Slotting all his trademark obsessions into the craggy architecture of Hollywood's lynchpin genre, German export Fritz Lang's third and final Western is one of the most unusual you'll ever see. A typically Langian tale of "hate, murder and revenge", it sees mild-man Arthur Kennedy strap on a six-gun and his best I'm-gonna-kill-'em face to hunt down his fiancée's murderer. The trail blazes to the titular notorious ranch, hideout of Mob diva Marlene Dietrich and her jealous quick-draw beau Mel Ferrer...
Stretching the tension with a dual thrust of edgy love triangle and mystery revenger, Lang keeps the tone off-kilter with a whisk of emotional fizz and corkscrew morals. And Dietrich? Clambering back into the genre some 13 years after the subversive antics of Destry Rides Again, the ageing icon serves glam and ham as she sharpens her bite on the spiky dialogue: '"Why don't you go away and come back 10 years ago?"'
DVD Extras:
None.
