Western Films

A Cecil B. DeMille western starring Mary Pickford. Jenny Lawrence travels to a California logging camp to find her uncle, unaware he has been killed and his identity assumed by a stagecoach robber (Elliott Dexter) hiding from the law; recognizing the truth, she accepts his protection rather than face the camp alone. Shot on location in the redwoods and at the Lasky studio, the film was one of Pickford's early features under her own production company. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Western · Drama · Silent

A 1975 American Western film directed by Earl Bellamy. When the eldest daughter of a pioneer family is kidnapped by a mysterious Native American warrior, her teenage brother Sam Sutter (Stewart Petersen) sets out to rescue her. Along the way, he encounters a wise but alcoholic trapper named Russian (Richard Boone) who agrees to help him track down the unknown tribe. Their perilous journey into the remote Red Rock region of Utah brings them face to face with Chief Cut Tongue (Henry Wilcoxon), whose solution to the situation is treacherous — Sam must sacrifice his own life by passing the test of "Crooked Sky" and shield his sister from an executioner's arrow. The film is marked Public Domain on Archive.org.

Western · Adventure · Family

A wounded gunfighter is taken in and nursed by a family of Quakers, and their gentle faith slowly wears down his thirst for revenge against the man who killed his foster father. John Wayne produced and starred; it was the first film his own company made. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Western · Romance

Bad Man of Deadwood is a 1941 Republic Pictures western directed by Joseph Kane, starring Roy Rogers and George "Gabby" Hayes. Rogers plays sharpshooter Brett Starr, who rolls into the town of Deadwood with Professor Blackstone's traveling medicine show, alongside singer Sally Payne. The show's tuneful pitch gets a hostile reception from the crooked businessmen who run the town and the hired guns who enforce their rule, so Starr sticks around to help the townsfolk — including a reform-minded judge's daughter — break the gang's grip. A classic singing-cowboy oater from Rogers's peak Republic years, the film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Western · Music

A federal marshal working undercover as a drifter arrives in a town being terrorized by a gang led by a respectable citizen who is secretly hoarding gold and driving out the ranchers. John Wayne stars in one of his early Lone Star westerns. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Western

A fire drives a wolf pack out of the mountains and into the desert, where they threaten local ranchers. The pack leader, Lobo, is actually a half-breed dog, and when he is wounded during a chase he is found and nursed back to health by a prospector named Dave Weston. The two become loyal companions, and Lobo helps Dave protect his borax claim from a scheming claim jumper. Rin Tin Tin, the German Shepherd who was one of Warner Bros.' biggest box-office draws in the 1920s, is the star, and the film is a good showcase for his athleticism and screen presence. Selected for the National Film Registry in 2004. Published in 1925, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Adventure · Western · Silent

A 1956 American Western co-directed by Albert C. Gannaway and Ismael Rodríguez, shot in Mexico and released through Republic Pictures. Bruce Bennett stars as Daniel Boone, leading a wagon train of settlers into Kentucky while fending off Shawnee warriors stirred up by the French renegade Simon Girty. Lon Chaney Jr. plays the Shawnee chief Blackfish, and country singer Faron Young appears as a settler — one of several Gannaway productions to cast Nashville stars. The film is in the public domain after its copyright went unrenewed, and it has been a fixture of budget western compilations ever since.

Western · Adventure

A Johnny Mack Brown western from Supreme Pictures, one of the smallest of the poverty-row studios. Brown plays Billy Donovan, a drifter who rides into a valley looking for the man who murdered his sister and hires on at the Halloran ranch, where a masked night rider the locals call the Phantom has been picking off anyone who gets too close to a stolen fortune. Directed by S. Roy Luby, who cut his teeth editing B-westerns before moving into the director's chair. The phantom-rider gimmick gives it a whiff of the era's "weird western" cycle — more mystery than shootout. The film entered the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Western

A 1951 Civil War Western directed by production design legend William Cameron Menzies. In 1864, a small Confederate artillery unit under Major Clay Clayburn (James Craig) hauls four cannons to the top of Devil's Mountain, a Georgia peak overlooking the railroad supplying Sherman's march on Atlanta. Their mission: block the Federal trains as long as possible. Opposing them is Union Major Will Denning (Guy Madison) — Clayburn's best friend from West Point — while Kathy Summers (Barbara Payton), the woman both men love, is caught between them. Shot in vivid SuperCineColor, it is in the public domain.

