Dude Ranch (1931)

Dude Ranch (1931)

Chester Carr, owner of a dude ranch in the Rockies, caters to guests seeking the thrill of the Wild West. Among his guests are the wealthy Spruce Meadows and his daughter Susan. But the West isn't wild anymore and most of Carr's guests are bored and about to leave. He is in despair when a caravan carrying a broke-down-and-out troupe of actors---Jennifer, Judd, Mrs. Merridew and her daughter, Alice---crashes down the hill and wrecks the hotel sign. Carr offers to board and lodge them free for a week if they can provide enough excitement to keep Meadows and the other guest from leaving. The actors agree. They have the properties and costumes for a Western melodrama,"Vance Kilroy's Revenge", which they proceed to adapt real-life for the occasion. That evening a woman (Mrs. Merridew) rushes into the hotel lounge with her little daughter (Alice), begging to be saved from the whip of her brutal husband Black Jud (Judd). He comes after them with a whip but the heroic Vance Kilroy (Jenifer) arrives and saves them. Black Jed leaves, shaking his fists, trimming his mustache and vowing to return. The visitors swallow the hoax, and dedcide to return. Jenifer (as Vance Kilroy) falls in love with Susan, but she sees through his false baravado and snubs him. A gang of bandits, planning to rob the local bank, arrives as hotel guests. Burson, the "ladies' man" dandy of the group takes a shine to Susan. When "Black Jed" returns, he is pursued and "strangled" by "Kilroy" but Burson openly shows his disbelief in the hero. Having being "killed" as "Black Jed", Judd re-appears the next morning as a Sioux Indian chief. When the bank robbery is committed, one of the gang wears a costume similar to Jennifers, and suspicion is cast on him. Sheriff Simonson arrives and arrests Jennifer, but Alice sees the bandits kidnap Susan, and she convinces the wooden-headed sheriff that he has arrested the wrong man. Jennifer joins the posse in pursuit of the fleeing gangsters. The ads, in London, carried a blurb from the Sunday Times reviewer in which he called the film... "Quite the funniest and brainest satire of American cowboy Wild West stuff I have ever seen..." "Ruggles of Red Gap" in 1935 probably knocked him for a loop. Quite-ho like.