La belle et le bandit

Gilbert Roland spends this episode of the Monogram Cisco Kid series frustrating evil-doing William Gould by chain-smoking and making love to a succession of lovelies, including Frenchwoman Ramsey Ames -- she spends the first quarter hour of the movie pretending to be a man. Being Gilbert Roland, he is remarkably successful in all these endeavors.

We're now in Old California, which may explain why Zorro's TV father, George J. Lewis is in this movie. He's a police captain who keeps trying to find and arrest Cisco.

Although the movie doesn't settle down to brass tacks until the last ten minutes, it's a fun, light-hearted romp for most of its length, and those last ten minutes are pretty scary. Gould is quite obviously a bad 'un, but he doesn't work too hard, spending much of his time sitting in a chair in a hotel, and a lot of the rest being a chuckling voice in the dark. Overall, it's a remarkably entertaining movie.

The TV prints of BEAUTY AND THE BANDIT did, indeed, have all references to the Cisco Kid and related matters (even in the credits) dubbed or blacked out. This was because at the time that these films were made available to TV, Gene Autry's Flying A Productions had the exclusive television rights to the Cisco Kid character. The movies could be shown on the home-screen, but not presented or marketed as being Cisco Kid stories or movies. Something similar happened with the TV show CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT when it went into syndication -- he suddenly became "Jet Jackson," because the original sponsor owned the Captain Midnight name and all rights therein.

I think that of all the villains that Gilbert Roland encountered in his Cisco Kid films William Gould and Martin Garralaga are the scurviest. These two are waging a kind of chemical warfare against the peasant population of San Marino, California to get their land.

Roland gets involved because a beautiful senorita Ramsey Ames is investing her money with Garralaga and Gould. She also comes in Male drag, but you can't for the Cisco Kid in these matters.

There' a very exciting gun battle between Roland and Gould at the climax. Can't describe it, you have to see it to believe..

One of the best Cisco kid movies with Gilbert Roland