The first wave of Warner Archive’s August Blu-ray upgrades has arrived. The six films included are All Through the Night, Captain Horatio Hornblower, Montana, Sergeant Rutledge, Torrid Zone, and Wag the Dog.

1942’s All Through the Night, directed by Vincent Sherman, is a clever mix of comedy and action starring Humphrey Bogart in his first film since John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon which made him a major star the previous year.

Bogart plays a petty gangster battling the Nazis in New York City just before Pearl Harbor. He’s up against Conrad Veidt, Peter Lorre, and Judith Anderson, with Kaaren Verne as the damsel in distress and Jane Darwell as his salt-of-the-earth mother. His Runyonesque group of equally petty gangsters includes Frank McHugh, William Demarest, Jackie Gleason, Phil Silvers, Wallace Ford, Barton MacLane, Edward Brophy, and Martin Kosleck. Ludwig Stossel is the proprietor of his favorite bakery.

Sherman and Bogart biographer Eric Lax provide feature length commentary. Sherman recorded his portion for the previous DVD release just before his death at 99 in 2006.

Included as an extra is a celebration of Warner Bros. character actors working at the time of the making of the film including Monty Woolley, Walter Brennan, and Eve Arden along with the many who had roles in this film.

1951’s Captain Horatio Hornblower, directed by Raoul Walsh, is a stirring adaptation of the novel by C.S. Forester whose The African Queen was also filmed that year.

Gregory Peck made a stalwart Hornblower and Virginia Mayo made a charming Lady Barbara, the fictitious sister of the Duke of Wellington, who was his passenger on a voyage from the West Indies back to England during the Napoleonic Wars. The supporting cast included Robert Beatty, Dennis O’Dea, James Kenney, Terence Morgan, Stanley Baker, and Christopher Lee.

1950’s Montana, directed by Ray Enright, was Errol Flynn’s last western, a genre he was not happy in. In it, he plays a sheepman looking for grazing space in wide open Montana and running into opposition from local cattle ranchers and a wealthy cattlewoman played by Alexis Smith in one of her stronger roles. S.Z. Sakall supplies comic relief as a peddler. Paul E, Burns plays the old codger role usually assigned to Walter Brfennan or Gabby Hayes. Also in the cast are Douglas Kennedy, James Brown, and Ian MacDonald.

1960’s Sergeant Rutledge, directed by John Ford, is one of the legendary director’s great late career westerns along with The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and Cheyenne Autumn.

The film revolves around a respected Black cavalry sergeant being court-martialed for raping and murdering a white woman and then murdering her father, his commanding officer.

It starred Woody Strode as the sergeant and Jeffrey Hunter as his defense attorney as well as his new commanding officer. Despite having the film’s starring role, Strode is billed below the title while Hunter, Constance Towers as a pivotal defense witness, and Billie Burke in a nothing role as the wife of the presiding colonel at the court-martial have star billing. Warner Bros. had wanted Ford to cast either Sidney Poitier or Harry Belafonte in the starring role, but he refused as neither Poitier nor Belafonte were as tough as Strode whose other notable 1960 role was as one of the gladiators in Stanely Kubrick’s Spartacus. Strode’s ridiculous billing below the title was Warners’ way of getting back at Ford.

Hunter also gives a strong performance following his work in two other Ford films, The Searchers in support of John Wayne and The Last Hurrah in support of Spencer Tracy. Blurbs from both Wayne and Tracy proclaiming how great the film is are used in the film’s trailer in lieu of clips from the film itself.

1940’s Torrid Zone, directed by William Keighley, is a fast and furious action comedy in which James Cagney and Pat O’Brien play adversaries for the umpteenth time with Ann Sheridan as the woman they fight over.

O’Brien plays the executive in charge of a banana republic operation of a Chicago owned fruit canning business. Cagney plays his rebellious man in charge of the local operation. Sheridan is a nightclub singer fleeing from the U.S. for undisclosed reasons, sort of like Jean Harlow in Red Dust. The supporting cast includes Helen Vinson as the two-timing wife of Cagney’s temporary replacement played by Jerome Cowan, while George Tobias plays an Hispanic bandit, George Reeves and Victor Kilian as Hispanic employees of Cagney, and Andy Devine as O’Brien’s assistant.

The double entendres Sheridan and Vinson hurl at each other somehow managed to stay in the screenplay despite the heavy scrutiny of the censors

1997’s Wag the Dog, directed by Barry Levinson, is a humorless comedy starring Dustin Hoffman who received an Oscar nomination for playing a Hollywood producer hired to fake a war to take the public’s mind off the White House sex scandal the president is embroiled in his bid for reelection.

The film, which also stars Robert De Niro as a White House fixer, was considered provocative at the time as it was released shortly before the Clinton sex scandal. Now it could draw comparisons to the Trump White House’s war on Iran.

Also newly released on Blu-ray are two Deanna Durbin musicals, First Love and I’ll Be Yours from Universal.

1939’s First Love, directed by Henry Koster, was Universal’s version of Cinderella in which Durbin plays an orphan who plays a boarding school graduate who is taken in by her maternal uncle played by Eugene Pallette and his scatterbrained wife played by Leatrice Joy, whose own children are a lazy son played by Lewis Howard and a snobbish daughter played by Helen Parrish. Durbin attends a prestigious dance where she falls for Parrish’s boyfriend played by Robert Stack who gives the former child star her first on-screen kiss.

1947’s I’ll Be Yours, directed by William A. Seiter, is a loose remake of William Wyler’s The Good Fairy with Durbin in Margaret Sullavan’s role. Tom Drake, William Bendix, and Adolphe Menjou co-star as the men in her life.

Happy Viewing.