Trial by Trigger

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.

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.

During the middle Forties, Warner Brothers was trying what might have become a new genre in films. They would take some of their previous big budget films with footage previously and re-edit them into short subjects. The story that would have taken two hours to tell would be done in now fifteen to twenty minutes.

Trial By Trigger is a cut down version of Valley Of The Giants and the roles played by Wayne Morris and Claire Trevor were now done by Robert Shayne and Cheryl Walker. Years before he became Inspector Henderson on Superman, Shayne was apparently the young contract player whom these cut down remakes were given.

Try to tell a story that had previously been a feature film in 20 minutes and inevitably much would be lost. That's what happened and that's why these short subjects never took hold. Can you imagine MGM trying to do edit down Gone With The Wind that way?

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.