Rancho Notorious – DVD

Bandits, gunslingers -- they know they can find refuge at the remote outpost of the lawless called Chuck-a-Luck. There, in exchange for a 10% cut of any loot, former barroom belle Altar Keane (Marlene Dietrich) serves as den mother to a Wild West den of thieves. Among the newcomers at the rancho: Vern Haskell (Arthur Kennedy), who poses as an outlaw in hopes of smoking out the desperado who killed his fiancee. In his third and final Western, Fritz Lang unsaddles the genre to create a tempestuous cult favorite swapping expansive exteriors for roiling psychological interiors. Critics have likened the film and its theme of a man twisted by vengeance to a Lang film of a wholly different genre: film noir's The Big Heat.

• crime
• western