Touch of Evil

 
Touch of Evil
1958
Director: Orson Welles
Starring: Charlton Heston, Orson Welles, Janet Leigh

Generally considered the last true classic film noir (as it was the last one made before the term was coined, everything that followed would be mindfully neo-noir), Touch of Evil is completely and utterly embodied to me by one of its main characters. Hank Quinlan is fat, bloated, sweaty, confused, and corrupt. These adjectives most definitely apply to the general tone of the film as well.

Miguel “Mike” Vargas (Heston in obnoxious brownface) is a Mexican narcotics cop working to take down the infamous Grande family in a border town. When an American business man is killed by a car bomb deposited in Mexico but detonated in the US, jurisdiction gets confusing. Vargas is helping on the case, but American veteran cop Quinlan (Welles) takes charge of the case. Quinlan is stubborn and untrusting of Vargas, who is as straight edge as it’s possible to be. Things aren’t helped when Vargas’ new wife, American Susan (Leigh) is kidnapped by the Grande family and psychologically tortured in order to tarnish both her and Mike’s reputation.

Horror of Dracula

Horror of Dracula
1958
Director: Terence Fisher
Starring: Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Michael Gough

Vampire myth and legend has been squarely in the public consciousness for more than a century. While Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula was hardly the first incidence of vampires in fiction, it was perhaps the most successful, and with such recent additions as *shudder* Twilight and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, vampires still continue to fascinate, whether they sparkle or no. In the 1950s, possibly the most iconic vampire film comes from the fabled Hammer studio of England, Horror of Dracula.

Inspired by but hardly faithful to Bram Stoker’s original novel, the movie tells the story of first Jonathan Harker (John Van Eyssen) and then Van Helsing (Cushing) as they track and stalk the vampire Count Dracula (Lee). Harker tries his hand at destroying Dracula by going out to the Count’s castle on his own, but he is quickly overcome by the Count and his female underling. We then cut back to Harker’s fiancée Lucy, who is sickly because she too is being haunted by the Count. Van Helsing explains to Lucy’s brother Arthur (Gough) that she must be protected from the vampire as well.

Hammer Horror is one of the most famous horror studios of all time, putting out a tremendous number of films for decades. Horror of Dracula was hardly their first film, the studio having been making films since the 1930s, but the studio underwent a rebirth in the fifties, one that was helped along greatly by the tremendous box office success of this movie. This rebirth helped to define what has now become recognizable as the trademarks of Hammer Horror.

Vertigo

Vertigo
Director: Had to be Hitchcock
Starring: James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes, The City of San Francisco
1958

It is not understating it to say that Vertigo is the ultimate Hitchcock movie, but you have to ask yourself, “Why?” Hitchcock is known as the master of suspense, but the mystery in Vertigo is solved and all is revealed with a third of the film left to go. In terms of mystery, Vertigo doesn’t fit with other Hitch standards like Rear Window or North by Northwest. No, this is the ultimate Hitchcock film for an entirely different reason. Of all his work, Vertigo is clearly the most personal, the most intimate, the most soul-baring piece of film he ever presented. And it is this fact that also makes Vertigo his most disturbing film.

Stewart plays John ‘Scottie’ Ferguson, a former police detective forced to retire due to psychological and physical issues surrounding an incident that left another cop dead and him hanging from the side of a building. An old friend from college convinces Scottie to do some private detective work for him, following his wife around. Apparently, Madeleine the wifey (Novak) is slightly off her rocker and appears to be possessed by the spirit of a melodramatic nineteenth century ghost, intent on getting wifey to kill herself. Scottie is immediately smitten with Madeleine, and things go from complicated to downright twisted.