"Here's adventure! Here's Romance! Here's O. Henry's famous Robin Hood of the old west - The Cisco Kid!" - "The Cisco Kid" Opening Credits
The Cisco Kid Collection 1 DVD Review
By Jonathan Boudreaux
Someone trying to steal your stash of gold? Has your uncle been replaced with a ruthless look-alike thanks to a scheming ranch hand? No need to worry - the Cisco Kid (Duncan Renaldo) and his trusty sidekick Pancho (Leo Carrillo) are here to help! Loosely based on an O. Henry short story, The Cisco Kid follows the adventures of Mexican adventurers Cisco and Pancho as they travel around the Southwest righting wrongs. With his dapper black getup (complete with intricate embroidery and a generous helping of silver accents) and his horse Diablo, Cisco is the cool-headed, intuitive half of the duo. Pancho, on the other hand, is well meaning, but a little goofy. The name of his horse says it all - Loco. Together, the two men make a formidable team, tracking down bad guys, solving crimes, and protecting the innocent.
Although each episode features a bloodless gunfight or two, The Cisco Kid is extremely kid-friendly. The plotlines are filled with situations and characters that have enormous kid appeal. In "Monkey Business," the duo comes to the aid of the owners of a traveling wagon show and are themselves aided by a mischievous monkey. They encounter another traveling wagon show in "Pancho and the Pachyderm," which, as the title suggests, features an amusing encounter between Pancho and a trained elephant. With the do-gooders also running across a midget posing as a ventriloquist's dummy in "Laughing Badman" and a traveling Punch and Judy show in "The Puppeteer," one half expects Bozo the Clown to show up in an episode. The show's innocent sense of fun - albeit one with gunshots - is a throwback to a time when no problem was so big that it couldn't be solved in less than half an hour.
The series' childishly fun sense of humor continues with Pancho's buffoonish behavior and his extensive use of malapropisms. In "Talking Dog," the gullible sidekick becomes convinced that a stray dog he has picked up is capable of speech. In actuality, he is hearing the voice of a stagecoach robber coming through a newfangled invention - the telephone. In "Chinese Gold," he mistakes a roll of thunder for the rumbling of his empty stomach. With lines like "we didn't did nothing," "Ceesco, let's went," and "all is well that ends good," Pancho is one part Ricky Ricardo and one part Frito Bandito, with a smidge of Jose Jimenez thrown in for good measure.
Those situations and lines of dialogue put The Cisco Kid on the verge of reinforcing negative stereotypes, but the performances by the show's leads redeem it. Carrillo's Pancho seems knowingly dumb, as if Pancho is putting on an act for both his and Cisco's amusement. This seems especially true since Pancho is always perfectly competent when it comes to getting Cisco and himself out of scrapes. The scripts often go to absurd lengths to include a damsel for Cisco to both help and pursue, but Renaldo's breezy style transcends the suave Latin lover stereotype. Together, the two make for a pleasingly affable duo.
Incredibly enough, Renaldo was in his 50s and Carrillo in his 70s when the series began shooting. At a time of life when most people consider retiring, Carrillo did many of his own stunts. He died five years after the series ended. Renaldo died in 1980.
In many ways, The Cisco Kid is an historic series. It was one of the first shows to be syndicated directly to individual TV stations rather than being broadcast on one of the national networks. To cut costs, most shows at the time were broadcast live. Cisco, however, was filmed - and in color, no less. This last point is pretty amazing since color televisions would not become prevalent until the following decade.
The Cisco Kid ran for six seasons, during which 156 episodes were produced. This set collects twenty episodes from throughout the series' run. These episodes include "Big Switch," "Convict Story," "Oil Land," "Chain Lightning," "Haven for Heavies," "Confession for Money," "Freight Line Feud," "Phony Heiress," "The Puppeteer," "Monkey Business," "Pancho and the Pachyderm," "Face of Death," "Talking Dog," "Canyon City Kid," "Laughing Badman," "Dutchman's Flat," "Freedom of the Press," "Battle of Red Rock Pass," "Bandaged Badman," and "Chinese Gold." While the set contains no information regarding when the episodes aired, the Cisco Kid episode guide at tvtome.com suggests that the first eight episodes are from season one, the next eight are from season three, and the final four are from season four.
The twenty episodes are divided onto four discs. The discs are housed in an oversized keepcase that employs two odd swinging arms that each holds two discs in a figure eight pattern. This design is unusual but efficient. Care must be taken to ensure that the arms are correctly seated in the case, however, before the case can be closed. An insert included in the case details which episodes are located on which discs, information that is also helpfully included on the discs themselves. The flip side of the insert includes ads for other MPI releases, including Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes series and The Honeymooners: Lost Episodes.
The fun menus make snappy use of the series' opening narration and other bits of dialogue. Viewers can play all episodes or choose to watch an individual one. Unfortunately, there are no chapter stops.
The Cisco Kid Collection 1 can be purchased in stores, online (including Amazon.com), and by phone direct from its distributor, MPI Home Video, at 1-800-777-2223.
