The star was popular actor Robson Green, playing a police officer, DCI Cregeen, whose injuries after a shooting leave him with strange abilities to sense criminals. The serial was very popular, and led to two sequel serials in 1998 and 1999, although these were not written by Abbott or Davies. 1999's Touching Evil III was co-produced with Granada by Green's own independent production company, Coastal Productions.
In 2004, the USA Network in the US screened an American mini-series adaptation of the first serial, produced by actor Bruce Willis's production company. While the American adaptation garnered critical acclaim, the USA Network deemed it commercially unsuccessful and opted to not renew the series.
This version makes it even clearer that Touch of Evil is a flat-out all-cylinders-running, eye-popping masterpiece, one of a few monumental 1950s swan songs marking the end of the great epoch of traditional studio filmmaking.
But as masterful as Welles's filming is, what makes Touch of Evil a staggering masterpiece is the global quality of his style, which causes every image to echo almost every other in the film.
In particular, the original release print of Touch of Evil is a historical artifact, a record of what opposing forces--cinematically illiterate studio bosses and a brilliant filmmaker--produced together as well as a record of what millions of people saw.
Touch of Evil (1958), is considered one of the last examples of film noir in the classic era (from the early 1940s until the late 1950s).
Quinlan is not on the take, but is bitter about the unsolved murder of his wife early in his career and has come to believe he can spot the guilty with his intuition, an aching in his bad leg, and he was willing to frame the guilty to make sure they get their just deserts.
The A-movie was The Female Animal, starring Hedy Lamarr, produced by Albert Zugsmith and directed by Harry Keller whom the studio had hired to direct the re-shot material in Touch of Evil.
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