Rancho Deluxe (1975)

A Masterpiece!

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Blistering performances.

When I posted my review of the Gene Autry flick "Down Mexico Way" some seven years ago as I write this, I wondered whether there might be at least one more Western out there that had a polka played in it. With a dab of poetic license, I'd say you could call "Rancho Deluxe" a Western, after all it's got cowboys, horses and cattle rustling in it. So when free spirit Betty Fargo (Patti D'Arbanville) called over to the band to 'Play a Polka', I'd have to say their response qualifies this flick as the third time I've caught one in the genre. If you're wondering what the other one was, it was Charles Starrett's programmer from 1951 called "Snake River Desperadoes".Well that polka might not have sounded much like a polka, and this might not look much like your traditional Western, but it sure does have that cattle rustling thing down pat. Problem is, most of the rustling by bad boys Jack McKee (Jeff Bridges) and Cecil Colson (Sam Waterston) is done one at a time, and they generally just shoot and butcher the poor animal right where he drops. I've never tried it, but it seems to me that taking a chainsaw to a dead animal would be a lot more gruesome than the picture allowed; Jack didn't get a drop of blood on him! This is a wryly amusing tale with quick and abrupt scene changes but it's not hard to follow. Writer Thomas McGuane must have let his fertile imagination head into Mexican overdrive to come up with the story. The Baseheart of Bozeman Canyon making shambles of the hotel room is almost worth the price of admission alone, but prepare yourself to really pay attention to everything going on along with all the sharp dialog because you'll want to reflect on things when it's all over.With a title tune from Jimmy Buffet and a sneak peak harmonica cameo by Warren Oates, this is definitely not your father's Western. The only connection there would be Slim Pickens' role in the story, and having seen a bunch of his pictures from the Fifties, I was a little surprised to see him in this one as late as 1975. But he did have quite a few more screen appearances after this one so I'll have to check out some of those as well if I can find them.After catching Sam Waterston in all those 'Law and Order' episodes, it's a bit strange seeing him here as an alcoholic Indian, or any kind of Indian for that matter. But it wouldn't be the last time he appeared in a Western. He showed up four years later as a Kiowa warrior named White Bull, giving Martin Sheen fits in another off beat story, but that time he went the entire picture without saying a word.

To those of you who put this on your 'desert island' menu, congratulations. If you were sentient in the period contemporary to the making of Rancho DeLuxe, you get a clear picture of the real comedic and artistic value of the film. If you missed all that and the movie is still on your list, well, kind of like Slim Pickens describes missing the circus of the century, you're winging it pretty well.The mystery and controversy that kept Perry/McGuane's little masterpiece out of distribution is a travesty on par with Moby Grape's having been dealt the lousy hand as a rock supergroup. It was about 15 years after release before the film circulated on VHS and its only circulation occasionally on late night TV was in a version so mutilated by censors as to render it incomprehensible.Had the film been in wide release and properly circulated, it likely would have accrued the same sort of cult following dealt to Rocky Horror and King of Hearts. But the world went down a different path and Urban Cowboy became the substantial cinematic view of how hipsters saw 'western' and 'rural' America. Too bad. But they can't know what they don't know.If you found yourself standing in Bridges' boots in 'Last Picture Show', you likely found great reason to enjoy Rancho DeLuxe as a comedic romp on lots of levels. And his part is only a fraction of what makes this one worthwhile. I hope I'll say the same about his 'True Grit' (an inflated and mediocre dime novel in print and piddling exploitation of John Wayne's career as film), but I'm not holding my breath.

Genuine sleeper. Was there ever anyone better at playing a "good ole' boy" than the Hollywood-bred Jeff Bridges. Here he's an upper-class dropout turned Montana cattle rustler, of all things. When he and Indian partner Sam Waterston aren't shooting steers or cavorting with the girls, they're making plans for their Rancho Deluxe where they'll retire in luxury. That is, if inept rancher Clifton James doesn't catch them first. Back in my old Saturday matinée days, rustlers rode horses and captured whole herds, while ranchers gathered in posses and tracked them down. Not now. Instead the boys ride in pickups and chainsaw the steer where it drops, while the two-man posse gets a bird's eye view from a helicopter, not that it does rancher James any good.Chuckles galore in this crafty screenplay that manages some neat twists and a whole truck load of colorful characters. There's James's wife (Ashley), sort of a slick Montana version of Lady Chatterley, along with lucky ranch hand Harry Dean Stanton who makes first-class use of a skinny aspen tree. Then there's broken-down cattle detective Slim Pickens. You know, the guy last seen riding Dr. Strangelove's A-bomb into the smithereens of a Soviet city, along with comely daughter Charlene Dallas who's also an occasional virgin. I hope whoever did the sharp-eyed casting here got a bonus. They certainly deserved one.Actually, my favorite part is when Waterston gets together on a lake bank with wise, old Dad. Now, I was always told that drink was the curse of the working class, or maybe it was work itself. Anyhow, not so, says Dad, at least not so in Montana. Instead, says Dad, Montana's curse is the pickup truck. Everybody stays broke because everybody has to have one. Get a few bucks and what do they do—they buy a pickup, afford it or not. In fact, the state is being impoverished and overrun by these 4-wheel critters. Anyway, it's a humorous and apparently incisive observation from novelist McGuane himself.Then too, for those who've ever wondered where the store-bought flies so beloved by fishermen come from, the movie answers the burning question. And speaking of shotgun marriage, watch Bridges teach the interlopers a lesson in bedroom manners in a humorous bit that stands expectation on its head. All in all, the 90 minutes remains an oddball and unromantic look at the modern frontier. But with the clever script and colorful characters, the movie also amounts to a light-hearted and slyly understated treat.

Never mind the movie, Monsieur Pickens' performance in this film is a significant event in the history of cinema. If he'd never done any other films, except perhaps Dr. Strangelove and Blazing Saddles, he'd live forever in my memory simply for the scene in Rancho Deluxe where he describes his dream of being in Egypt in the days of the Pharaoh, and expresses consternation at having that dream disturbed. And the speech he gives at the end was another of those earth-shattering moments that stick with you like flies to mayonnaise. Ah, what an actor. Every time he's IN the movie, he's the one you're watching to see what he does, because you know it'll be something you'll remember.I've learned over the years that it's the supporting players who make the movie. And in some respects, in many of his other movies, Slim Pickens always seemed a kind of updated Andy Devine, western comic relief but not much else. In this (and in the other two films I mentioned) we get to see another side of M. Pickens. More than a clown, he's a one-man show, as much of a scene stealer as, say, a vaudevillian in a movie full of Shakespearan actors. To tell the truth, the rest of the movie is occasionally disappointing, although Sam Waterston was fascinating to watch, showing a promise which sadly never fulfilled itself. Clifton James and particularly Elizabeth Ashley are great fun. Curt and Burt, played respectively by Harry Dean Stanton and Richard Bright, are more or less adequate. Jeff Bridges acts just like Jeff Bridges.However, hands down, this is Slim Pickens' movie. The man was brilliant, what can I say.