Cereal At Midnight

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...

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...

There's no denying that 1938's Angels with Dirty Faces  is a masterpiece. The iconic gangster film stars James Cagney, who had helped create the genre in 1931 with The Public Enemy , Pat O'Brien--no stranger to mobster pictures himself--and Humphrey Bogart, who had been playing gun-toting bad guys as long as Cagney, but had been further down the call sheet. All three actors are synonymous with Warner Bros. and mob movies, with Cagney and O'Brien being a part of the "Irish Mafia" in Hollywood during the 1930s. The pedigree of talent on the stage couldn't be higher, and the movie has become one of the most beloved films in the gangster cycle, even being parodied in Home Alone   by the fake movie Angels with Filthy Souls . "Keep the change, ya filthy animal!" The story of Angels with Dirty Faces tells the tale of two poor kids, Rocky and Jerry, who grew up on the mean streets, struggling to survive. One particularly mischievous night finds the boys...