Western

An American International Pictures western directed by Edward L. Cahn, the prolific B-movie workhorse who also made It! The Terror from Beyond Space. John Agar plays a young cowboy tracking the gunman who killed his twin brother, teaming up with a hard-drinking ex-convict gunfighter (Mike Connors, still billing himself as "Touch" Connors) and an Indian woman called Yellow Hawk. Marla English, AIP's resident noir-vixen of the mid-fifties, plays the saloon girl caught between them. Shot fast and cheap like everything on the AIP slate, but the vengeance plot has a grim little edge to it. The film entered the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Western

A naive prospector heads west to seek his fortune in the Gold Rush, finding more calamity than gold in a landscape of gags. A Ben Hardaway and Cal Dalton-directed Merrie Melodies short. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Comedy · Western

Cowboy Dan Somers and oilman Jim "Hunk" Gardner square off over drilling rights on Indian land in Oklahoma — and over schoolteacher Catherine Allen — in a feud that escalates from fists to sabotage to a race against a burning oil field. John Wayne stars opposite Martha Scott and Albert Dekker, with Gabby Hayes, Marjorie Rambeau, and Dale Evans. One of Republic's biggest pictures of 1943, later reissued as War of the Wildcats. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Western · Romance · Drama

Exactly what the title promises, and one of the great camp titles of the 1960s. Maria Frankenstein (Narda Onyx), granddaughter of the Baron posing as his daughter, sets up a frontier lab outside a Western town to perfect artificial brains, and finds her ideal test subject when the wounded outlaw Jesse James (John Lupton) stumbles in with his dying partner. Shot in eight days by veteran poverty-row director William Beaudine — his final film, after hundreds of features and serials stretching back to the silent era — it is cheap, padded, and weirdly sincere, a B-western colliding with a monster movie. Perennial fodder for bad-movie nights and a staple of every public domain horror collection. The film is in the public domain.

Horror · Western

One of the Zane Grey westerns Henry Hathaway directed for Paramount in the early 1930s, back when Randolph Scott was still playing B-leads in buckskin. Scott is Dale, a mountain man who overhears saloonkeeper Beasley's scheme to grab a rancher's land and kidnap his daughter — so Dale kidnaps her first, dragging the enraged but safe heiress (Verna Hillie) into the hills while he untangles the plot. Harry Carey steals scenes as a philosophical crook. Handsomely shot around Big Bear and considerably better made than the poverty-row oaters of the same year. The film entered the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Western · Action

A 1963 American Western comedy film directed by Andrew V. McLaglen, starring John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara. Loosely based on Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, the film follows aging cattle baron George Washington McLintock, the richest man in the territory, as he navigates numerous personal and professional crises. His estranged wife Katherine (O'Hara) returns seeking custody of their daughter Becky, while government officials, land-grabbers, and corrupt Indian agents all want a piece of his empire. The film features a famous mudhole fight scene and a memorable chase through town. Produced by Wayne's company Batjac Productions and co-starring Patrick Wayne, Stefanie Powers, Yvonne De Carlo, and Chill Wills. The film is marked Public Domain on Archive.org.

Western · Comedy

When Gabby Kendrick refuses to breed his prize stallion Golden Sovereign to Roy Rogers' mare, fate intervenes — the horses run off, a rustler's bullet kills the Sovereign, and Roy is blamed and jailed. A year later he returns with Trigger, the Sovereign's son, determined to clear his name. Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, and Gabby Hayes star in the film Republic used to explain how the smartest horse in the movies came to Roy. It is in the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Western · Music

The only film ever directed by Marlon Brando, who also stars as Rio, a bank robber betrayed by his partner Dad Longworth (Karl Malden) after a Mexican heist. Years later Rio escapes prison and tracks Dad to a California coastal town where the betrayer has reinvented himself as a respectable sheriff with a wife and stepdaughter (Pina Pellicer). Stanley Kubrick was originally set to direct before Brando took over himself, and the production became legendary for its cost overruns — but the result is a brooding, unusually psychological western shot in VistaVision along the Monterey coast. The film entered the public domain when its copyright was not renewed.

