Purely Joyful Movie!

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Executive producer: Alan Ladd. A Jaguar Production. Copyright 1960 by Jaguar Films. Released through Warner Bros. No New York opening. U.S. release: March 1960. U.K. release: May 1960. Australian release: 25 August 1960. Running times: 93 minutes (Aust), 91 minutes (USA), 88 minutes (UK). NOTES: Location scenes filmed in Northern California. Film debuts of rock star Frankie Avalon, and Alan Ladd's daughter Alana. COMMENT: Disregarding Ladd's jaded appearance, Guns of the Timberland is pretty much a typical Ladd vehicle. This time our hero sees the error of his logging ways and comes down firmly on the side of the environmentalists. This action is not only the catalyst for Romance (in the person of Jeanne Crain, looking very beautiful here) but Conflict with his longtime partner and friend, forcefully yet sympathetically played here by Gilbert Roland. A fair amount of action ensues, culminating in a rip-roaring forest fire.A surprise was my belated discovery that the film was supposed to be set in 1895. I thought it was more or less contemporary. There's no period flavor about the movie at all. The costumes, the props, the furnishings could pass for backwoods modern. Mr. Avalon even has a couple of songs that certainly do not jive with 1895!In addition to Mr. Roland and Miss Crain, it's always good to see Lyle Bettger. Producer Ladd doubtless cast him in the movie because of his small size, but he's big enough to run rings around Alan in the acting department. His role is comparatively small and not exactly characteristic (he's one of the goodies this time), but with his distinctive voice and forceful manner, he's a guy you remember long after Ladd's more routine dramatics have faded from memory. The director is at his best in the action spots. These are suspensefully staged. Production values also benefit from extensive location lensing. I love the conclusion on the logging train when Ladd's companions snatch up Miss Crain and the ensemble steams off into the distance to a rousing chorus of "Cry Timber". This is the sort of stuff that director Webb does best -- including of course that frighteningly realistic forest fire in which both Ladd and Roland seem to be doing their own death-defying stunts. They're both braver men than I am, that's for sure!

Unlike the other reviewers of this abysmal western, I have read the Louis L'Amour source novel, and I found this adaptation deplorable. "Beneath the 12 Mile Reef" director Robert Webb doesn't fare as well here as he did with one of the first Cinemascope films. Primarily, Aaron "Love Boat" Spelling is to blame for this mediocre adaptation. The license that he has taken is enough to rile any ardent Louis L'Amour aficionado. Spelling has added characters that never appeared in the novel. The pugnacious Gilbert Roland character Monte, who is partners with Ladd, didn't even exist in the novel. Furthermore, neither does Frankie Avalon's warbling errand boy who delivers merchandise for the local general store when his girlfriend isn't making life troublesome for him. Perhaps the biggest change that Spelling made was turning the dastardly lumberjack leader from the novel into the hero of the film. The cattle rancher and the town citizens have little respect for the Ladd hero. Actually, the timberjack character in the novel does everything but twirl his mustache. Indeed, he is thoroughly ruthless about getting the timber logged. Furthermore, Spelling has lightened the violence considerably. Cattle rancher Clay Bell is wounded in one scene and has to recover while two of his cow hands are beaten brutally in town. In the film, the Alan Ladd hero is named Jim Hadley, but in the novel he is named Jud Devitt, and he is an unsavory gent to the hilt. Interestingly enough, Spelling and "Proud Rebel" co-scribe Joseph Petracca kept rancher Clay Bell's name intact. Nevertheless, the Lyle Bettger character barely resembles his combative counterpart in the novel. Bell does stall the lumberjacks at the entrance to his property. Ladd is allowed a romantic interest (Jeanne Crain) whereas his evil counterpart in the novel lost the girl. Moreover, the Ladd hero knows what he is beaten in the movie and leaves town on a train with his lumberjacks with him.Altogether, "Guns of the Timberlands" doesn't do justice to the Louis L'Amour novel, and it seems pretty lame for a horse opera. The premise is refreshing enough. Instead of cattlemen clashing with sheep herders, the cattle man tangle with timberjacks.

