Touch of Evil was originally released in February 1958 as the second half of a double feature, a ploy which proved Universal had no interest in the film or any hopes of salvaging their investment.

Variety admitted that while there were striking moments in Touch of Evil, it took "more than good scenes to make a good picture."

The New York Times echoed Variety when it said that the lasting impression of Touch of Evil was "effect rather than substance."

Renown critic Pauline Kael wrote, "this marvelously garish thriller has something, but not very much, to do with drugs and police corruption in a border town. What it really has to do with is love of the film medium, and if Welles can't resist the candy of shadows and angles and baroque decor, he turns it into stronger fare than most directors' solemn meat and potatoes. It's a terrific entertainment."

In his review of Touch of Evil for The A List (Da Capo Press), film critic Michael Sragow wrote, "Orson Welles's Touch of Evil takes viewers on a jolting ride through a seedy town on the U.S.-Mexico border, circa 1957....their jeopardy-riddled journey makes for one of the freest, riskiest, and raciest melodramas ever financed by a Hollywood studio.

In his Guide for the Film Fanatic, Danny Peary's entry for Touch of Evil said "Welles the director shot it like an artist, employing some of the most audacious visual strokes of his career. The result of this artist directing sleaze? A masterpiece....It's interesting that Heston's character investigates Quinlan's past to find out who Quinlan is now - this search for a great man's past, and the subsequent discovery of consistent moral corruption (the reason he was able to make it to the top in the first place) was also essential to Citizen Kane and Mr. Arkadin/I>/ Welles's characters are potentially great men but none of them act nobly on their way to the thrones of their particular worlds. This is the reason Calleia, who loves Welles's Quinlan, is so disappointed: real heroes must have pure pasts."

Despite the lukewarm critical response in the United States, Touch of Evil won the international prize at the 1958 Brussels' World Fair.

Film critic and future director Francois Truffaut lamented at the time that the U.S. had submitted The Long, Hot Summer (1958), also starring Orson Welles, for competition in the Cannes Film Festival, instead of Touch of Evil.

In Truffaut's review of the film, he wrote "Touch of Evil wakes us up and reminds us that among the pioneers of cinema there was Melies and there was Feuillade. It's a magical film that makes us think of fairy tales.....It's a film which humbles us a bit because it's by a man who thinks more swiftly than we do, and much better, and who throws another marvelous film at us when we're still reeling under the last one."

Not surprisingly, considering Universal's treatment of it, Touch of Evil earned zero Academy Award nominations.

Touch of Evil was placed on the Library of Congress' National Film Registry in 1993.

Rick Schmidlin won a Special Award from the New York Film Critics Circle for his 1998 re-edit of the film, based on Orson Welles' specifications as noted in a 58-page memo written at the time of the original release.

by Scott McGee and Jeff Stafford