Riddle Ranch

There are films (some being made today) that go far beyond the pale of critique,and 1935's "Riddle Ranch" stands tall in the saddle among such.It is another entry in Mitchell Leichter's Beaumont Pictures, Inc. series that were made as "A Black King Production" and, unless Conway Tearle was in it, as he was in four of them and still had enough clout in his long-past-prime period to at least get co-starring billing with an exceptionally ugly horse, the name above the title was Black King, The Horse With A Human Brain in..."whatever." These "Black King" films, filled with bad acting, bad writing, bad photography, bad editing, bad directing, bad horse breath and, no doubt, bad box lunches for the cast did achieve perfection of a sort...they were perfectly awful, and one has to admire perfection no matter which end of the scale it resides at. Being from Texas does not make me a judge of horse flesh, but I've seen every one of the "Black King" films---hey, some of us have just lived wasted lives--- and I have a sneaking suspicion that whenever Leichter gathered up the $86.99 necessary to cover all cost of production, he dropped by Fat Jones' hoss-rental stable and took advantage of whatever Blue-light Special Jones had going that day on horses, and rented the cheapest one possible, whether it resembled the preceding Black King or not. I could be wrong, since the laws of probability says there couldn't be two horses this ugly. The only thing that keeps this film from being as bad as "Plan Nine From Outer Space" is, at least the scenery was real. Well, I think it was but the photography was so bad, I can't even be certain of that.