Western · Drama

A silent Western comedy directed by and starring Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, with Buster Keaton and Al St. John in supporting roles. The film is a parody of Western movie conventions, with Arbuckle as a drifter who arrives in a lawless frontier town, tangles with a saloon owner, and rescues a damsel in distress. Keaton, still in his early years as a supporting player in Arbuckle's Comique films, has a smaller role but already displays the comic precision that would make him a star. The film features the kind of rough-and-tumble slapstick that defined Arbuckle's Comique comedies, with plenty of barroom brawls, pratfalls, and visual gags. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Western · Silent

Pioneer Days is a 1930 Mickey Mouse cartoon directed by Burt Gillett for Walt Disney Productions, distributed by Columbia Pictures. Mickey and Minnie travel west in a covered wagon as part of a pioneer wagon train. When Minnie is captured by Native Americans, Mickey must rescue her, eventually frightening off the attackers by pretending to be an entire army of soldiers. The short features Horace Horsecollar and Clarabelle Cow in supporting roles. As a 1930 work, the film is in the public domain.

Animation · Comedy · Western

A federal agent goes undercover to bring down the Reno brothers' gang of train robbers in post-Civil War Indiana, only to find the local townspeople and officials are in the gang's pocket. Randolph Scott and Forrest Tucker star in this fact-based western. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Western

A 1957 American Western directed by Albert C. Gannaway and released by Republic Pictures, notable for its cast of Grand Ole Opry stars. Faron Young plays a young marshal and Marty Robbins a fellow lawman, while Jim Davis plays the villainous ex-cavalry officer Angus McKane, who is trying to force Mexican landowners off their grants after the Mexican American War. Lee Van Cleef appears as McKane's henchman Damon Pardee. More famous for its country music casting than its craft, the film fell into the public domain when its copyright was not renewed and remains a curiosity for fans of both westerns and classic country.

Western · Drama

A drifter rides into a town where everyone has been massacred and is promptly framed for the killings by the real culprit, a bandit hiding out in a secret lair. John Wayne stars in an early Lone Star western. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Western

A government agent posing as a singing cowboy arrives in a valley where a land baron is monopolizing the water supply to force out the homesteaders. John Wayne's first Lone Star western and one of his rare singing-cowboy roles. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Western

A 1929 American pre-Code RKO musical comedy starring Bebe Daniels and John Boles, along with the comedy team of Wheeler & Woolsey. Based on the 1927 stage musical produced by Florenz Ziegfeld, the film follows Capt. Jim Stewart (Boles), who pursues the bandit "The Kinkajou" over the Mexican border and falls in love with Rita (Daniels), though he suspects that her brother is the bandit. The film was the biggest and most expensive RKO production of 1929 and the studio's biggest box office hit until King Kong (1933). Its finale was photographed in two-color Technicolor. Rio Rita was chosen as one of the 10 best films of 1929 by Film Daily. The film united Wheeler and Woolsey as a team and made them famous.

Musical · Romance · Western

A Johnny Mack Brown western from Supreme Pictures. Government agent Dan Doran rides into a lawless territory to break up a gang that has been running off homesteaders and rustling stock, but is himself framed for a stagecoach robbery by the real outlaw chief, Lige Branscomb. Posing as an outlaw to infiltrate the gang, Doran has to clear his name from inside the hideout — with the help of Stella (Lois January), who knows more about the operation than she lets on. Directed by S. Roy Luby, a veteran cutter who became one of Poverty Row's most reliable western directors. The film's copyright was not renewed; it is in the public domain in the United States.

Western

An innocent man escapes from prison and heads west to find the real killer, joining up with an outlaw gang to get close to his quarry. John Wayne stars in an early Lone Star western. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Western

West Point classmates J.E.B. Stuart and George Custer are posted to Kansas Territory, where they clash with the abolitionist John Brown and his violent crusade against slavery. Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, and Ronald Reagan star in this highly fictionalized Warner Bros. western. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Western · History

Saps in Chaps is a 1942 Looney Tunes cartoon directed by Friz Freleng for Leon Schlesinger Productions. A Western-themed gag cartoon featuring sagebrush sight gags and wild west wackiness, with horses, cowboys, and desert humor. The short was the last black-and-white Looney Tunes cartoon directed by Freleng. The film is in the public domain.

Animation · Comedy · Western

When a gang starts slaughtering game out of season to corner the meat market, cowboy Roy Rogers rides in to help wildlife officer Cap Foster protect the herds — and ends up framed for Foster's murder. Republic's King of the Cowboys is joined by Trigger, Jane Frazee, Andy Devine, and the Sons of the Pioneers in this Trucolor musical western from ace serial and B-western director William Witney. The archive.org source is the uncut Trucolor version. It is in the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Western · Music

A 1921 silent Western directed by Charles Bartlett and produced by Neal Hart Productions. Corporal Jack Borden of the Northwest Mounted Police trails the man who killed his partner to New York City, where the killer is selling worthless stock in a gold mine. With the help of Blanche Hall, Borden locates the man in a Bowery dive, but he escapes back to Canada. Along the way, Borden discovers that Blanche and his sweetheart Milly are long-separated sisters and brings about a reconciliation. The film stars Neal Hart and Violet Palmer. The film is in the public domain.

