The Girl from San Lorenzo

"The Girl From San Lorenzo" is an offering from the second series of Cisco Kid westerns starring Duncan Renaldo as Cisco. Leo Carrillo played Pancho in this series. Unlike the first series, Cisco is not portrayed as a dashing cabelliero and there are no musical numbers. You have to listen close to Carrillo's dialogue to pick up all of his oxy-morans. They're hilarious.

The plot plot of this entry has Cisco and Pancho being blamed for a series of stagecoach robberies being committed by Cisco and Pancho impersonators (David Sharpe, Edmund Cobb). The "brains" of the outfit is Byron Foulger who usually played mousy bank tellers or storekeepers. Don C. Harvey is his chief lieutenant. Jane Adams and Bill Lester are the nominal series western hero and heroine. Lee Phelps makes a rather aged sheriff.

The DVD release pairs this film with "South of the Rio Grande" (1945) from the first series. You can compare the two formats and draw your own conclusions. Also on the DVD is an episode from the TV series and a very enlightening interview with Duncan Renaldo in which he discusses his career and how he came to play Cisco.

The Cisco Kid and Pancho are wanted for robbery, murder, and probably urinating in public, but Duncan Renaldo and Leo Carillo didn't do t. It's a couple of look-alikes posing as them. For once in the B movies, where exact doubles abound, it's a couple of other guys: Edmund Cobb and David Sharpe. Or maybe the other way around.

Well, at least it's a couple of extra pay checks, always nice to see in the twilight of the B western. The form was migrating to television. Renaldo and Carillo would take the role thither in seven months, with a nice long run; director Derwin Abrahams would join them for a bit, and then finish up the decade directing for the small screen. Jane Adams is the pretty girl of the title, and other familiar faces include Byron Foulger, Lee Phelps, and Leonard Penn.

In this final Cisco Kid feature film before Duncan Renaldo and Leo Carrillo decided to concentrate on television, Cisco and POanch are building up quite a reputation for themselves. The problem is that it's not them doing the crimes in and around San Lorenzo. It's a pair of fakers looking to draw attention away from themselves. In fact the boss has a very good reason for not wanting to draw any attention.

This is a fast paced western. Leo Carrillo was not the dunce you saw on television, in fact shows some smarts when the guys are captured temporarily. Renaldo is not quite the skirt chaser as previous Ciscos were.

Cisc remains a favorite cowboy hero of mine.