Caught this much under-rated film on a Jeanne Crain memorial day at TCM. Although the title suggests that guns were a prominent part of this lumberjacking drama, actually fists, dynamite, falling trees, a forest fire and angry words do most of the damage in the many confrontations between the loggers and local valley ranchers plus townies, and sometimes between loggers.The plot is rather similar to that of the previous "The Big Trees" and its predecessor "Valley of the Giants". However, instead of the point of saving the trees merely because of their extreme size and age, the point here is to prevent gross soil erosion from clear-cutting a forest on a steep mountain slope. The ranchers and townies below realize that, without the trees, their pastures and town below will likely soon be destroyed by floods and the accompanying mud and silt. In this respect , the point of the film actually is much closer to that of the '37 "Gold is Where You Find It", which dramatizes the historical flooding and sedimentation of downstream towns and cultivated fields, after extensive blasting of gold-bearing CA river bluffs with high pressure water hoses. It also differs from "The Big Trees" in that, instead of the lumber baron giving up his logging life in favor of the simple life of the tree huggers, the horsewoman rancher(Jeanne Crain, as Laura Riley). who helped lead the opposition to the loggers, seemingly implausibly runs off with the lumber baron.Jeanne Crain, in her mid-30s, is stunning looking, and quite charismatic as a dominant voice in the vehement objections of the valley people to the loggers, headed by Jim Hadley(Alan Ladd) and Monte Walker(Gilbert Roland). I'd much rather have Kirk Douglas("The Big Trees") or someone equally dynamic appearing and acting in the lead. Yes, it's rather difficult to imagine feisty Riley getting too excited in a romantic way over sleepy looking and often acting Ladd, as Jim, especially after their many hostile confrontations. Even during the height their fight over logging the trees, they incongruously steal a passionate kiss, as a hint of the possible future. I think we can rationalize her turnabout as due to a combo of 1) recognizing a very similar determined personality in Jim 2)Jim's belated changed attitude toward logging the disputed forest, 3) his concern for her badly injured adopted son from a tree fall, 4) his heroic rescue of badly injured partner Monte from the forest fire. Perhaps she was also attracted to a move-around life, after a life stuck on her ranch and little town. We see a similar transformation of Doris Day in a western setting, in "Calamity Jane", released the following year, and again in "The Ballad of Josie", with an implied message for contemporary women.The drama between the valley folk vs. the loggers, and within the loggers, is well done and maintains interest. Yes, near the end,, it gets a little crazy, with people switching sides and undecided what to do. Gilbert Roland, as Monte, wants to keep on fighting after Jim decides further fighting isn't worth it and after Riley shows him a neighboring ghost town after the forest above was clear-cut. The only gun battle is near the end, when Monty and Jim duel after Monte uses dynamite to clear the trees that the valley people felled over the logging road. After Jim wounds Monte in the right shoulder, he runs into the forest and sets fire to some pine needles, which starts a fire. Monte must have realized that he would surely die in this fire, as he was now weak from loss of blood. Clearly, he momentarily wanted to destroy this forest by fire, thus extracting vengeance on the hostile valley people. Then, Jim risks his life trying to find and carry Monte out of the fire, even knowing Monte might shoot him. After his apparently successful rescue, Monte soon died anyway, probably mostly from blood loss. Monte's death symbolizes the end of mindless government-approved short-term forest exploitation, as applied to this area. It also symbolically opens up the possibility of a new partner for Jim, in the person of Riley(We can see a similar symbolism in many other films, for example: "The Big Trees" and "The Far Country").Frankie Avalon, then a heart throb on the rock and roll scene, is included to hopefully attract more teenagers in the audience. He mainly plays Riley's adopted orphan son, who becomes the loggers only semi-friend. In fact, he says he would like to become a logger, despite his small body frame. After nearly killed by a falling tree, Jim talks him into staying on his family's ranch. He has one rock and roll scene, which looks totally out of sync with the rest of the film, which clearly is scripted to be before the advent of motor vehicles. He also has a solitary love song relating to his girlfriend Jane(Alana Ladd). His acting is a bit stiff. He would return for a part in the classic western "The Alamo", before costarring in an endless series of beach and bikini musical romantic comedies.In conclusion, this film succeeds in making its point about the dangers of clear-cutting erosion-vulnerable forests, while providing an action-packed conflict story at the local level. The various character actors are all fine. Just, producer Alan Ladd should have found someone more dynamic-looking to play Jim. Also, the title is lousy.

Kirk Douglas said the worst film he ever did was The Big Trees, in fact he did it for no salary in order to buy his way out of a Warner Brothers contract. Like Guns Of The Timberland, it's a logging story and was a bad step in the career of both stars.The problem with Alan Ladd, producer and star of Guns Of The Timberland was that there weren't too many steps left for him. Douglas did his timber disaster at the beginning of his career, Ladd towards the end.Ladd and Gilbert Roland are partners in a timber concern and they've got a contract to cut logs in the territory of Jeanne Crain's ranch. The problem for Jeanne and the rest of the valley is that it will leave no watershed for flooding and as her foreman Lyle Bettger so aptly puts it, her cattle will be eating mud next year.Of course the sight of Jeanne in a nice tight fitting cowgirl outfit was enough to make Ladd only concerned about one log in his life. But Roland wants to fight and therein lies the conflict.Like Douglas in The Big Trees, Ladd's conversion to the cause of environmentalism is a bit too unconvincing. And Gilbert Roland going berserk is not the Gilbert Roland I'm used to on the screen. I really hated him in this and Gilbert Roland is one of my favorite players.Ladd produced as well as starred in Guns Of The Timberland and in order to get a little box office from the young, he had current teen heart throb Frankie Avalon make his screen debut opposite his own daughter Alana. I don't think Frankie got any big hit records out of Guns Of The Timberland, he did sing two forgettable songs here.But this was not the worst film Alan Ladd made. That would be next year in Duel Of The Champions, but he was definitely tobogganing down career wise in Guns Of The Timberland.