The Gay Ranchero
The Gay Ranchero
| 14 January 1948 (USA)
The Gay Ranchero Trailers

Manzanita Springs ia a combination small airline and spa and Vance Brados wants it. He pays their mechanic to have the planes run out of fuel so his men can rob the gold shipments and kill the pilots. After Sheriff Roy Rogers catches the mechanic, Roy plans one more gold shipment to get proof and this time his men will be ready. But it looks like Roy's plan will fail when Brados suspects a trap and call off the raid.

Reviews
dougdoepke

Okay Rogers programmer. Plot's a little different—bad guys trying to sabotage small rural airport and its planes so they can build a casino. Roy's the town sheriff, while Frazee runs the port with Devine's help, that is, when he's not in the bull ring. Guizar and Estrelita are sort of charming drop-ins. There's some good hard riding around familiar LA area locations. Not much gunplay, but some good flying fists, especially when two bad guys mix it up. And, oh yes, lots of a low-flying single engine as it navigates the trees and fields. Unless I missed something, the Amazon streaming version lacked the songs listed here, and was in fuzzy b&w . Anyway, Roy's his usual appealing six-gun hero, while Miss Frazee's a relief from the ugly guys, and Devine's amusing without overdoing it. But, in my little book, Estrelita steals the film with striking looks and a strong personality. Watch out for the little story twists that may require a scorecard as to who's on whose side. All in all, it's an average Rogers oater which for his fans is way good enough.

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classicsoncall

The first thing to catch my attention here was the actor who was second billed, Tito Guizar as the Gay Ranchero of the title. Well I don't know if he was much of a ranchero or not, he was on hand here to convince his sweetheart Consuela Belmonte (Estelita Rodriguez) to pack it up and move back to Mexico with him. That idea gets a bit thrown off track when Consuela wins a bid to take over Betty Richards' (Jane Frazee) Manzanita Springs Airline, to the chagrin of villain Vance Brados (George Meeker) who wants the airline for himself. Brados is behind a number of plane hijackings, forcing them to land when their fuel supply and guages are tampered with, then robbing their cargo and doing away with the pilots.I had to do a double take early in the story when Roy Rogers is ambushed escorting a pair of outlaws back to Manzanita. It's pretty apparent that Roy is shot in the shoulder by one of the bad guys, but when he's rescued by Nicci Lopez (Guizar) and removes his shirt to tend to the wound there's no blood. Not even a bullet wound! I wonder why the film makers didn't notice that.Whenever I catch Roy and fellow cowboy star Gene Autry in a Mexican themed Western I find myself wishing it had been filmed in color and this was no exception. The song and dance numbers would have been a lot more delightful, what with the singers and dancers decked out in traditional costume. The title song is offered up in an English and Spanish version and Guizar gets to do a solo of his own in between tunes by Bob Nolan and his Sons of the Pioneers.Andy Devine is also on hand in the story, but isn't as prominent as in some of Roy's other films. As far as I know, it's the only time a B Western ever offered up a bullfighter versus a Bullfincher.

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MartinHafer

This is an odd Roy Rogers film, but he did do a lot of strange films that were an odd amalgam of the old and the new. In this case, our cowboy hero is involved with an airport and hijacked airplanes--a very, very odd venue for a western hero. And, yes, it's true, there were no airplanes in the old west. However, Roy Rogers and Gene Autry BOTH made a ton of anachronistic films--with cowboys AND telephones AND pickup trucks and the like. It's odd. So why are the planes being sabotaged? Tune in and see in this rather ordinary (aside from the locale) Rogers film. About the only standout thing is the nice non-stereotypical Hispanic leading man--something unusual for the time.

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FightingWesterner

Bandits find a way to force airplanes down in uninhabited areas, in order to steal their cargo. Sheriff Roy Rogers rides out to the landing sites to investigate and runs afoul of the villains.Tito Guizar is good as the title character, an ex-bullfighter who comes to the United States to wrangle his beautiful runaway fiancé, but almost everything else about this loosely-plotted Roy Rogers vehicle is pretty pedestrian, with a few confusing moments and not nearly enough action until near the end.However, Bob Nolan and The Sons Of The Pioneers sing a few decent songs, Roy's still likable, and Estelita Rodriguez, as Guizar's fiancé is awfully attractive.

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