Warner Baxter plays the Cisco Kid in the first two pictures. Cesar Romero, one of Cisco's sidekicks in The Return of the Cisco Kid, takes over the role from Baxter for The Cisco Kid and the Lady. Oddly though, the set does not include In Old Arizona (1929), Baxter's first Cisco Kid movie, and the picture that won him the Academy Award as Best Actor. That title debuted as a regular DVD way back in 2005.

The Cisco Kid, later and perhaps most famously adapted into the long-running (1950-56), 156-episode television series, the very first TV show filmed in color, has its roots in O. Henry's 1907 short story "The Caballero's Way." In the short story, however, the Cisco Kid was an unsympathetic cold-blooded killer. Several silent films adapted O. Henry's story, but apparently it was In Old Arizona, with The Cisco Kid reimagined as a kind of clever and romantic Mexican Robin Hood, that set the standard for every adaptation since.

Just as the later TV series broke ground with its use of color, In Old Arizona was a historically significant work. It was the first talking feature shot outdoors, one of the first talking Westerns, and the first ever sound-on-film feature. Prior to this, the earliest talkies used more rudimentary synchronized sound-on-disc technologies.

Regardless, and in spite of Warner Baxter's Oscar win, seen today In Old Arizona is excruciatingly primitive and difficult to sit through. It's much like the vast majority of earliest talkies: static direction (owing to the cumbersome, unperfected sound recording equipment), endlessly talky (filmmakers mistakenly thinking that's what audiences expected in a "talkie"), and by today's standards hammily acted (the influence of the contemporary stage).

Raoul Walsh was supposed to both direct and star as the Cisco Kid, but while driving through the desert a jackrabbit jumped through the windshield of his car and he (Walsh, not the rabbit) lost his right eye. Warner Baxter took over the role, though Walsh was able to recover enough to co-direct the picture.

An enormous success, Fox followed it with The Cisco Kid, a production with its fair share of incident. En route to its Arizona location aboard Southern Pacific's Argonaut passenger train, forty members of the cast and crew were uninjured when the train was wrecked near Yuma, though two trainmen died and both the steam engine and two baggage cars derailed and overturned (the film company was in the miraculously undamaged second section).

The Cisco Kid is a bit more cinematic than In Old Arizona, with lots more dollying camera shots and interesting cinematography generally, and unlike In Old Arizona, which featured a ludicrous performance by Dorothy Burgess as a Mexican, The Cisco Kid at least has an authentically Hispanic leading lady in San Sebastian-born Conchita Montenegro, who's really quite charming. But the movie still has much of the same early-talkie stiffness as In Old Arizona, despite being released in late-1931, a point by which movies had generally improved.

Very loosely adapted from "O'Henry's [sic!] Romantic Bad Man," the story more or less is a direct continuation of In Old Arizona, with Cavalry Sgt. Mickey Dunn (Edmund Lowe, still hammy) on the trail of The Kid, now rustling cattle. The Kid in this film reluctantly (but passionately) kisses saloon singer Carmencito (Montenegro). She helps him escape, and saintly widow rancher Sally Benton (Nora Lane), whom The Kid falls for, looks after the wounded outlaw.

Sally's two young children soon regard the friendly Kid as a surrogate father, and he becomes determined to help Sally save her ranch from nefarious banker Enos Hankins's (Willard Robinson) clutches. The second-half of The Cisco Kid is better than the first, but it's still awkwardly directed and sluggishly paced, as well as outrageously sentimental.

By 1939, Fox was now 20th Century-Fox and producers of the best series B movies in Hollywood, most famously the Charlie Chan, Mr. Moto, and (briefly) Sherlock Holmes movies, though the Sherlocks were, arguably, modest A-pictures. The Return of the Cisco Kid is everything In Old Arizona and The Cisco Kid aren't: it's funny, exciting, wistful, and romantic. It's a terrific little film yet totally forgotten relative to the historically-important-but-deadly In Old Arizona. It's not even listed in Leonard Maltin's Classic Movie Guide, which does review hundreds of lesser B-Westerns.

At the turn of the century, The Cisco Kid (Baxter), the alias of Señor Gonzales Sebastian Rodrigo Don Juan Chicquello, is executed by a firing squad. The Kid, however, lives, his two friends, Lopez (Cesar Romero) and Gordito (Chris-Pin Martin), having replaced the live bullets with blanks.

Heading for Arizona, The Kid meets alcoholic but genial Col. Jonathan Bixby (Henry Hull, in a lively, broad performance) and his granddaughter, Ann Carver (Lynn Bari, also good), Cisco instantly falling for the latter. The two are traveling to claim a ranch they've purchased, but upon their arrival discover that it has been stolen by land baron Sheriff McNally (Robert Barrat), while their partner's son, Alan Davis (Kane Richmond), has been tossed into jail. Soon the colonel and Ann are in lockup themselves.

