There's apparently a market out there for low-profile old TV shows and obscure B-movies, but not enough of one to warrant anything but bargain releases. That's what you get with this 1949 60-minute Western, "Cisco Kid: Satan's Cradle."
A number of actors played the Kid in a series of B-Westerns based on a short story character created by O. Henry, but Duncan Renaldo will forever be the Cisco Kid in the minds of Baby Boomers. Renaldo took over from Warner Baxter, Cesar Romero, and Gilbert Roland in 1945, and three years later Leo Carillo replaced Martin Garralaga as Pancho, the Kid's comic-relief sidekick. That's when the show found its chemistry and made it to TV in sanitized form for 156 color episodes which aired between 1950 and 1955.
"Oh, Cisco!" "Oh, Pancho!" was their sign-off, and the two cut-up caballeros would ride into the sunset until the next half-hour installment. But during it's hey-day, "The Cisco Kid" was one of the four big Westerns for kids, vying for a market share of comic books, lunch boxes, and other collectibles along with "The Lone Ranger," "The Gene Autry Show," and "The Roy Rogers Show."
This black-and-white film was made a year before the TV series, and if you only remember the TV show it'll strike you as just a tad more adult. Cisco and Pancho have quite an eye for the ladies, in other words, and they seem to chase skirts as much as they chase bad guys in this film. Set in New Mexico territory during the late 1800s, "The Cisco Kid" followed the Robin Hood antics of a gentlemanly cowboy who wore a black and silver trimmed outfit and rode a horse named Diablo. His sidekick, Pancho, who was always butchering the English language, dressed more like a cross between a cowboy and rodeo clown and rode a horse named (appropriately) Loco.
Like most B-Westerns (and those Cisco Kid TV episodes) this one begins with the two Mexican cowboys riding happily along until they just happen to come across someone in trouble. They find a wounded preacher (Byron Foulger) who tells them how he came to be unceremoniously dumped in the desert. It turns out that an unscrupulous lawyer named Steve Gentry (Douglas Fowley) killed the town's founder, claiming he died in a mine accident, and convinced a cohort to surface as the man's widow. When Cisco and Pancho ride into Silver City, they head straight for the Silver City Saloon, where they find Luscious Lil enjoying the fruits of their deception. She and Gentry run Silver City now, including the saloon, and anyone who tries to stop them gets what the preacher got: a severe beating that's surprisingly graphic and realistic for a 1949 B-Western. There's not much else to say about the plot except that Cisco and Pancho get to the bottom of things, while Cisco also gets romantic with Lil (Ann Savage).
hot in Pioneertown, California, the set includes stretches that will look familiar to fans of old TV Westerns. You might even recognize a few of the giant boulders. "Satan's Cradle" was directed by Ford Beebe, a name that will seem instantly familiar if you associate it with some of his other TV work, like "Davy Crockett" and "Bomba the Jungle Boy." As B-Westerns go, the plot is pretty standard, but Beebe raises the level of realism and gives it a filmic treatment rather, with longer takes and more character development. It's not a great film by any means, but as the genre goes it's pretty decent.
If "Satan's Cradle" sounds like your shot of rotgut, you might check out the Alpha Video catalog at www.oldies.com. You'll find a lot of B-Movies there, including recent releases "Cowboy G-Men" (Jackie Coogan, "Wallaby Jim of the Islands" (George Houston), "Dynamite Dan" (Boris Karloff), "Law of the Wild (Rin-Tin-Tin and Ben Turpin), and an old TV cop show, "Rocky King, Detective."
A number of actors played the Kid in a series of B-Westerns based on a short story character created by O. Henry, but Duncan Renaldo will forever be the Cisco Kid in the minds of Baby Boomers. Renaldo took over from Warner Baxter, Cesar Romero, and Gilbert Roland in 1945, and three years later Leo Carillo replaced Martin Garralaga as Pancho, the Kid's comic-relief sidekick. That's when the show found its chemistry and made it to TV in sanitized form for 156 color episodes which aired between 1950 and 1955.
"Oh, Cisco!" "Oh, Pancho!" was their sign-off, and the two cut-up caballeros would ride into the sunset until the next half-hour installment. But during it's hey-day, "The Cisco Kid" was one of the four big Westerns for kids, vying for a market share of comic books, lunch boxes, and other collectibles along with "The Lone Ranger," "The Gene Autry Show," and "The Roy Rogers Show."
