The Cisco Kid [2 Discs] [DVD]

Platinum Video's double-disc release of The Cisco Kid television show, starring Duncan Renaldo and Leo Carrillo, is pretty good competition to MPI's authorized sets, even though it doesn't overlap too many episodes. Ironically, MPI's sets, which try to restore the color of the original prints, look decidedly less sharp than the Platinum version -- the latter is mastered from washed out, faded prints, which look almost black-and-white, and they're better for it and look more natural. The sound fairly booms, and the dialogue is bright and in-your-face, and that's about it -- there are no bonus features, just six half-hour shows per disc with access to scenes but not even a chapter marker between them (pressing chapter advance keeps the number "one," but brings up the next episode). Both discs open automatically to a rudimentary menu permitting access to the individual episodes. As to the show itself, that's an acquired taste depending upon one's love of pre-World War II B-Westerns. It does give one a chance to see various actors at the beginning or end of their careers, however, one single episode, "False Marriage," has Gail Davis at the start of her career, five years before she starred as Annie Oakley in her own TV show, and veteran character actress Mary Gordon (best remembered as Sherlock Holmes' housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson, in the Basil Rathbone movies) in the final year of her career.