Director: Irving Cummings
Year:  1931
Rating: 6.0

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Yes, that Cisco Kid is a bad hombre. Mexican. Crosses the border into America all the time and no one stops him. To rape and steal. You know Mexico doesn't send its best. Taking our women. Not willing to work. Just wants to live off the fat of the land. We need a wall. And The Cisco Kid will pay for it by God.


This is Warner Baxter's second outing as the Cisco Kid wearing a thick Mexican accent like a rotting carcass around his neck. At one point he is speaking to a lovely senorita in English and her to him in English and the film actually explains why which I thought was rather cute. "I like to speak English very much" "I too like to speak English. Let us not speak Spanish".


In his first portrayal as this rascally but big hearted robber in In Old Arizona (1928) he won the Academy Award for Best Actor which after seeing this film is sort of mindboggling. But it was one of the first movies to have sound and be shot outdoors in the rugged West. He also sang in it as he does in this film (La Cucaracha of all songs). Baxter was to portray Cisco one other time (The Return of the Cisco Kid) before handing his accent on to Cesar Romero who did not have to fake it. Romero made six Cisco kids before the character moved into TV. Baxter went on to become The Crime Doctor! To my surprise the character is based on an O'Henry story but in that he is not such a nice jovial fellow.


This is perhaps one of the most mellow Westerns I have ever seen. Practically nothing happens. A calvary officer (Edmund Lowe) chases after Cisco for the whole film just as he apparently did in Old Arizona while the Cisco Kid chases women and is kind to little chidren. It has the excitment of a burnt match. But it only comes in at a little over an hour and I was able to watch it while waiting in my doctor's reception.