Blogcritics The critical lens on today's culture & entertainment
Saddle up and point your browser in the direction of Sinister Cinema, kids: ‘cuz there’s a new batch of B-Westerns that are-a-rarin’ to go! Best of all, Sinister Cinema is having their Lucky 7 Sale: buy any six titles from the SC catalogue (all titles are included in this offer) and you get the seventh absolutely free.
America has always been obsessed with its cowboy heroes — and rightfully so: back in the early days of Tinseltown, there were prairies and rocky landscapes as far as the eye could see (nowadays, you can only see as far as the next Starbucks). With open ranges galore at their disposal, Hollywood moviemakers found an easy way to crank out movies by the dozen and keep their costs low. As a result, the B-Western is probably the most famous genre that Hollywood ever exploited on film, accounting for a good 30 percent of the moviemaking capital's output during the 1930s alone.
Now you can take your pick from 44 new B-Western titles, all of which retail for just under $12 a piece and are available on DVD or VHS (in case your parents or grandparents haven’t upgraded yet).
B-Westerns were produced by practically all of Hollywood's studios, from the big names at Universal and Paramount, to the budget studios like Columbia and Republic, and even (and probably especially) from the poverty row studios like Monogram and PRC.
Yet, no matter how "cost-effectively" these movies were manufactured, they resulted in some of Cowboy Cinema's most famous stars. Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Randolph Scott, Buck Jones, Tom Mix, Bob Steele, George O'Brien, and even a guy by the name of John Wayne all owe their success to their early days in B-Westerns.
And let's not forget my personal favorite, William Boyd, as Hopalong Cassidy: as a lad who, growing up, felt the abuse of bullies at school and suffered the tortures of depression at home, I could always rely on an ol' Hoppy movie to cheer me up (or at least transport me to the Bar 20 where I didn't have to worry about anything else — yes, I'm like that, alright?).
Some highlights of the new line-up at Sinister Cinema include:
Buffalo Bill Rides Again (1947), which is reported to be in the so-bad-it's-good category of fine filmmaking; Painted Desert (1938) and The Border Patrolman (1936) with George O'Brien); The Fighting Sheriff (1931) with Buck Jones; Trailin' (1921) starring the great Tom Mix; the Bob Steele vehicle, Rider of the Law (1935); Ken Maynard in The Trail Drive (1933), and, one of the earlier Republic Pictures efforts of the King Of Cowboys himself — Roy Rogers — in Shine On, Harvest Moon (1938).
Now those aforementioned movies are just a mere eight of the 44 new titles that are now available from Sinister Cinema, some of which have never received any distribution on home video.
Singing cowboys, overacting villains and their dastardly schemes to change the cattle brands, cliffhanger thrills: the good ol' fashioned western way. Stop paying $60+ a month just for an all-western cable TV channel that shows The Electric Horseman over and over. It’s time for a change: head over to Sinister Cinema and order some classic B-Westerns today!
