mark.waltz Moderately enjoyable, this woodsy adventure features tough, no nonsense performances by Sterling Hayden and David Brian, a sentimental one by vet Adolph Menjou and a Hruba-licious performance by Vera Ralston, the Norma Shearer of Republic studios, aka married to the boss. She's simple window dressing in this familiar story of the rivalry between two men in the logging industry, one good (Hayden) and one bad (Brian). He will stop at nothing to keep Hayden out of his way, including sabotage and murder. Menjou, as Ralston's father, tries to keep the peace and right a wrong, and pays dearly. The war is on, and there will be no tree standing if Brian has his way.After a pretty theme song over the credits, Ralston gets to sing (dubbed!) two campy songs and Hoagy Carmichael, the town's only piano AND accordion player, gets a novelty number as well. Ralston gets better photography this time than she has in some of the other films I've seen her in, and she's not bad, but fortunately, the focus is on the men. Hayden and Brian are both very good, and Carmichael and Chill Wills provide some minor laughs. Menjou is given some really melodramatic dialog but instills it with his customary class. Good color scenes of how the industry works helps this out. But the logging industry has been dealt with on screen in better ways, so this just remains formula.

dhenke I remember watching this movie back in '55 in Great Falls, Montana. It was a fun flick. Sterling Hayden did his usual Sterling Hayden performance. It was not Godfather worthy, but acceptable. The scenery was familiar to us, being Montanans. I actually did some lumber jacking in my college years. It is heavy work. After the movie, we stopped at a soda fountain. I stuffed the jukebox with a couple of quarters and punched in the song, "Timberjack". It was set to play twelve times. (If you put in a quarter instead of a nickle, you got six plays.) After the fourth play, the proprietor came over and unplugged the jukebox. We laughed our way out of the place.

ptb-8 Ah yes, the Republic treatment for logging movies shot in glorious 'funny looking' Trucolor. One must be very forgiving of Republic constantly making silent movie western melodramas even if they were produced 1955 and in color. It is as if they just kept making the same (sort of) films year in and out until the doors closed in 1959. Vera, the singing wife of studio head Herbert Yates moans a few songs and swings her Hungarian hips about the saloon warbling through her ZsaZsa sounding accent. Somehow, all this is great fun. There is great outdoor scenery, some fantastic railroad location footage and genuinely interesting logging train scenes. Adolph Menjou and Hoagy Carmichael are added to the cast of character actors who look as thought they are there to earn enough to afford a long holiday. Some scenes outside the saloon doors are clearly shot in the corridor at the entrance of a sound stage which all makes TIMBERJACK more quaintly fascinating. As with Johnny Guitar, someone returns to slug it out with someone and fix the bad guys. However we have Vera instead of Joan in this one and a competent serial director. In fact if it was chopped up into 12 minute episodes, that is exactly what TIMBERJACK would be. Very watchable for all the above reasons.

funkyfry Story involves a timberjack (Hayden) out to discover the murderer of his father. Unfortunately, the story gives us only one suspect in Hayden's rival in the local lumber trade, so there's not much mystery here. A few songs by Carmichael and a great rousing performance by Ralston lift the story slightly above the obvious. Nice locations, good action scenes, and Hayden is good as usual but seems unmotivated by this limited vehicle. Fairly solid, but few thrills beyond the music and good cast -- they deserved a little more story.