Western · Action · Silent

John Wayne plays Sheriff John Higgins, who resigns in disgrace after believing he has killed his own best friend in a shootout, and takes to the desert as a prospecting recluse. When his dead friend's sister Bess (Lucile Browne) arrives to run the ranch and is targeted by the real killer, Higgins is pulled back into the fight to clear his conscience. One of the sixteen Lone Star westerns Wayne made for Monogram in the mid-1930s under director Robert N. Bradbury, all shot fast and cheap around Lone Pine and all built around Wayne's still-forming screen persona — the easy drawl, the moral guilt, the horsemanship that would carry him to Stagecoach four years later. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal of copyright.

Western

A wagon-train epic shot on location across seven states, The Big Trail follows a party of settlers from the Mississippi to the Pacific Northwest, led by the young scout Breck Coleman. Raoul Walsh shot the film in Fox's experimental 70mm Grandeur process, and the wide frame gives the landscapes and the wagon-train set pieces a scale the standard 35mm version could not match. The film is John Wayne's first leading role, at 23; he plays the kind of plainspoken, decent hero he would spend the rest of his career refining. Tyrone Power Sr., in his final film, plays the villain. The film's widescreen version was little-seen at the time and the picture flopped, but it survives as a landmark of early sound spectacle. Published in 1930, it entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2026.

Western · Adventure

Kirk Douglas plays a timber baron who arrives in California's redwood country in 1900 planning to strip it bare, only to run up against a Quaker community whose land sits on the biggest trees. The land scheme he builds with the help of a saloon singer and a treacherous foreman slowly collapses as he falls for the widow who leads the settlers and starts to see what the forest is worth. Directed by Felix E. Feist for Warner Bros and shot in Technicolor among the real redwoods, it is a conservation western a generation before that was a genre. It entered the public domain after its copyright was never renewed.

Western · Drama

A 1957 American Western directed by Carl K. Hittleman and distributed by United Artists. Patricia Medina plays Angela Medley, a frontier gambler who supports her hard-drinking father "Doc" Medley (Henry Hull) while running with the gunslinger Slinger (Gerald Mohr). When the new town physician Dr. Bruce Merritt (Richard Denning) arrives, Angela falls for him, setting up an inevitable showdown between the outlaw and the respectable life she wants. A compact, unpretentious B-western carried by Medina's sympathetic lead performance, it circulated widely on television and fell into the public domain when its copyright was not renewed.

Western

A 1950 American film noir Western directed by John Sturges, starring Lew Ayres and Teresa Wright. Lin Vanner, an American oil company manager in Mexico, shoots a man he believes stole the payroll — then learns the suspect was likely innocent. Guilt-ridden, he seeks out the dead man's widow Ellen and her son at their remote ranch, concealing his role in her husband's death as an uneasy romance grows between them. An early credit for Sturges before his run of classic Westerns, the film is a compact psychological study of guilt and expiation. It entered the public domain and is also known by its reissue title, Tar Comes Back.

Drama · Crime · Western

Bucky and Pepito, a young boy and his Mexican sidekick, try to catch a wily coyote in the Old West in this early television cartoon. An episode of the infamously low-budget Bucky and Pepito series produced by Sam Singer. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Comedy · Western

Sam Peckinpah's feature directing debut, made after years of television westerns. When drifting gunfighter Yellowleg (Brian Keith) accidentally kills the son of dance-hall hostess Kit Tilden (Maureen O'Hara), he insists on escorting her across Apache country to bury the boy beside his father — a journey the whole town considers madness. Steve Cochran and Chill Wills play the outlaws who tag along for a bank payroll. The film already shows Peckinpah's fixations: guilt, obsession, and violence that solves nothing. Shot in CinemaScope on Arizona locations, it flopped on release but is now watched as the first chapter of one of the great western careers. The film is in the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Western

The Frozen North is a 1922 silent comedy short co-directed by and starring Buster Keaton, with Edward F. Cline. Keaton parodies William S. Hart's Western films, playing a rugged cowboy who arrives in a frozen northern landscape and attempts a series of Western-movie tropes with disastrous results. The short is notable for its surreal humor and self-referential gags, including Keaton breaking the fourth wall. As a 1922 work, the film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Western

