In Old New Mexico *** (1945, Duncan Renaldo, Martin Garralaga, Gwen Kenyon) – Classic Movie Review 8,288

The 1945 American Western film In Old New Mexico is the second of three Cisco Kid films made that year with Duncan Renaldo as Cisco and Martin Garralaga as Pancho, who hold up a stage coach and abduct Ellen Roth (Gwen Kenyon).

Duncan Renaldo as The Cisco Kid and Martin Garralaga as his sidekick Pancho are on excellent, zesty form in director Phil Rosen’s fast-paced, enjoyable 1945 black and white B-movie American Western film  In Old New Mexico (aka The Cisco Kid in Old New Mexico).

After the success of The Cisco Kid Returns (1945), Duncan Renaldo again stars as ‘O Henry’s famous Robin Hood of the Old West’ in the second of his series of Cisco Kid films, which proves one of the best, partly because it starts with the idea of Cisco being a road bandit, like character created by O Henry in his 1907 short story The Caballero’s Way.

Road bandit Cisco and his sidekick Pancho (Martin Garralaga) hold up a stagecoach and abduct Ellen Roth (Gwen Kenyon) to save her and to prove that she did not commit the murder of an old woman in her care. She claims that a sinister doctor, Doc Wills (Dick Gordon), arrived and gave the old lady a pill overdose.

Betty Burbridge again writes the original screenplay and Philip N Krasne produces for Monogram Pictures.

Also in the cast are Norman Willis as Will Hastings, Lee Lassers White, Aurora Roche, Ken Terrell, Donna Dax, Pedro de Cordoba, Harry Depp, Edward Earle, Jim Farley, Frank Jaquet, Artie Ortego, and Bud Osborne.

The film now reveals Cisco’s real name to be Juan Carlos Francisco Antonio, instead of Juan Francisco Hernandez in The Cisco Kid Returns.

On screen we see: Monogram Pictures presents Duncan Renaldo as The Cisco Kid in “In Old New Mexico”, so the correct title of the film could just be In Old New Mexico.

It is the final film of starlet Gwen Kenyon. She died on October 18, 1999 in Montecito, California, aged 83. She was married to actor Morton Scott.

The Cisco Kid Returns was released on 3 April 1945, the first of three Cisco Kid films made that year, followed by the 15 May release of In Old New Mexico [The Cisco Kid in Old New Mexico] and South of the Rio Grande on 15 September.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8,288

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