Why so much hype?

the audience applauded

Stylish but barely mediocre overall

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Warner Baxter made his third and last appearance as the Cisco Kid in this film. Return Of The Cisco Kid had Cisco for the one and only time have two companion sidekicks. In that the film was joining the trio western formula that was popular in the day led by Hopalong Cassidy and the Three Mesquiteers.Cesar Romero and Chris-Pin Martin are the sidekicks and I think Romero was there for the experience. I'm sure Darryl F. Zanuck already had him in mind as the new Cisco Kid when he made this film. Baxter, Romero, and Martin come across Lynn Bari and her roguish grandfather Henry Hull making their way west to claim a ranch left to them. Up till then they live by Hull's wits and ways as a conman which Baxter recognizes from the start and that endears them to him. But in the town they are heading for they have a crook for a sheriff in Robert Barrat who is your basic Snidely Whiplash type villain. He's stolen title to the ranch and wants big bucks for it and might not even accept those. This was a case for either Cisco Kid or the A-Team.After that the story takes a twist from the plot of Warner Brothers 20th Century which also came out in 1939. It works out better for Baxter than it did for James Cagney. In fact Baxter's turning of the tables on Barrat at the end of the film is a hoot. It relies on the natural elements of their surroundings.Return Of The Cisco Kid is hardly as good as In Old Arizona where Baxter won the second Best Actor Oscar for the part. But it's a fun western and I've always been a fan of the Cisco Kid.

...which was actually a production code buster in a way, because the Cisco Kid is not punished in this film in spite of the fact that he is a robber and it is shown that he did have the capacity for murder, even if he just set people up to be technically murdered by others.The film starts with Cisco (Warner Baxter) facing a Mexican firing squad. He is executed, but the head of the federales doing the deed spots some vultures above and says to let the buzzards make a meal of Cisco rather than bury him. They leave and Cisco's partners arrive and Cisco rises from the dead. No! This is not a vampire movie! In fact Cisco's partners removed the bullets from the guns of the federales as they slept the night before and loaded them with blanks. Still, Cisco was a very cool cucumber considering he did not know if his gang had succeeded or not until after the "execution".So off they go to plan more robberies. But as the passengers on the stagecoach of interest to Cisco make a quick stop, Cisco is instantly smitten by passenger Ann Carver (Lynn Bari) who is accompanying her grandfather (Henry Hull as Colonel Joshua Bixby) to purchase a ranch he plans to move to. So Cisco rides along with the passengers to be close to Ann and humorously gets held up by his own gang, unaware of their leader's new plans. He draws his gun and tells them to get lost. Confused they run. And everybody on the stage thinks Cisco is a hero.The trouble begins when they get to their destination. The man holding their earnest money for the ranch and the deed has been jailed by a corrupt sheriff (Robert Barrat). Barrat always played the villain over at Warner Brothers with hissable skill, and it is true here too. When Ann and her grandfather object, they get thrown in jail too. Meanwhile, Cisco is left waiting at a restaurant where he has hoped to woo Ann at dinner. But she never shows as an increasingly irascible Cisco believes he has been stood up. When he finds out she is in jail he seems ... relieved. Because A. she might actually care and B. jail breaks are one of Cisco's specialties.Why does the sheriff want this ranch so badly? Because there is gold there, something that Ann and her grandfather do not know. The sheriff may have been doing okay swindling cowboys and farmers, but Cisco has a few tricks up his sleeve that confound the bad guys, as usual. To see what happens and how it happens, watch and find out.It may be that the censors let Cisco get out of this film scot-free because he has a touch of Robin Hood in him. Also note Cesar Romero as one of Cisco's gang who is third billed even though he hardly has any screen time at all. Romero would play the Cisco Kid in later Fox films about the bandit.

I have seen just about all the various Cisco Kid movies and each of them sees the character change and evolve with it. The older Warner Baxter films feature a rather amoral sort of guy...one who loves the ladies but is nearly just at home breaking the law. The Caesar Romero Kid was clearly a lover above all else...and clearly not a criminal. The Duncan Ronaldo version presents the guy as just a sort of social worker--ridding the west of injustice and, oddly, rather asexual. Regardless, I do really enjoy these B-movies and recommend you see them.Of all three Warner Baxter versions of the character, this final one is the worst. The problem is with the writing. After an excellent start, the film just goes downhill from there. The Cisco Kid is MUCH more amoral and this version isn't above trying to kill people who stand in his way...and this makes this film FAR less fun than the other Cisco films. In other words, just when you're starting to like the guy you find yourself horrified by his actions...something you really DON'T want in a hero! In this case, he pursues a woman throughout the movie and when he learns she's actually in love with another guy, he then arranges for the guy's death!! That's not very sporting of you, Cisco! This is pretty bad but combined with a very anticlimactic and bizarre ending where Cisco makes the baddies to promise to be nice, it's clearly a film where the writers didn't seem too concerned and were just churning this film out and then going on to their next project. Overall, a HUGE disappointment.By the way, one of the only interesting things about this one is the casting of Caesar Romero as Cisco's friend, Lopez. Only a few months later, Romero would return to star in his first Cisco Kid film.

Warner Baxter's second outing as "Cisco" finds him barely escaping death before a firing squad. Escaping with his two sidekicks he just chances to meet an attractive senorita whose father has been cheated by unscrupulous land grabbers. Sound familiar? Naturally Cisco falls in love at once and takes care of the baddies. But, the lady already has a boy friend whom she prefers to Cisco (if you can believe it). Cisco is not one to tolerate this. He devises a job that is sure suicide for the boyfriend, but changes his mind at the last minute, and rides off into the sunset without the senorita, only with the side kicks.That's the story, but there are some goodies to set it a bit higher than the usual "formula" western. For one thing, the photography is beautiful. Director and camera man must have been in love with the Arizona scenery! Always assuming, of course, that it wasn't shot in Griffith Park. For another, the comedy which was usually so intrusive and unfunny in the usual oater is here subtle and actually very funny. For example, when sidekick Chris Pin Martin is ordered by one of the villains to help put out a fire, he "helps" by spitting on it! Although O. Henry might feel the film adventures of Cisco are a far cry from those in "The Caballero's Way", on which IN OLD ARIZONA (the first Cisco movie) was sort of based, there are some echoes of the Kid's treacherous way of dealing with what he perceives as treachery to himself. When he thought the senorita had "led him on", he devised that plan already mentioned to get rid of her boyfriend. Actually, Cisco was mistaken. The girl had never loved him, she had only been friendly because of his help to her father.Baxter makes a believable mexican and Lynn Bari is a lovely lady. The sidekicks didn't have to "act" being mexicans. They were the real thing. Now for some disillusionment, if you think the movie and TV "Cisco Kid" is anything like what O.Henry created in his short story. In the first place, "El Chivato" as the mexicans called him, was not a mexican himself. The Texas Rangers when discussing him said his name was "Goodall". He was a very small, dark man, who might have passed as mexican, and his haunt was the prickly pear infested border country between the Frio and Rio Grande Rivers. He had no side kicks, only a treacherous half mexican girl friend who deserted him, to her cost, for a handsome Texas Ranger. As for Cisco's character, he was a conscienceless killer, for pleasure as much as for any other reason. And he didn't care if the fight was fair or not. If you would like to know the vicious way he got even with his girl friend, read "The Caballero's Way". It's only about twelve pages, and it led to so much!