Le Mystère de Santa Marta

Begins with execution for gun running into mexico.

My summary is a bit deceiving. There is a character in this film named Johnny Cash...though it's not THE Johnny Cash...just a character played by Dick Foran.

When the story begins, three unsavory friends are about to be executed, as they were trying to sneak guns into Mexico. However, they manage to escape and walk back over the border to the States. There they come upon a small town where SOME unknown bandit is harassing the community and shooting people. At first, they think it's these three gunrunners, but a young lady has faith in them and helps them establish their innocence. Soon one of them (Albert Dekker) is the sheriff and he vows to clean up the town. But can he? And, considering their unsavory pasts, why would they?

This is a B-western plot all the way but with A-list Fred MacMurray in the lead as well as Gilbert Roland and Dekker. This makes it almost like a B+ film instead of a B. Worth seeing but despite the cast, it's nothing remarkable.

At the end of the long run as an MGM contract director, Sam Wood with GOODBYE MR. CHIPS and NIGHT AT THE OPERA on his C.V., found himself doing a B western. That must have been a shock but he had a first rate cast, Dietrich's musician and Ernst Lubitsch's camera man along, so he got stuck into what proved to be an entertaining minor production moved away from the expected cowboy action - note the shift from dramatic to comedy at the end of the big shoot out.

Drifters McMurray, Dekker (doing dumb comic) and Roland battle villain Schildkraut, with Patricia Morrison for female interest. We could have done without the moppet but the mounting is expert and the cast comfortably superior to their material.

Well, nothing special to say about this western from director Sam Wood, where a trio of leads are in charge of the entertaining job. This not Sam Wood's best picture, not his most famous, maybe because the topic is so predictable, with good guys vs villains whom they want to get a small town rid off. If you search something unusual, some surprise, forget this film, despite its obvious quality in directing and acting. Very forties in its film making and acting, I mean you did not find such schemes in the fifties. In the forties, there were many westerns involving a group of "good" guys, and rarely lonesome heroes. And among those pals, there was usually one of them "worst" than the others. So, to summarize, that's a good western for die hard fans of the genre, that's all.

Around the time Rangers Of Fortune was made by Paramount hero trio westerns were a big deal with such folks as the Three Mesquiteers, the Rangebusters, the Roughriders all competing for those Saturday afternoon dimes. Not to mention the most famous of all Hopalong Cassidy which was being produced at the Paramount studios at the time this film came out. Somebody made a decision to do one for a slightly bigger budget with one of their top male stars in the lead.

Fred MacMurray who was most famously quoted as saying that he never felt comfortable in westerns because 'the horse and I were never one' stars with Gilbert Roland and Albert Dekker as a trio not much for law and order and freshly fleeing from some Mexican Rurales over the border, become three gallant knights ridding a Texas border town of some outlaws terrorizing new settlers. No one knows who is doing this or why.

MacMurray and Roland are their usual selves. Dekker was quite a revelation in a part that first call would have gone to Warren Hymer. Patricia Morison who recently turned a 100 years young has all the men in town trying to win her except Albert Dekker. Dick Foran is over from Warner Brothers as an eager young settler. Joseph Schildkraut is the elegant owner of the local saloon.

The copy of Rangers Of Fortune I saw on YouTube shows this film is in sore need of restoration. It's worthy enough to be saved if for nothing else than one unusual Albert Dekker.