This black-and-white film was made a year before the TV series, and if you only remember the TV show it'll strike you as just a tad more adult. Cisco and Pancho have quite an eye for the ladies, in other words, and they seem to chase skirts as much as they chase bad guys in this film. Set in New Mexico territory during the late 1800s, "The Cisco Kid" followed the Robin Hood antics of a gentlemanly cowboy who wore a black and silver trimmed outfit and rode a horse named Diablo. His sidekick, Pancho, who was always butchering the English language, dressed more like a cross between a cowboy and rodeo clown and rode a horse named (appropriately) Loco.
Like most B-Westerns (and those Cisco Kid TV episodes) this one begins with the two Mexican cowboys riding happily along until they just happen to come across someone in trouble. They find a wounded preacher (Byron Foulger) who tells them how he came to be unceremoniously dumped in the desert. It turns out that an unscrupulous lawyer named Steve Gentry (Douglas Fowley) killed the town's founder, claiming he died in a mine accident, and convinced a cohort to surface as the man's widow. When Cisco and Pancho ride into Silver City, they head straight for the Silver City Saloon, where they find Luscious Lil enjoying the fruits of their deception. She and Gentry run Silver City now, including the saloon, and anyone who tries to stop them gets what the preacher got: a severe beating that's surprisingly graphic and realistic for a 1949 B-Western. There's not much else to say about the plot except that Cisco and Pancho get to the bottom of things, while Cisco also gets romantic with Lil (Ann Savage).
hot in Pioneertown, California, the set includes stretches that will look familiar to fans of old TV Westerns. You might even recognize a few of the giant boulders. "Satan's Cradle" was directed by Ford Beebe, a name that will seem instantly familiar if you associate it with some of his other TV work, like "Davy Crockett" and "Bomba the Jungle Boy." As B-Westerns go, the plot is pretty standard, but Beebe raises the level of realism and gives it a filmic treatment rather, with longer takes and more character development. It's not a great film by any means, but as the genre goes it's pretty decent.
If "Satan's Cradle" sounds like your shot of rotgut, you might check out the Alpha Video catalog at www.oldies.com. You'll find a lot of B-Movies there, including recent releases "Cowboy G-Men" (Jackie Coogan, "Wallaby Jim of the Islands" (George Houston), "Dynamite Dan" (Boris Karloff), "Law of the Wild (Rin-Tin-Tin and Ben Turpin), and an old TV cop show, "Rocky King, Detective."
There's apparently a market out there for low-profile old TV shows and obscure B-movies, but not enough of one to warrant anything but bargain releases. That's what you get with this 1949 60-minute Western, "Cisco Kid: Satan's Cradle."
A number of actors played the Kid in a series of B-Westerns based on a short story character created by O. Henry, but Duncan Renaldo will forever be the Cisco Kid in the minds of Baby Boomers. Renaldo took over from Warner Baxter, Cesar Romero, and Gilbert Roland in 1945, and three years later Leo Carillo replaced Martin Garralaga as Pancho, the Kid's comic-relief sidekick. That's when the show found its chemistry and made it to TV in sanitized form for 156 color episodes which aired between 1950 and 1955.
"Oh, Cisco!" "Oh, Pancho!" was their sign-off, and the two cut-up caballeros would ride into the sunset until the next half-hour installment. But during it's hey-day, "The Cisco Kid" was one of the four big Westerns for kids, vying for a market share of comic books, lunch boxes, and other collectibles along with "The Lone Ranger," "The Gene Autry Show," and "The Roy Rogers Show."
This black-and-white film was made a year before the TV series, and if you only remember the TV show it'll strike you as just a tad more adult. Cisco and Pancho have quite an eye for the ladies, in other words, and they seem to chase skirts as much as they chase bad guys in this film. Set in New Mexico territory during the late 1800s, "The Cisco Kid" followed the Robin Hood antics of a gentlemanly cowboy who wore a black and silver trimmed outfit and rode a horse named Diablo. His sidekick, Pancho, who was always butchering the English language, dressed more like a cross between a cowboy and rodeo clown and rode a horse named (appropriately) Loco.
