Tonnerre sur Timberland

Alan Ladd and Gilbert Roland are partners in cutting down some trees. The community of ranchers next to the stand opposes them, led by Jeanne Crain. Over the hill is another ranching community, ruined when clear-cutting produced a torrent of mud that ruined the grazing grounds.

Stories about logging, when they were not concentrating on the burly loggers, often had a strain of ecological anxiety, all the way back to Nell Shipman. Certainly, no one likes a forest fire. Gilbert Roland is a lot of fun as always, and Miss Crain does an honest job. 20-year-old Frankie Avalon has a role that was written for someone 14. The real problem with the movie is Ladd. He's paunchy, hand spends most of the movie with a meaningless smile on his face and his eyes shut. Director Robert Webb has cameraman John Seitz shoot handsomely, but the star is at his worst. With Noah Beery Jr. And Regis Toomey.

Of the five reviews contributed here for GUNS OF THE TIMBERLAND so far, four are quite negative, so today, on the date of Alan Ladd's centennial, please allow me to balance out the critical consensus. I'm a big fan of Ladd and a huge fan of westerns (I've reviewed a few dozen on IMDb) and I had a good time with this film, which I watched on TCM when it aired last week. Sure, Ladd was old and tired and near the end of his career, but he still has that movie star quality that put him at the top of the box office chart so consistently in the 1940s and early '50s. There's a sense of sincerity and conviction he brings to every role he played. We believe him. Here he plays the fair-minded boss of a logging crew at odds with neighboring ranchers in timber country. The ranchers have powerful arguments against logging and one can't help but agree with them. One of the ranchers, a pretty but tough lady named Laura Riley (well played by Jeanne Crain), even gives Ladd a tour of a ghost town that was made uninhabitable by flooding after logging on adjacent hills led to erosion and mud slides. Ladd listens to the arguments and eventually gets into a confrontation with his stubborn partner, Monty, played by Gilbert Roland, leading to an action-packed forest fire climax.

The plot moves well, is reasonably suspenseful, and boasts lots of action. We see plenty of train action, trees falling, and the dynamiting of a mountain pass at one point, all enhanced by extensive location shooting. The townsfolk present a united front against the loggers, leading to a big brawl in town in one sequence where the loggers have come on a Saturday night to take over the saloon. One of the ranchers is played by Lyle Bettger, who usually played particularly vicious heavies in westerns throughout the 1950s. (He's Ike Clanton in GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL.) He masterminds a couple of devious maneuvers against the loggers here, but he's actually, overall, a good guy, which is quite surprising.

Ladd would have turned 100 today (September 3, 2013), but died 50 years ago, in January 1964, from a lethal (and probably accidental) combination of alcohol and pills. He had a good run in Hollywood for 20 years and made far more films I like than films I didn't. He was a quintessential Hollywood movie star, studio-created but fan-supported. He may not have had much range, but was very dependable within his range and always gave the fans what they wanted.

Decent Alan Ladd vehicle about confrontation between ranchers and timbermen. A tough logger : Alan Ladd and his group : Gilbert Roland , Noah Beery Jr., among others, go to the outskirts of Deep Wells. There they contend a beautiful rancher: Jeanne Crain and her foreman : Lyle Bettger . The towners are opposed to trees cutting , thinking of falling trees would cause mudslide sweeping the buildings.

An exciting film in Western style about violent feud, thrills , action , fights and romance. Based on the novel by prolific Louis L'Amour , whose books have got several cinematic adaptations . Stars Alan Ladd gives a passable acting in his usual style , though he seems to be oldest than his true age : 46 at the time of shooting , that's why he was a real drunk, in fact he died early at 50 for mingling drinking and pills . He was already in his fall after his succesful films, especially in Film Noir, such as The Black Cat, The Glass Key, This Gun for Hire The Blue Dahlia, or other genres in movies as The Great Gastby , Botany Bay, Hell below Zero, The Black Night, The Badlanders and his bigh hit : Shane. While the always gorgeous Jeanne Crain is pretty well as her contender as well as her sweetheart . And a large support cast of notorious secondaries, such as : the teen idol Frankie Avalon playing some catching songs , Alana Ladd -Alan Ladd's daughter- as the sweet girlfriend , the ordinary baddie Lyle Bettger , the Latino Gilbert Roland, Noah Beery Jr as a sympathetc logger , Regis Toomey as a good-tempered Sheriff and Verna Felton as grumpy grandmother. It displays a colorful and brilliant cinematography in glimmer Technicolor. As well as a stirring and evocative musical score by David Buttolph adding the enjoyable songs performed by singer Frankie Avalon .

