Cereal At Midnight

The good folks at Kino Lorber Studio Classics have just kicked off a 5th anniversary sale! We're big supporters of the label--which focuses specifically on taking films from the vaults of major studios and giving them stellar Blu-ray releases--and these sales have become the stuff of legend. There are close to a hundred KL Studio Classics titles in our Cereal At Midnight library, so we thought we would give you guys OUR picks for things that we recommend and why. Consider this your Cereal At Midnight cheat sheet for the sale! Click below for our top recommendations--alphabetized for your browsing convenience!

In the latest Western Spotlight, Heath talks about the B-Western heroes! Who were they, what happened to them, and where can you find their movies now? With hundreds (thousands?) of western B-movies in existence, there's so much to explore and enjoy!  Western Spotlight 1: https://youtu.be/k5rD2T8VmiI Western Spotlight 2: https://youtu.be/TuFB95idxN8 Western Reviews: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLms82QIo-B9mcxhF8WY72AYgCg1XTKKFn CerealAtMidnight.com Twitter: CerealMidnight Instagram: CerealMidnight TikTok: OfficialCerealAtMidnight Letterboxd: CerealAtMidnite Shop: CerealAtMidnight.Threadless.com Ebay.com/usr/cerealatmidnight Patreon.com/CerealAtMidnight Facebook.com/CerealMidnight Patreon.com/CerealAtMidnight

Warner Archive delivers another fun genre film from the past with the world's first Dino-Western.

Set agains the backdrop of the Dust Bowl crisis, Under Western Stars  sees Roy Rogers squaring off against the water company who’s trying to charge the citizens for their precious H2O in a time of drought. In doing so, he gets himself arrested, but the townsfolk love him because he’s a man of the people. Before you know it, he’s nominated to be a congressman. His good looks and smooth voice make him a lock for the female vote, while his tenacity and grit give him wide appeal to the men. Smiley Burnett, Gene Autry’s old sidekick, appears alongside Roy for this adventure, but his gimmick—a frog-voiced multi-instrumentalist—is virtually identical. Carol Hughes plays the female lead here but, as with many of the roles at the time, there's not much for her to do other than be occasionally feisty and have the hero fall in love with her in the last reel. I also note that, just like Gene Autry in his films, Roy Rogers plays “Roy Rogers.” Under Western Stars was filmed during a Republic wa...

Two spaghetti western gems have been newly restored and are now available on Blu-ray thanks to Mill Creek Entertainment!

One of the things that continues to amaze me about westerns from the 1950s is that, despite the fact that hundreds (if not more) of them were made during the decade, each one feels unique and special with a different focus, tone, and style. Even westerns that star the same actors and film in the same locations manage to retain an individuality that never fails to impress me. Robbers' Roost  is another solid entry that helps to make the case that the fifties were the pinnacle of westerns on film. Furthermore, this movie comes from 1955, a year that I maintain is a very special one for movie fans. In fact, I wrote a ten-part series about the movies of 1955 over at F This Movie, highlighting how the films from that year represent a change in complexity and a deeper focus on more realistic characters. Consider George Montgomery in  Robbers' Roost . The actor plays our lead here, and we're introduced to him at the beginning of the movie when he walks in on a gang in a s...

What is it about regional horror movies that we find so compelling? Maybe it's because they're made outside the traditional Hollywood scene and offer a fresh perspective on old ideas from people who are--more often than not--a lot like us. Local actors replace movie stars, new landscapes stand in for the Southern California scenery that we know so well, and there's a hunger and drive from everyone involved because these low-budget offerings represent that one shot to get noticed. If everything works out, then maybe, just maybe , the filmmakers might get to do it again.  Ghost Riders (also known as Ghostriders ) is a 1987 micro-budget genre movie that is equal parts horror, action, and western; it's a real oddity among regional filmmaking, with westerns not being a profitable genre in the mid-eighties and the western/ghost story pairing being a particularly risky proposition. The film begins in the 1880s as a preacher spearheads the lynching of a ruthless outlaw and his ...

Anthony Mann's THE TIN STAR is a perfect example of the western genre during its 1950s pinnacle. With the new Blu-ray release from Arrow Video, let's discuss why it's an unsung masterpiece.  Thanks for using this link to order THE TIN STAR and support Cereal At Midnight! https://amzn.to/3TQN0hh Further viewing:  Gene Autry, Western Icon https://youtu.be/_eFV8G6i0gc B-Western Heroes https://youtu.be/Mq9MgxJV7CE Western Spotlight Vol. 1 https://youtu.be/k5rD2T8VmiI Western Spotlight Vol. 2 https://youtu.be/TuFB95idxN8 The Ranown Westerns https://youtu.be/96bb0cx-YE8 Review Archive: CerealAtMidnight.com/p/reviews.html Shop: CerealAtMidnight.Threadless.com Ebay.com/usr/cerealatmidnight Patreon.com/CerealAtMidnight Facebook.com/CerealMidnight Twitter: CerealMidnight Instagram: CerealMidnight TikTok: OfficialCerealAtMidnight Letterboxd: CerealAtMidnite **************************************************************** When shopping on Amazon, please consider using Cereal At Midnigh...

