Trial by Trigger

Trial by Trigger (1944)

*** (out of 4)

Entertaining Western short has a logger (Robert Shayne) trying to fight off a lumber company and their evil boss (Warner Anderson) over land full of redwood trees. This two-reeler has a very entertaining story and a nice cast that makes it worth watching. The most interesting thing is seeing how loggers worked back in the day when everything was a lot different than today. There are plenty of scenes of trees being cut and all of this makes the film worth viewing. Shayne is very good in his role and turns in a good performance as does Anderson as the bad guy. Cheryl Walker plays the woman caught between the two men and manages to be good as well. This was director McGann's final film but he's best remembered for directing In Old California and Blackwell's Island. Also worth noting is a famous quote from Casablanca that appears here.

Robert Shayne fights to save his own stand of redwood trees from the depredations of eastern logging concerns.

It's a short subject from Peter B. Kyne's story, THE VALLEY OF THE GIANTS. During the 1940s, Warner Brothers became the last major studio to issue western short subjects, and they did it in a clever fashion.... from a business standpoint, anyway. They would take a script, usually by Ed Erl Repp, shoot a few new scenes with Shayne and whoever he's co-starring with, and then cut it into some impressive cinematography from Warners' A movies. In this case, the plundered movie is 1938's GOLD IS WHERE YOU FIND IT.

The series of shorts was called "The Santa Fe Trail" series and this was the sixth one. It has a nice message about conservation that was in the original source from writer Kyne.

Forests are being devastated by ruthless loggers. Immoral Dan Fallon and his father are looking to cut down a stand of protected majestic California redwoods. Small-time logger Bill Cardigan needs to pay off his debt. He's also standing in the way of the Fallons' evil scheme. The Fallons buy the bank holding Bill's loan and throw every roadblock in his way.

This tries so hard to make this an environmental story. Bill is as far from an environmentalist as most loggers of his day. He's chopping some giant redwoods. A better theme is a fight against corrupt big business. Almost non of that matters that much. I'm more taken with the logs, the stunts, and the train scene. There is an explosion. The trees are giants. I'm more interested in those things.

Akin to the Republic movie serials of the 1940's in its use of new footage shot to match older, stock footage from 1938's "God's Country and the Woman", this fast-moving, entertaining logger epic (starring young Robert Shayne, seven years later to gain classic TV fame as Inspector Henderson in the George Reeves "Adventures of Superman" series) only misses the mark when the new footage (shot in post 1940, clearer black and white) is edited against the older (1938, three-strip color) footage. Shayne's dark hair vs. the stuntman's light-colored hair (a situation that can likely be blamed on the 'bleaching' that happens when color film is duped in B&W) make every carefully-planned re-staging of the action and every calculated match-edit into a distracting jumpcut. More's the pity, because the logging sequences and especially the runaway train climax are first-rate.

This 20-minute short is a mini-western about lumber barons in California's Redwood country, fighting over land grabbers and a girl. The trio is comprised of lesser known actors, ROBERT SHAYNE, CHERYL WALKER and WARNER ANDERSON.

What sets the featurette apart from others is the heavy use of stock footage from an earlier Warner Bros. film, GOLD IS WHERE YOU FIND IT ('38), photographed in Technicolor in 1938. The contrast between the new footage from '44 and the older is quite evident, and it has been inserted with an attempt to match sound stage filming with actual outdoor footage that ends up looking fake.

Nor can anything be said for the flat performances, the tired script (full of the usual clichés about lumbermen vs. landowners), and the general look of the clumsy effort to spin a mini-western in brief running time.

Recommended only for the scene of the runaway train, the bridge collapse and the lumber shipment being dynamited, all taken from the earlier mentioned film.