Guns of the Timberland

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...