Cisco Pike is a 1972 American drama film that was written and directed by Bill L. Norton, and released by Columbia Pictures.

The film stars Kris Kristofferson as a musician who, having fallen on hard times, turns to the selling of marijuana and is blackmailed by a police officer (Gene Hackman).

Detective Leo Holland has stolen a sizable quantity of high-grade marijuana from a Mexican gang and visits Cisco, who says he is trying to quit the drugs business.

Cisco then visits his lawyer, who confirms the garage belongs to a person called Betty Hall, apparently related to Holland.

Cisco visits his former competitor, Brother Buffalo, to try to sell the bricks in bulk and thus more quickly, and offers him twenty-five kg (55 lb) for a low price.

Cisco gives the money to a desperate Holland; they are interrupted by the arriving emergency services responding to the call about Jesse's body.

Releases in this style which met a good audience reception in 1970 include Getting Straight, The Strawberry Statement and Five Easy Pieces.

[1] UCLA graduate and Los Angeles–born Bill Norton wrote a draft of a story depicting the relationship between the contemporaneous music and drug scenes.

Norton initially opposed the casting of Karen Black but relented when the studio imposed it as a condition for producing the film.

Columbia felt Black's recent Best Supporting Actress nomination in the Academy Awards for Five Easy Pieces would help the promotion of the release.

[5] Kris Kristofferson had made his film debut with a cameo appearance on Dennis Hopper's The Last Movie, which was unreleased at the time of Cisco Pike's production.

The publication said that due to the ongoing economic crisis, audiences were not open to "downers" and attributed the film's three changes of title to damage control.

[15] Newsday said the film "takes itself very seriously", called the script "limited", and criticized Norton for having "no noticeable talent for creating three-dimensional characters".

[19] The Boston Globe opened its review by calling the film "sluggish", while it suggested that Hackman's presence on the screen was "needed", but concluded that his character "doesn't have enough to do".

The reviewer described the scenery of the movie as "shot with an eye for the sleazy and depressed", and he felt that it leaned "too long on background mood and too short on dialogue and action upfront".

[20] Austin American-Statesman defined it as "one of those low-level, low-life, sex-and-drugs epics" that has "an occasional moment of perverse interest", but "great hunks of pure tedium".

[21] Comparing Kristofferson's film debut to those of Mick Jagger in Performance and James Taylor on Two-Lane Black Top, The Philadelphia Inquirer concluded "(he) can't act either".

[24] Cisco Pike was re-released in March 1975 to a short theater run; according to an article in the Los Angeles Times, most of the copies of the film had by then been destroyed.

The film was screened at the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles, California in 2000 as part of a retrospective titled Celebrating the New Hollywood of the 1960s and 1970s.

The website AllMovie gave it three-and-a-half stars out of five; reviewer Fred Beldin said the film is a "feature-length advertisement" for Kristofferson's next album release but concluded it "has plenty to offer with its eccentric pacing, great cast, and period ambiance".

The Hollywood Reporter noted the movie gained a cult following and praised Norton for a "clean and defined" plot.

[30] In the third volume of Marvel Comics' Rawhide Kid, the main character's enemy is named after the film and his outfit is called "The Cisco Pike Gang".

[31] The soundtrack of Cisco Pike is mostly composed of songs that would comprise Kristofferson's next album release, The Silver Tongued Devil and I; it includes "Breakdown (A Long Way from Home)", "The Pilgrim—Chapter 33" and "Lovin' Her Was Easier (Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again)".

[33] The film's soundtrack also includes "Michoacan", which is sung by Doug Sahm during his cameo,[34] as well as "Hootin' and Hollerin" by Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee.