Here are some highlights of the recent releases to the Warner Archive Collection. DVD’s and Blu-rays are manufactured on demand. They also have a streaming service. Before you visit Warner Archive to check out their selection, check out the selections below an a few of my thoughts.

Oscar Nominees & Winners

Our primary reason for highlighting each week’s selections is to showcase new and reprints of Oscar nominees and winners. Below are the Archives most recent releases in this class.

Eskimo (1933)
From the director of Trader Horn and Tarzan the Ape Man comes this riveting Arctic adventure, the first feature film shot in Alaska and in a Native American tongue. When Mala (Ray Mala) is told there’s a White Man’s boat harbored in Tjarnak that will barter furs for guns, the Inuk makes the 500-mile trek across the tundra accompanied by his woman, Aba (Lulu Wong Wing). Trading his skins for a rifle, Mala goes out on a hunt, returning to learn Aba was killed while escaping the ship’s lecherous captain (Peter Freuchen). Stabbing him dead, Mala goes home, unaware he’s broken the White Man’s law and that the Mounties are tracking him down. Based on two books by Peter Freuchen, the Danish explorer who plays the role of the captain, Eskimo also featured director W.S. Van Dyke doubling as Inspector White and received the 1934 Film Editing Oscar®, the first ever awarded. Newly remastered.

Oscar Nominations:
Best Film Editing (Winner)

Other Films

Here are other notable film releases coming to Warner Archive Collection

Bad Bascomb (1946)
An outlaw’s heart is stolen by a cute little moppet in this captivating Western adventure starring Wallace Beery, Margaret O’Brien, Marjorie Main and J. Carroll Naish. When Lawmen foil his gang’s latest heist, Zeb Bascomb (Beery) escapes by taking refuge in a Mormon caravan, posing as its newest convert. Assigned to work for Abbey Hanks (Main) and bonding with her granddaughter Emmy (O’Brien), Zeb plans to run off with the wagon train’s gold, until the head elder appoints him their leader. Caught between the threat of an Indian attack and capture by the law, Zeb can’t quite decide whose neck to save, Emmy’s or his own. Newly Remastered.

Barnacle Bill (1941)
Wallace Beery and Marjorie Main set sail for laughter in this salty comedy costarring Virginia Weidler and Barton MacLane. A lazy but lovable deadbeat, skipper Bill Johansen (Beery) spends his days fishing on his ramshackle boat when he’s not sweet-talking spinster Marge Cavendish (Main), the shopkeeper to whom he owes money. Bill’s fortunes soon change, however, when he’s reunited with Virginia (Weidler), the young daughter he hasn’t seen in years. Borrowing from Marge to buy a large schooner, Bill decides to compete with John Kelly (MacLane), a crooker ship owner who’ll do whatever it takes to sink Bill’s boat along with his dreams. Newly Remastered.

Big Jack (1949)
An outlaw insists on making a grave robber his personal physician in this black comedy set in the American backwoods of 1802, starring Wallace Beery, Richard Conte and Marjorie Main. Caught digging up bodies for medical knowledge, Dr. Alexander Meade (Conte) is about to be hanged when he’s rescued by Big Back Horner (Beery), a brigand whose leg needs tending. Eager to have his debt pain, Jack insists Meade stay at his side, but the doctor soon escapes to Montaville, where he continues his research at night. With the townsfolk ready to string him up and Jack determined to stop them, Meade attempts to use what he’s learned on the mayor’s daughter, an operation that could save both their lives. Released two weeks her his death, Big Jack marked Wallace Beery’s final screen appearance, his 36-career spanning nearly 250 films, including The Lost World, Grand Hotel, Treasure Island and The Champ, for which he won the 1931/32 Oscar ® for Actor. Newly Remastered.

The Bugle Sounds (1941)
Wallace Beery takes on saboteurs, the Army and Marjorie Main in this patriotic war drama, costarring Lewis Stone and Oscar®-winner* Donna Reed in one of her earliest roles. When the 19th Cavalry Regiment trades in its horses for tanks, no one is more upset than First Sgt. Hap Doan (Beery), who loves his mount more than he does his gal Susie (Main). Promising to retire and take the horse with him, Hap goes AWOL after a runaway tank fatally injures his steed. Dishonorably discharged, a disgruntled Hap soon finds himself mixed up with spies in a sinister plot to blow up his units new tanks. Released one month after Pearl Harbor, The Bugle Sounds was filmed with the full cooperation of the U.S. Army and was shot on location at Fort Ord, California, and on huge replicas of Fort Lewis and Fort Knox, built on M-G-M’s backlot. Newly Remastered.

The Dick Foran Western Collection (1935-37)
In a dozen sagebrush sagas, crooning cowboy Dick Foran shoots and strums his way across the trails first blazed by Ken Maynard and John Wayne. All Newly Remastered in a four disc collection with 12 features and a bonus Dick Foran Technicolor short subject. Dick Foran enjoyed a long and storied career as a stellar supporting player across a wide variety of genres, but it was his crooning that made him a cowboy king. In a dozen sagebrush sagas, Foran strummed and shot his way across the same terrain trod earlier by John Wayne and Ken Maynard. Western fans will want to keep an eye out for fellow cinema saddle bums like Roy Rogers, Gordon “Wild Bill” Elliot, Glenn Strange and Wayne Morris. So get set for melodies and mayhem in this complete collection of Dick Foran’s Warner Bros. Westerns.

Jackass Mail (1942)
Wallace Beery and Marjorie Main are back in the saddle in this rowdy Western comedy costarring J. Carroll Naish and Darryl Hickman. While riding shotgun on an express wagon transporting gold, Tiny Tucker (Main) is saved from outlaws by bushwhacking horse thief Just Baggot (Beery), a bandit who missed getting there first. Accepting a job as her driver, Baggot struggles to stay on the straight and narrow, while Tiny will do what she can to keep him an honest man, even if she has to blast his head off to do it. Directed by Norman Z. McLeod (The Paleface) and based on a story by C. Gardner Sullivan (The North West Mounted Police), Jackass Mail was the fourth pairing of screen couple Beery and Main, a crowd-pleasing partnership that spanned seven films and ended only with Beery’s 1949 passing.

Showdown in Little Tokyo (1991)
A warrior and a wise guy. They’re Los Angeles who mix punches with punchlines in a knock-down, gun-down Showdown in Little Tokyo. Dolph Lundgren is the muscle, an American samurai steeped in Eastern traditions. Brandon Lee is a “Valley dude” quipster with a lot of fight in him. Together they hang tough in a war with a lurid L.A. underworld of Japanese drug lords. As directed by Mark L. Lester (Commando), that combat is a frenzied comic book come to explosive life. How this dynamic duo takes on and flattens all comers makes for “smart, fast-moving martial arts action adventure. A class act” (Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times).