The picture produced by Jaguar Productions- Alan Ladd ownership- and Warner Bros , being professionally directed by Robert D Webb. The latter was a professional artisan, an expert craftsman, at the beginning he worked as a director assistant, producer and subsequently fimmaker. He directed all kinds of genres as Western : White Feather, The Proud ones, The Jackals and Adventures : Pirates of Tortuga, Seven Citirs of Gold, The Way of Gold and Noir : The Cape Town Affair, The Spider, The Caribbean Mystery. Although he also made documentary and TV episodes from known series as Daniel Boone, Rawhide, Temple Houston series. Rating 5.5/10. Acceptable and passable. Well worth watching for Alan Ladd and Jeanne Crain fans.

Alan Ladd is cast as Jim Hadley, who, with his crew of lumberjacks, is looking for a new forest to cut... But Hadley and crew soon find that they will have to fight for their next load of wood...

The residents of the valley town of Deep Wells, led by Laura Riley (Jeanne Crain), realize that without the natural protection provided by the surrounding woodlands, their ranches and homes would be buried by mudslides during the first heavy rains...

The interests of the inhabitants to drive out the intruders start with their refusal to give horses or supplies of any kind, and increases to blow out the logging road...

Although the obligatory spark of romance lights up between Hadley and Riley (as the lady rancher is called), the two remain at cross purposes. The efforts of the townspeople to force the intruders to move on begin with denials of horses and supplies and escalate to the dynamiting of the logging road...

Hadley, bracing himself for a fight, still insists on legal means to reach the lumber. But his hotheaded partner, Monty (Gilber Roland) favors a more direct approach...

The fast friendship between the two loggers is strained to the breaking point when Monty decides to open the road by the method that closed it: dynamite...

The film, set against some spectacular scenery, and climaxed by a forest fire, remains a routine and simple outdoor melodrama... Frankie Avalon's musical numbers are among the more ludicrous moments in an already sorry film... As Avalon's love interest, Alana Ladd is cute but makes no great impression as an actress...

Aside from a plot that would become more and more relevant as the decade progressed as well as a chance to see Alan Ladd's daughter, Alana, I can't see much about this dull little film that would encourage me to recommend it or see it again. Like most of Alan Ladd's later films, it's very listless and dull. Plus, I really am not sure what the message was nor do I think the folks making the film knew either.

The film begins with some loggers coming to clear the land. However, the locals are very unhappy as they are concerned about the ecological effects this might have on the town below. This is understandable. However, instead of trying to work with the loggers or go through the courts to stop them, some of the locals (led by Lyle Bettger and Jeanne Craine) decide that pretty much anything is fair to stop the tree cutting. During most of the town's dirty tricks, the boss of the logging outfit (Ladd) is amazingly complacent. In fact, this is his mood through almost all the film--like he's only semi-conscious. As a result, one of his men, Monty (Gilbert Roland) has had enough and has decided to fight fire with fire, so to speak. Then, and only then, does the boss rouse out of his near slumber.

I know it might sound rather nasty, but at this point in his career, Alan Ladd was a hard-core alcoholic. Because of this, he began to look puffy and his acting became much more muted and slow. I really think this is a serious problem in "Guns of the Timberland". However, it's NOT the biggest problem. This problem is the writing. The film doesn't seem to know WHAT the message is and many of the characters are, as a result, very inconsistent. Too often, folks behave in ways that defy common sense as well as who they have been throughout the film--particularly Ladd and Craine. Overall, the film is sluggish and dull and this is rather sad, as in his prime, Ladd was an exciting actor. Here, he's as dull as dish water.