Latin sensation Gilbert Roland plays O' Henry's charismatic Mexican troubleshooter The Cisco Kid, a gunslinger who straddles the line between being a saint and a sinner, in Old California. Basically, he is a bandit on horseback with a gang of twenty loyal followers. In this installment of the Monogram Pictures' franchise, The Cisco Kid takes an interest in a young Frenchwoman, Jeanne Du Bois (Ramsay Ames of "The Mummy's Ghost"), who is masquerading as a man. It seems her dad has died and left her with a pile of silver, and she plans to do something with it, but isn't sure what she will do. She arrives at her destination via a wooden sailing ship. Cisco learns about her from a former accomplice, Sailor Bill (Glenn Strange of "Gunsmoke" fame), who alerts the Latin bandit about her and her stash of silver. No long after these two meet, Cisco steals her silver from a strongbox during a robbery. She is heading to a town to meet one of her father's criminal associates, Doc Wells (William Gould of "Beasts of Paradise"), who owns lots of land and has allowed an epidemic to ravage the surrounding countryside. Essentially, Doc has blackmailed his accomplice, Dr. Juan Valegra (Martin Garralaga of "The Gay Cavalier") into withholding a remedy to staunch this epidemic. Once these two greedy villains have depleted the population of Mexican farmers, they plan to sell the acreage to investors who are aboard. Basically, this is what Du Bois plans to do until she meets Cisco and falls madly in love with the rascal. Of course, everything works out splendidly in this tidy, little, 77-minute, black & white oater with veteran director William Nigh of "Forever Yours" at the helm. Roland would star in several of Cisco Kid B-movies. He brings a sense of class and presence to these otherwise nondescript westerns. Initially, Cisco has no idea that Jeanne Du Bois is posing as a gentleman, and he treats her like a young man who doesn't know enough about the pleasures of life. For example, Cisco introduces her to tequila. She had order wine at the cantina, but Cisco convinces her tequila is a better choice. One of Roland's trademarks in his acting was the elaborate business that he brought to performing certain chores. In "Beauty and the Bandit," Roland demonstrates not only how to light a cigarette by using his thumbnail to scratch the sulfur wooden matches and ignite a flame. Once he was scratched the match alight, he holds the bottom of it in his thumb and ignites his cigarette. No sooner has he taken a puff or two off the cigarette than he puts it atop his ear the way a clerk would put a pencil, and indulges in his favorite past time of licking salt off his hand and chasing it with the tequila. Mind you, he takes his time as he performs this routine of drinking the tequila while the cigarette burns on his ear. No, he doesn't burn his ear because he doesn't allow the cigarette to go unattended. Of course, like Zorro, Cisco plays games with the Rurales. He has fun making buffoons of them, but they don't take it too badly. In the end, the Captain (George J. Lewis of "Radar Patrol vs. Spy King") warns Cisco that he must leave before they have to arrest him for his borderline shenanigans.
Review of Beauty and the Bandit
