The Cisco Kid: The Lynching Story

The Cisco Kid: The Lynching Story

Originally broadcast: Tuesday, December 12, 1950 on first-run syndication.

Plot: Cisco attempts to save a man from a gang of men out to lynch him for the death of a mining prospector.

Analysis: I know I’ve had some pretty high, possibly unreasonably high, standards applied to these Cisco Kid episodes. Today’s episode proved to me at least that it’s not that unreasonable as we finally had an episode at least on par with what we were seeing earlier in the year on Gene Autry. A plot that made sense where we knew pretty early on who was right and who was wrong, but how we got to the finish was the drama. I actually really enjoyed this one and it is, thus so far, the best episode of Cisco Kid I’ve seen so far.

We discussed Cisco in our last review, so it’s only fair, since he featured in some comedic moments in this one, to discuss the man behind Pancho, Leo Carrillo. The man could probably be best defined as almost Mr. California as his family had roots in the state going all the way back to the days when it was a Spanish colony, most notably with his great-grandfather serving as the Spanish governor of Alta California between 1837 and 1838. As an actor, he divided his time between Broadway and movies, making some 90 movies between 1928 and 1950. The truly remarkable thing about his work on Cisco Kid was his age – 70 – when he started work on the project, 24 years older than Renaldo playing Cisco.

The Bottom Line: Like I said, this is one of the better episodes of the series so far and the first one I honestly can recommend checking out if you are so interested. Pancho and the owner of the hotel have a few off-comedy moments, but otherwise, the episode is a decent half hour of entertainment.

You can find The Lynching Story included with 19 other episodes in The Cisco Kid: Collection 2 produced by MPI (http://www.amazon.com/Cisco-Kid-Collection-2/dp/B0001LJCX4/ref=sr_1_3?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1286758713&sr=1-3). With the holidays approaching, you may be lucky enough for find it for reasonable prices.

Next time, our long awaited first entry into 1951.