South of the Rio Grande

"South of the Rio Grande" is an entry from the first series of Cisco Kid westerns starring Duncan Renaldo. It is more of a musical than an action piece and most of the "action" takes place indoors.

The film starts out with Renaldo serenading a senorita and is followed by several songs sung by "saloon girl" Armida and heroine Lillian Molien. The story involves Cisco posing as a senior military officer to get the goods on bandito Sanchez (George J. Lewis) who has been murdering the local ranchers and stealing their cattle.

In this series Martin Garralaga played "Pancho". He does OK but suffers in comparison to the later "Pancho", Leo Carillo. Also in the cast is Charlie Stevens.

This film is available on DVD along with "The Girl From San Lorenzo" (1950), an episode from The Cisco Kid TV series and a delightful interview with Duncan Renaldo.

In his third movie as the Cisco Kid, Duncan Renaldo gets a letter from the town where he spent his youth. Landowner and cattle thief George J. Lewis has been abusing his powers to oppress the local people. Renaldo rides in with Martin Garralaga as Pancho to find that the central government had sent a man to replace Lewis.... but there's his bullet-ridden corpse. Renaldo takes his papers and proceeds to investigate as the new man in charge. Armida and Lillian Moliero sings and dance to the tunes of the Guadalajara Trio. Occasionally Lewis tries to shoot Renaldo in the back. Garralaga steals Lewis' watch several time.

Renaldo is all right as the Cisco Kid, which explains why he was replaced by Gilbert Roland, but came back to play him for the last few movies and the television series. Prodcer Philip Krasne ekes out a thin story with the musical interludes, director Lambert Hillyer gets decent performances, and director of photography William Sickner gets in some great shots in the crowd scenes. Pleasant and unpretentious, this sold enough tickets to people nostalgic for earlier entries in the better-financed Fox series to keep everyone working.

This Cisco Kid film brings Duncan Renaldo and Martin Garralaga South Of The Rio Grande where he is answering a call from help from a family he knew from childhood. He arrives too late to help them as they are killed, but others in the area are similarly afflicted.

Part of Renaldo's plan calls for him to impersonate the new administrator who was killed on the road. This calkls for Cisc to think fast on his feet which he does.

Renaldo also gets to sing a couple of Spanish ditties and if he wasn't dubbed had a few nice notes in his voice.

Good entry in the series.