Posing as a wealthy rancher, The Kid learns from McNally that the stolen land contains a rich gold mine. Cisco, determined to get the ranch back for Ann, breaks them out of jail and plots to steal the land back from McNally.

Return of the Cisco Kid improves upon the first two films in every way. Baxter, at 50, is an older, wiser and somehow more poignant Cisco Kid, anticipating similarly tragic antiheroes as far-flung as Japan's Zatoichi. Hinted at in the early films but wisely expanded here, his main attributes are his audacity and daring (needing $100,000 at one point to buy back Ann's land, he simply robs that amount from McNally's bank) and his cleverness. Instead of engaging in long gun battles with McNally, throughout the story The Cisco Kid mostly uses his wits, and his ruses here are almost ingenious.

Particularly good is Robert Barret's villain. Big and imposing but also projecting intelligence, his McNally provides an unusual wrinkle to a stock Western character. He plays the part laid back and highly confident, never feeling threatened and taking perverse but leisurely pleasure openly stealing from others. When the Cisco Kid begins outsmarting him, rather than irritation McNally appears genuinely startled that anyone could outwit him.

Another illustrative scene has McNally confronting a young, burly Ward Bond, playing a rancher outraged that his cattle have been rustled. McNally effortlessly beats him senseless. The scene works because, without ever showing off his physique (Barret, reportedly, was a physical fitness nut), the audience believes that McNally could best even someone as imposing as Bond.

The Cisco Kid and the Lady, with Cesar Romero now playing lead for the first of six 1939-41 appearances, is a disappointing follow-up, though Romero is fun. The movie unimaginatively reworks all of Return of the Cisco Kid's highlights without really understanding what made them so good in the first place. There's even a scene where the villain, again played by Robert Barret, again beats up Ward Bond.

The Cisco Kid and Gordito (Chris-Pin Martin, for the third time) are riding through Arizona when they intercept a runaway wagon containing a widower and his toddler son, Junior. Jim Harbison (Barret), whose gang deliberately caused the wagon's horses to bolt, also arrives and there the dying father jointly bequeaths his gold mine to Cisco, Gordito, and Harbison with their promise that they'll look after his orphaned son. The map to the mine is divided into three equal pieces and, moments after the man expires, Harbison at gunpoint demands the rest of the map.

However, Cisco and Gordito have memorized and destroyed their portions, forcing an uneasy alliance. There follows an incredibly tasteless bit of comedy: everyone rides off, abandoning the baby in the desert, with Cisco and Gordito each assuming the other was looking after it. The toddler inches toward the main road, where it's nearly run over by a speeding stagecoach (realistically done via a traveling matte). Schoolteacher Julie Lawson (Marjorie Weaver) is outraged by the men's carelessness, while Cisco, naturally, is charmed by her beauty.

This Cisco Kid adventure follows the established formula but adds nothing new while repeating other material badly. In one scene straight out of The Three Stooges, Gordito gives Junior his revolver to play with. The Cisco Kid loves Julie, but she loves another, Tommy Bates (George Montgomery), while the usual "bad girl," saloon dancer Billie Graham (Virginia Field) in this case, has the hots for Cisco.

Despite a funny double-entendre bit where Tommy thinks Cisco is the father of Julie's illegitimate baby, the script is otherwise bereft of any of the inventiveness that so livened up Return of the Cisco Kid. Even Barrat is wasted, here playing a much more excitable, short-tempered, and predictable villain.

Cesar Romero, however, makes a nice contrast to Warner Baxter. Young, handsome, and Hispanic (though born in New York to Cuban parents), the picture cleverly makes use of Romero's experience and skill as a Latin dancer, and overall he makes for a much more romanticized Cisco Kid.

Video & Audio

Strangely, the packaging gives no name to this set, simply listing the three films on its cover and spine. However, the three DVD-Rs, one for each film, are labeled "The Cisco Kid Volume 1 Collection" (sic?), so perhaps Fox will continue with the remaining Romero films at a later date. The transfers of these 1.37:1, black-and-white films are acceptable but not great. The Cisco Kid and the Lady in particular looks like an older transfer, though The Cisco Kid is notable for including the original exit music. The audio, English only with no subtitles, is acceptable and, unlike earlier Fox Cinema Archives titles, these are all-region discs. No Extra Features.

Parting Thoughts

Of the three films in this set, only Return of the Cisco Kid stands out, but it ranks alongside the best high-end B-Westerns/nervous As of its type, and deserves to be better known. Recommended.

Stuart Galbraith IV is the Kyoto-based film historian and publisher-editor of World Cinema Paradise. His credits include film history books, DVD and Blu-ray audio commentaries and special features.