Year of Release: 1958Country of Origin: USA
Director: Orson Welles
Cast: Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Orson Welles
Plot outline: Stark, perverse story of murder, kidnapping, and police corruption in Mexican border town (IMDb).
Loosely based on the novel Badge of Evil by Whit Masterson, Mr. Welles helps himself to the juicy role of a fanatical Texas cop who frames a Mexican youth for murder and clashes with an indignant Mexican sleuth, Mr. Heston. In addition to battling Mr. Welles, a psychopath who runs the town, Mr. Heston has to fend off a vengeful narcotics gang menacing his young bride, Miss Leigh. Any other directors might have culled a pretty good, well-acted melodrama from such material, with the suspense dwindling as justice begins to triumph. Mr. Welles' is an obvious but brilliant bag of tricks. Using a superlative camera like a black-snake whip, he lashes the action right into the audience's eye. The careful groupings of the cast, the overlapping of the speeches and other stylized trade-marks of the director's Mercury Players unit are here. But the tempo, at least in the first half, is plain mercurial, as befits a thriller. Where Mr. Welles soundly succeeds is in generating enough sinister electricity for three such yarns and in generally staging it like a wild, murky nightmare. Miss Leigh has the most blood-curdling time of all in two sequences, one involving a strangulation in a hotel room. The other - her siege by some young punks in an isolated motel - should make any viewer leery of border accommodations for a long time to come. However, while good versus evil remains the text, the lasting impression of this movie is effect rather than substance, hence its real worth. The cunningly designed climax, for instance, barely alludes to the framed youth at the outset (in a fine, ironic twist, by the way). The entire unsavory supporting cast is excellent, including such people as Joseph Calleia, Akim Tamiroff and Ray Collins. Marlene Dietrich, as an incidental guest star, wisely advises Mr. Welles to "lay off the candy bars." Two questions: the first to Mr. Welles, who obviously savors his dominant, colorful role. Why would a villainous cop, having hoodwinked the taxpayers for some thirty years, suddenly buckle when a tourist calls his bluff? And why, Mr. Heston, pick the toughest little town in North America for a honeymoon with a nice morsel like Miss Leigh? (NYT)
My judgement: ***1/2 out of 4 stars
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