Review: Rancho Notorious


Arthur Kennedy is an embittered cowboy whose wife-to-be is brutally murdered on the eve of their wedding. He’s on a vengeance mission to track down the murderer (Lloyd Gough, who along with creepy John Doucette were robbing the general store where she worked), with the trail leading to the goofily-named Chuck-a-Luck, a ranch owned by Altar (Marlene Dietrich). Mel Ferrer is Dietrich’s fast-draw companion Frenchie Fairmont, Jack Elam plays a fourth-tier gunman.



Bizarre 1952 western from Fritz Lang (“Metropolis”, “Ministry of Fear”, “Man Hunt”) has a dopey title, even dopier song by William Lee, and a bunch of non-Western sounding/looking actors in the cast (Kennedy, Dietrich, and Ferrer, let alone a German Expressionist director…or an Austrian-born German Expressionist director). And yet it all works…well, except the damn song. That’s just awful.



It’s probably a chief inspiration for Mel Brooks’ “Blazing Saddles”, wherein Madeline Kahn aped Dietrich and Frankie Laine parodied himself and presumably Lee here, too. Dietrich (whose song numbers are really quite good) and Ferrer are especially charismatic, and Kennedy is always sturdy (I’ve rarely seen a bad performance by him). Definitely worth a look for the curious among you, it’s oddly watchable and at under 90 minutes, it’s never dull. The screenplay is by Daniel Taradash (“From Here to Eternity”, “Picnic”), from a story by Sylvia Richards (screenwriter of “Ruby Gentry”). But really, Chuck-a-luck? Chuck-a-luck?!



Rating: B-

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