Satan's Cradle

Satan's Cradle was the fourth of producer Phil Krasne's "Cisco Kid" programmers for United Artists. Anyone who remembers the Cisco TV series will know without being told that Duncan Renaldo and Leo Carrillo essayed the roles of wandering do-gooders Cisco and Pancho. Unlike previous entries, Satan's Cradle was directed by serial veteran Ford Beebe rather than the unimaginative Wallace Fox; the improvement is immediately noticeable. This time, Cisco takes on a frontier megalomaniac, shyster lawyer Steve Gentry (Douglas Fowley), who has taken over a mining town. Gentry's confederate is dancehall girl Lil (Ann Savage) who is as deadly as she is beautiful. When itinerant preacher Henry Lane (Byron Foulger) is beaten to a pulp by Gentry's goons (an astonishingly brutal sequence), Cisco and Pancho move in for the kill.