The film usually credited with proving movies could tell a real story. Four bandits hold up a railroad telegraph office, board the train, rob the mail car, and escape across the New Jersey countryside with a posse in pursuit — all in about twelve minutes. Edwin S. Porter made it for Edison's studio in 1903, cutting between the telegraph office, the train, and the chase in a way audiences had never seen. Its most famous image is a close-up of a bandit (Justus D. Barnes) firing his revolver point-blank at the camera, a shot exhibitors could place at the start or the end of the reel. Selected for the National Film Registry in 1990. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Western · Crime · Silent

A Poverty Row pre-Code western from M. H. Hoffman Jr.'s Allied Pictures, directed by Otto Brower. Rodeo champion turned cowboy star Hoot Gibson plays William Penn "Peaceful" Patton, a mild-mannered cowhand raised on pacifism who is mistaken for the notorious outlaw known as the Hard Hombre. Trading on the outlaw's fearsome reputation, Peaceful strong-arms a valley of ranchers into a fair division of grazing land — until his mother arrives and exposes the masquerade, and the real Hard Hombre rides in for revenge. Shot around the Vasquez Rocks, the film also carries a quiet piece of screen history: Florence Lawrence, the very first movie star of the silent era, appears in a minor role. It is in the public domain in the United States.

Western

John Ford's first large-scale Western chronicles the building of the first transcontinental railroad, framed as a romance between a surveyor's son and the daughter of a railroad boss. Ford shot on location with thousands of extras, real locomotives, and a reconstructed frontier town, giving the film a documentary weight rare for the genre at the time. The Iron Horse was a major hit for Fox and established Ford as a director who could handle epic scope, the beginning of his long association with the Western. Abraham Lincoln appears as a guiding presence, and the film treats the railroad as the fulfillment of his vision of a united continent. The Library of Congress selected it for the National Film Registry in 2011. The film entered the public domain in the United States in 2020.

Western · History · Silent

Cubby Bear, a mail carrier in a Gold Rush-era frontier town, braves the wilderness to deliver the last mail, racing against time and a villainous raccoon. A Mannie Davis-directed Van Beuren Aesop's Fables short featuring Cubby Bear. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Comedy · Western

A young easterner heads west to partner with an old family friend on his ranch, and the two strike gold, only to be targeted by a crooked assayer who wants the claim for himself. John Wayne stars with George Hayes in an early Lone Star western. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Western

A drifting cowhand stumbles onto a racket in which a gang cripples rodeo riders to fix the betting, and sets out to bring them down. John Wayne stars in an early Lone Star western that also features him singing. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Western

A fictionalized western in which Billy the Kid, Doc Holliday, and Pat Garrett circle one another in a love-and-rivalry triangle over a half-Mexican woman. Howard Hughes produced and directed, famously clashing with the Production Code over Jane Russell's presence; the film's release was delayed for years. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Western · Drama

A faithful collie named Shep treks across the wilderness to find the man who framed her master for murder in a gold-mining camp. The last of MGM's Lassie feature films, sometimes retitled Lassie's Adventures in the Gold Rush. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Family · Adventure · Western

The Paleface is a 1922 silent comedy short co-directed by and starring Buster Keaton, with Edward F. Cline. Keaton plays a butterfly collector who wanders into a Western town and is captured by cannibal Indians. When he discovers their land is being stolen by corrupt oil prospectors, he helps the tribe expose the scheme. The short features Keaton's trademark physical comedy and deadpan reactions in a Western setting. As a 1922 work, the film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Western

James Cruze, who had scored a hit with The Covered Wagon (1923), returned to the frontier epic with this story of the Pony Express and the riders who carried mail across the West. The plot follows a rider framed for murder and the woman who believes him, set against the backdrop of the short-lived but legendary mail service. Wallace Beery plays a villain, Ricardo Cortez the accused rider, and Betty Compson the woman who helps clear him. Cruze stages the riding sequences with the same eye for scale that made his westerns spectacles. Published in 1925, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Western · Adventure · Silent

A King Vidor silent western based on Ralph Connor's novel, shot on location in the Sierra foothills. John Bowers plays a missionary preacher who arrives in a rough cowboy camp determined to build a church in the saloon, while Colleen Moore is the rancher's daughter injured in a cattle stampede whom he helps heal. Vidor packed the film with action, including a climactic stampede, and the production built its own "Vidor Village" set in the mountains. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Western · Silent

