WRITTEN by JOSEPH BONADUCE & JAY SIMMS based on a story by JAY SIMMS DIRECTED by R. G. SPRINGSTEEN CAST JACK WESTON as HANNIBAL REX JOAN HUNTINGTON as CELESTE SID HAIG as BRUNNING E. J. ANDRE as THE SILVERSMITH JOANNE MEDLEY as JOAN JACK GRINNAGE as MIKE SLATTERY MEL GALLAGHER as O'HARA CHARLES HORVATH as JOMO

Jack Weston as Hannibal

"Last of the Caesars" was Laredo's garish entry into the universal Western plot category -- the slave labor camp.  Usually a corrupt judge/ landowner/ mining magnate/mayor sentences strangers to work in [usually] a mine for a bogus crime.  [William Smith had two more entries in this category.  He was in the Gunsmoke version "Hard Labor" as one of the imprisoned workers and in Wildside's "Delinquency of a Miner" as a rescuer.]  In Laredo's version, Jack Weston plays the crazed Hannibal Rex who, with the help of the black-suited Brunning and his henchmen, is kidnapping specialized workers to build him a city.  The men slaughter anyone whose skills they can't use.
 

	The Rangers find the massacred remains of one of Brunning's raids. And argue over who will dig the graves
Joe & Reese spend  three days tracking the kidnappers until they are captured themselves.		Chad & Erik, the brain trust, masquerade as sculptor Wentworth and architect Van Roden so Hannibal will kidnap them.  They allow themselves to be seduced by two women setting a trap for them
Erik & Chad pull the hard	duty, kissing the girls

Joe soon  makes it to 2nd class citizenship as a gladiator.  Chad & Erik, as skilled artisans are first class citizens.  Reese fumes as he watches them live the good life while he labors as a slave.

When the beauteous Celeste, one of Hannibal's off-limits wives, invites Erik to her  tent. Erik suspects a trap.  He tells Chad of the invitation.  Chad whose brain is clouded with testosterone falls into the trap and ends up on one of Hannibal's execution devices -- a metal pole slowly heating toward red hot hung over a pit of venomous snakes.

Last of the Caesars ended predictably with Chad & Joe rounding up the few bad guys not killed, Reese doing something comical and Erik in a clench with a villainess.

NiteOwl Review:  Too silly for words.
 

Laredo Episode Forty-Two

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