Kino Lorber teased it will release Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil as a 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray disc.
The 1958 theatrical poster was tweeted tonight by Kino Lorber along with the phrase “4K UHD coming soon.” In subsequent tweets, Kino Lorber said the set will include the general release, preview version and reconstruction. The company hopes to include all previously released extras.
It will be the first Welles-directed movie to get a Ultra HD Blu-ray release.
Touch of Evil ‘s three cuts have previously been available on DVD and Blu-ray from Universal Home Video.
Touch of Evil , which stars Welles, Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh, was cut by the studio and released to theaters with a running time of 93 minutes. A longer 109-minute “preview” version was found and released in 1976.
In 1998, Universal released a reconstruction by Rick Schmidlin and Walter Murch that followed editing instructions made by Welles. It has a running time of 111 minutes and is generally considered to be the best version.
Initially dismissed by film critics, Touch of Evil found popularity among European audiences and won top awards at the 1958 Brussels World Film Festival. In 1993, the film was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.
Kino Lorber released the Welles’ thriller The Stranger on Blu-ray in 2013.
Coming Soon! pic.twitter.com/XXNakFUuTQ
— KLStudioClassics (@KLStudioClassic) February 10, 2021
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