In his previous adventures, Santo has faced vampires, monsters, and mad scientists. In 1970's  Santo vs. the Riders of Terror , our silver-masked hero leaves the dark graveyards and supernatural shenanigans behind to square off against a group of outlaw bandits in the old west! One of the great things about the Santo movies--and Mexican storytelling in general--is the prevalence of magic realism, which allows for extraordinary elements in conventional settings. With magic realism, the unreal exists alongside the mundane, meaning that anything is possible. Therefore we have a Santo movie in which the character exists entirely in the old west. He doesn't time travel  to the old west like we've seen in previous movies; in this outing, he's already there. One part  The Lone Ranger and one part  Zorro , the western version of Santo rides a white horse and travels the countryside helping those who need his services. Who was that masked man? Santo! In Santo vs. the Rid...

It's a great time to be a John Sturges fan. At the time of this writing, many of the director's films are being restored and given high definition and Ultra HD upgrades from the previous DVD editions, offering the best home media presentations to date for modern film fans. The last few years alone have seen the restorations of  Underwater! , Last Train from Gun Hill, Bad Day At Black Rock, and  The Great Escape , with even more planned for the coming months. There's never been a better time for cinephiles to discover or re-evaluate the work of an under-praised filmmaker who may not have had a particular auteur style, but was a master all the same. Now the preservationists at The Film Detective have added another film from the Sturgis library to our shelves: 1950's The Capture . The Capture is a wonderful film that plays to the strengths of its director and defies categorization by equally serving elements of crime, romance, western, and noir. The story begins with an in...

I like it when Audie Murphy plays mean. After all, we're talking about the most decorated combat soldier in the history of the U.S. military, a man who was not only familiar with violence, but also celebrated for it. 1950's Kansas Raiders  gives the soldier-turned-actor a chance to sink his teeth into one of the meatiest roles of his still-fledgling acting career: the legendary outlaw Jesse James. Hollywood has always had a special fascination with outlaws, often celebrating them while clumsily and half-heartedly trying to insert some sort of moral lesson, mostly to keep the censors happy. I can't help but think of the episode of The Brady Bunch where Bobby sees a movie about Jesse James and then decides that he's his hero and has to be corrected by his chagrinned parents. That's a pretty good metaphor for Hollywood's love affair with the dark side--"mischief sure is fun! Er...but it's wrong."  Kansas Raiders  is the fictionalized tale of the James...

I've got a serious soft spot for westerns. The 1950s was the pinnacle of the genre, buoyed by the post-World-War-II crisis of conscience and gray morality of a society trying to come to terms with the things it had seen and done, and that's the decade with the most complex, rich characterization, not just in westerns, but in other genres, too.  But I'm also a huge fan of the 1930s cinema and the seemingly-endless supply of oaters that poured out of the studios and onto the matinee screen. For every big-budget 1930s western, there seem to be dozens of low-budget cheapies that lack the nuance, scope, and budgets of later westerns but that compensate for their cheapness with economy and simplicity. Bad guys wear black, good guys wear white (or at least white hats) and decency always triumphs over villainy. Running times were short and character development was even shorter, with most of the "acting" feeling as stiff as trail jerky.  Here's the thing, though: thir...

Mr. Majestyk is my kind of movie.   Charles Bronson takes center stage in this tale of vigilante justice and revenge set against the backdrop of the gorgeous Colorado landscape. Add in a screenplay written by the great Elmore Leonard, whose outstanding short stories and novels have been adapted into the films 3:10 to Yuma, Get Shorty, Jackie Brown, Out of Sight, and even the television series Justified , and you've got a recipe for gritty, 1970s greatness.  Charles Bronson plays the titular character, Vince Majestyk, a rural farmer who raises melons. His one desire is to get his latest crop harvested and brought to market. Turns out, he's got a lot invested in this, and as his backstory unfolds, we realize the melons represent more than just agriculture. Like the anti-hero out of a noir film, Majestyk has been tripped up by life and is trying his best to rise above the bad hand that he was dealt. When he chooses to hire a group of Hispanic migrants, led by Linda Cristal ( The ...

"Django, have you always be alone?" As a matter of fact, the answer is no! This is just one of dozens of movies featuring Italy's most successful western hero (anti-hero?), coming over a year after the 1966 Spaghetti Western classic from director Sergio Corbucci and starring Franco Nero. Lucky for us, Preparati la bara , which was directed by Ferdinando Baldi, feels like an important and worthy installment in a series of sequels that don't always connect to Corbucci's famous original film. With an alternate origin story, stylish cinematography, and one of my favorite scores in all of the genre, this movie is a Spaghetti Western gem!