It’s always a little jarring to run across a Golden Age Western directed by the Austrian dabbler in the dark side, Fritz Lang. The director of “M,” “Ministry of Fear” and “The Blue Gardenia” always seemed “urban,” occasionally “futuristic” and often cynical. He made only made three sagebrush sagas once moving to Hollywood. The first two — “The Return of Frank James” and “Western Union” — were pretty forgettable.

By the time RKO gave him the budget and a Technicolor take on this most American of genres for “Rancho Notorious,” he’d made up his mind on its conventions and decided to apply The Lang Touch — savagely cruel characters, moral amorality, heartless violence — to a sort of commentary on Westerns.

The studio cast Marlene Dietrich, whose most famous Western was the James Stewart comedy “Destry Rides Again.” Lang decided to send it and her up, having her sing as another shady “dance hall girl,” this one aging out of her wandering, man-eating ways, even her paramour (Mel Ferrer) Frenchy — her name in “Destry.”

Like “High Noon,” this morality play would feature a title song woven into the fabric of the film, telling the story and passing judgement on the characters. But when your singer is crooning about “the old sad story of hate, murder and rage,” the effect is less “Threepenny Opera” and more, well, camp.

Consider the song’s title, which was almost the film’s title (studio owner Howard Hughes nixed it), “The Legend of Chuck-a-Luck,” and the camp’s out of the bag. The tune, the plot point and the location “Chuck-a-Luck” in the movie come from the sound a giant, standing roulette wheel makes when it spins, its pawl clattering away as it passes by numbers.

“Chuck-a-Luck” is a sound familiar to many a character in this populous, somewhat sprawling 90 minute thriller. But what Vern Haskell (Arthur Kennedy) wants to know is what “place” it signifies.

Vern is a Wyoming ranch hand all set to marry his shopkeeper sweetheart (Gloria Henry) when we meet him. But a couple of robbers (Lloyd Gough and John Doucette) end that dream. Beth was murdered, the old doc tells Vern, “and she wasn’t spared anything.” She was raped.

Mild-mannered Vern, who admits he’s a “raw hand with a gun,” is bug-eyed with rage. When the posse pursuing the bandits turns back, Vern presses on. He gets clues from the dying partner (Doucette’s “Whitey”), from strangers who give him other names, other towns to chase leads in all the way down The West, towards Mexican border country, towards the Spinning C Ranch.

It’s owned by this notorious retired “dance hall girl,” Altar Keane (Dietrich). The way to get to her is through her outlaw beau, Frenchy (Ferrer). Outlaws lay low there, lots of them (Jack Elam, Frank Ferguson, George Reeves, etc.).

It’s all fun and games and ranch chores and “good whisky, a bold song and an honest woman,” as far as they’re concerned. But Vern knows the consequences of their actions. He’s on the scent and close to his quarry. The corrupt Altar, who takes a cut from every bank robbery her violent boarders commit, is just another clue, one he may have to bat his eyes at to figure out who his quarry is amongst the desperados.

Altar, celebrating a birthday and lamenting that “every year is a threat to a woman,” might just return his affections when Frenchy’s not around.

I often marvel at how much “story” filmmakers of the past packed into 80-100 minute movies. Lang keeps this Daniel Taradash script on the move, trotting through episodes where Vern stops to ask this or that town about “Chuck-a-Luck” or “Altar Keane,” once he hears that name from a bad hombre who tries to kill him.

Chats lead to flashbacks as we hear the legend of “Altar Keane,” who cut a wide swath through saloons and the men who haunt them all over the West.

One novelty of the film is noting how many members of its cast became TV regulars, starting with “Superman” George Reeves. Sitcoms of the ’50s and early ’60s featured Russell Johnson (“Gilligan’s Island”), William Frawley (“I Love Lucy,” “My Three Sons”), Dick Elliott (Mayberry mayor in “The Andy Griffith Show”) who turn up as yarn spinners or roulette wheel spinners in the flashbacks and town interrogations.

Lang’s fistfights are furious even as his shootouts are somewhat pedestrian. But the big, colorful cast covers up a lot of shortcomings — the sound-staginess of many scenes, that cornball title tune, returning time and again, for starters.

Kennedy makes the transition from mild-mannered and moon-eyed to manic and furious with ease. There’s violence in the way he pursues Altar, bruising embraces and kisses. Dietrich makes this turn a sort of self-conscious farewell to her leading lady days. She’d appear in a half dozen more films, mostly vamping her past, over the next twenty years, not quite “closing the door,” like Garbo, but bowing out gracefully, letting us remember her for the fiery, androgynous beauty and song stylist she was.

Ferrer was cast against type here, but isn’t bad. Reeves has one of his most colorful supporting roles, playing a happy-go-lucky “petticoat chaser” with three big scratch marks across his face. He’d land “Superman” on TV that same year.

And Lang would follow up this Technicolor Western with some fine film noirs — “The Blue Gardenia,” “The Big Heat” — and melodramas, before making one last visit to his favorite villain, Dr. Mabuse (“The Thousand Eyes of Doctor Mabuse”) and easing into retirement.

He never had the sort of independence to tell stories his way in Hollywood that he did in Europe.

“Rancho Notorious” may not rank among Lang’s very best films. But when you made “Metropolis,” “M” and “The Big Heat,” you’ve set the bar pretty damned high. Whatever he thought of Westerns as an American genre and cultural obsession, this one stands out as a peak-era commentary on the form with an eye toward the violence and cruelty that accounts of a romanticized, largely lawless period of history often skipped over in between songs, shots of whisky and shoot-outs.

Rating: “approved,” violence, rape is referenced, smoking.

Cast: Marlene Dietrich, Arthur Kennedy, Mel Ferrer, Jack Elam, Frank Ferguson, John Doucette, Lloyd Gough, Dan Seymour, Gloria Henry and George Reeves.

Credits: Directed by Fritz Lang, scripted by Daniel Taradash. An RKO release in Technicolor, streaming on Tubi, etc.

Running time: 1:29