Like most B-Westerns (and those Cisco Kid TV episodes) this one begins with the two Mexican cowboys riding happily along until they just happen to come across someone in trouble. They find a wounded preacher (Byron Foulger) who tells them how he came to be unceremoniously dumped in the desert. It turns out that an unscrupulous lawyer named Steve Gentry (Douglas Fowley) killed the town's founder, claiming he died in a mine accident, and convinced a cohort to surface as the man's widow. When Cisco and Pancho ride into Silver City, they head straight for the Silver City Saloon, where they find Luscious Lil enjoying the fruits of their deception. She and Gentry run Silver City now, including the saloon, and anyone who tries to stop them gets what the preacher got: a severe beating that's surprisingly graphic and realistic for a 1949 B-Western. There's not much else to say about the plot except that Cisco and Pancho get to the bottom of things, while Cisco also gets romantic with Lil (Ann Savage).
hot in Pioneertown, California, the set includes stretches that will look familiar to fans of old TV Westerns. You might even recognize a few of the giant boulders. "Satan's Cradle" was directed by Ford Beebe, a name that will seem instantly familiar if you associate it with some of his other TV work, like "Davy Crockett" and "Bomba the Jungle Boy." As B-Westerns go, the plot is pretty standard, but Beebe raises the level of realism and gives it a filmic treatment rather, with longer takes and more character development. It's not a great film by any means, but as the genre goes it's pretty decent.
If "Satan's Cradle" sounds like your shot of rotgut, you might check out the Alpha Video catalog at www.oldies.com. You'll find a lot of B-Movies there, including recent releases "Cowboy G-Men" (Jackie Coogan, "Wallaby Jim of the Islands" (George Houston), "Dynamite Dan" (Boris Karloff), "Law of the Wild (Rin-Tin-Tin and Ben Turpin), and an old TV cop show, "Rocky King, Detective."
A number of actors played the Kid in a series of B-Westerns based on a short story character created by O. Henry, but Duncan Renaldo will forever be the Cisco Kid in the minds of Baby Boomers. Renaldo took over from Warner Baxter, Cesar Romero, and Gilbert Roland in 1945, and three years later Leo Carillo replaced Martin Garralaga as Pancho, the Kid's comic-relief sidekick. That's when the show found its chemistry and made it to TV in sanitized form for 156 color episodes which aired between 1950 and 1955.
"Oh, Cisco!" "Oh, Pancho!" was their sign-off, and the two cut-up caballeros would ride into the sunset until the next half-hour installment. But during it's hey-day, "The Cisco Kid" was one of the four big Westerns for kids, vying for a market share of comic books, lunch boxes, and other collectibles along with "The Lone Ranger," "The Gene Autry Show," and "The Roy Rogers Show."
This black-and-white film was made a year before the TV series, and if you only remember the TV show it'll strike you as just a tad more adult. Cisco and Pancho have quite an eye for the ladies, in other words, and they seem to chase skirts as much as they chase bad guys in this film. Set in New Mexico territory during the late 1800s, "The Cisco Kid" followed the Robin Hood antics of a gentlemanly cowboy who wore a black and silver trimmed outfit and rode a horse named Diablo. His sidekick, Pancho, who was always butchering the English language, dressed more like a cross between a cowboy and rodeo clown and rode a horse named (appropriately) Loco.
Like most B-Westerns (and those Cisco Kid TV episodes) this one begins with the two Mexican cowboys riding happily along until they just happen to come across someone in trouble. They find a wounded preacher (Byron Foulger) who tells them how he came to be unceremoniously dumped in the desert. It turns out that an unscrupulous lawyer named Steve Gentry (Douglas Fowley) killed the town's founder, claiming he died in a mine accident, and convinced a cohort to surface as the man's widow. When Cisco and Pancho ride into Silver City, they head straight for the Silver City Saloon, where they find Luscious Lil enjoying the fruits of their deception. She and Gentry run Silver City now, including the saloon, and anyone who tries to stop them gets what the preacher got: a severe beating that's surprisingly graphic and realistic for a 1949 B-Western. There's not much else to say about the plot except that Cisco and Pancho get to the bottom of things, while Cisco also gets romantic with Lil (Ann Savage).
hot in Pioneertown, California, the set includes stretches that will look familiar to fans of old TV Westerns. You might even recognize a few of the giant boulders. "Satan's Cradle" was directed by Ford Beebe, a name that will seem instantly familiar if you associate it with some of his other TV work, like "Davy Crockett" and "Bomba the Jungle Boy." As B-Westerns go, the plot is pretty standard, but Beebe raises the level of realism and gives it a filmic treatment rather, with longer takes and more character development. It's not a great film by any means, but as the genre goes it's pretty decent.
If "Satan's Cradle" sounds like your shot of rotgut, you might check out the Alpha Video catalog at www.oldies.com. You'll find a lot of B-Movies there, including recent releases "Cowboy G-Men" (Jackie Coogan, "Wallaby Jim of the Islands" (George Houston), "Dynamite Dan" (Boris Karloff), "Law of the Wild (Rin-Tin-Tin and Ben Turpin), and an old TV cop show, "Rocky King, Detective."
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