A Hal Roach two-reel parody of Rex Beach's rugged Yukon novel The Spoilers — released the same year as yet another straight adaptation of the story. Stan Laurel, in one of the solo shorts he made before teaming with Oliver Hardy, plays prospector Bob Canister, whose gold claim is jumped by the corrupt local sheriff, played by perennial Roach foil James Finlayson. Directed by Ralph Ceder, the short spoofs the novel's legendary climactic brawl with a saloon fight that keeps escalating. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Western · Silent · Short

A U.S. marshal and his Native American sidekick hunt a mysterious outlaw known only as the Shadow, who has been terrorizing the frontier. John Wayne stars in an early Lone Star western. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Western

A musical Western directed by Sam Newfield and produced by Jed Buell, billed as the world's only musical Western with an all-dwarf cast. Billy Curtis stars as the hero Buck Lawson, who must rescue the town from the villainous Bat Haines while winning the heart of Nancy Preston. The film uses a conventional Western story to showcase gags such as cowboys walking under swinging saloon doors and riding Shetland ponies. It is frequently cited as one of the worst films ever made. The film is in the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright.

Western · Comedy · Music

A gentle French-Canadian trapper in the Northwest is swindled of his furs and his bride by a brutal rival, and his slow-burning revenge turns him from man to wolf. Lon Chaney stars in this silent wilderness drama. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Western · Drama

Bucky and Pepito tangle with a vexatious Texan who causes trouble in their frontier town, in this episode of the infamously low-budget Bucky and Pepito series. Directed by Reuben Timmins and Edwin Rehberg. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Comedy · Western

A young woman from Virginia moves to her cousin's ranch on the western prairie, where the constant wind drives her to the edge of madness. Lillian Gish conceived the project herself, chose the novel, hired her leading man Lars Hanson, and assigned Victor Sjostrom (credited as Victor Seastrom) to direct, reuniting the team from The Scarlet Letter. The film was shot in the Mojave Desert with wind machines blasting the cast for days, and Gish's performance in the climactic sandstorm is one of the most physically committed in silent cinema. MGM forced a more hopeful ending than the novel's, but the film's power is in the imagery of a woman swallowed by an empty landscape. The Wind was selected for the National Film Registry in 1993. The film entered the public domain in the United States in 2024.

Drama · Western · Silent

Ken Maynard rides into Tombstone Canyon looking for the man who murdered his father and finds the valley terrorized by a masked killer called the Phantom, who strikes from a cave hideout with a scream that echoes off the rocks. A prototype of the "weird western" — half horse opera, half old-dark-house mystery — the film leans on Maynard's stunt riding and a genuinely spooky masked villain. Made for Tiffany Pictures near the end of that studio's run. The film is in the public domain.

Western · Mystery

Roy Rogers returns to his ranch after ten years in Hollywood only to have Trigger kidnapped by a gang demanding a $100,000 ransom — and Roy has to track them down without spooking them into harming the horse. Jane Frazee is the ranch owner's daughter and Andy Devine does triple duty as three members of the Bullfincher clan. One of Roy Rogers's best-loved Republic westerns, directed by serial veteran William Witney, and in Trucolor. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Western

A ranch foreman who has spent his life covering for his reckless foster brother finally reaches his breaking point when the brother's schemes turn to theft and murder. Burt Lancaster stars in this lean MGM western. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Western

A tenderfoot from the East heads west to claim an inheritance, only to find himself embroiled in a frontier feud with outlaws and Indians. A silent comedy Western starring Stan Laurel, directed by Scott Pembroke and Joe Rock. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Comedy · Western

A man posing as a ranch hand searches for the outlaw who killed his father and kidnapped his younger brother years before. John Wayne stars in one of the better-regarded Lone Star westerns. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Western

A 1955 independent production directed by R. John Hugh. In the closing days of the Civil War, five Confederate deserters — branded "yellownecks" — flee into the Florida Everglades, hoping to reach the coast and a boat to Cuba. The swamp itself becomes the enemy: snakes, alligators, disease, and Seminole pursuers pick the men off one by one. Shot on location in the Everglades and around Orlando before Disney existed, the production famously filmed its storm sequence during a real hurricane and borrowed its snakes from a local tourist attraction. A grim, unusual survival Western, the film is in the public domain.

Drama · War · Western