The Story Archive

Touch of Evil

Orson Welles · 1958 CE · Film · Modern / American · Contemporary

A car crosses from Mexico into a Californian border town and explodes, drawing in a Mexican narcotics official on his honeymoon and a vast, limping American detective whose hunches always prove right. The detective plants evidence; the official pulls at his old cases while his wife waits in a desert motel. Its opening crane shot is the most copied take in American cinema, and the studio recut Welles until a 1998 restoration.

Open Touch of Evil in the archive — filters, lineage graph and full facet browsing.

Lineage

Attributes

Genre
Theme
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
Plot structure
Symbol / motif
Conflict
Mode / tone
Culture / tradition

Closest analogues