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An Interview with RICK SCHMIDLIN The re-edit producer of ORSON WELLES’ masterpiece TOUCH OF EVIL ************************************************************************** The following interview with Rick Schmidlin took place shortly after the re-edited version of the film debuted in 1998. Since that time I’ve not spoken with Rick, although I was quite happy that he posted many comments about his […]

Vargas: You framed that boy, Captain. Framed him! _____________________________________________________ Firstly, Universal Home Entertainment must be greatly commended for finally releasing all three versions of Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil on DVD. This is, in itself, a rather historic milestone and one which Criterion helped paved the way for, with it’s own groundbreaking three-disc set for […]

Orson is primarily an artist — a great one. —Albert Zugsmith ****************************************** One of the great unsung heroes behind the making of Touch of Evil has to be Universal staff producer Albert Zugsmith. As can be seen in Zugsmith’s comments below, he and Welles had a wonderful working relationship on the two pictures they made […]

Now that we can compare all three versions of Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil on DVD, here are the last twelve pages from Welles’s original script, so we can see just how much Welles concept evolved during the actual shooting of the film. This script includes Welles changes up until February 16, 1957, two days […]

To introduce Mercedes McCambridge’s comments about her one day of work with Orson Welles on Touch of Evil, I think it’s interesting to note that although she had won an Academy Award, she was not deemed worthy enough by Universal to be listed alongside Marlene Dietrich and and Zsa Zsa Gabor as one of the […]

As Marlene Dietrich reports in her autobiography, MARLENE, the Academy Awards have had a long history of embarrassing mistakes. A prime example of this occurred in 1933, when a movie called CALVACADE won best picture. Does any movie goer alive actually remember this forgotten film? That same year a little picture called KING KONG received […]

In 1958, the year Touch of Evil and Vertigo were released, these were the nominees for best picture: Auntie Mame, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Defiant Ones, Gigi (the winner) and Separate Tables. Besides Richard Brooks bowdlerized version of Tennessee William’s great play, I don’t own any of these pictures. I certainly don’t […]

Universal Home Entertainment has released an official press release containing some additional details about the features that will be on their two-disc set of TOUCH OF EVIL, due out October 7, 2008. Charlton Heston on TOUCH OF EVIL: We finished shooting on TOUCH OF EVIL down on the canals in Venice, California, after we had […]