Unlike the other reviewers of this abysmal western, I have read the Louis L'Amour source novel, and I found this adaptation deplorable. "Beneath the 12 Mile Reef" director Robert Webb doesn't fare as well here as he did with one of the first Cinemascope films. Primarily, Aaron "Love Boat" Spelling is to blame for this mediocre adaptation. The license that he has taken is enough to rile any ardent Louis L'Amour aficionado. Spelling has added characters that never appeared in the novel. The pugnacious Gilbert Roland character Monte, who is partners with Ladd, didn't even exist in the novel. Furthermore, neither does Frankie Avalon's warbling errand boy who delivers merchandise for the local general store when his girlfriend isn't making life troublesome for him. Perhaps the biggest change that Spelling made was turning the dastardly lumberjack leader from the novel into the hero of the film. The cattle rancher and the town citizens have little respect for the Ladd hero. Actually, the timberjack character in the novel does everything but twirl his mustache. Indeed, he is thoroughly ruthless about getting the timber logged. Furthermore, Spelling has lightened the violence considerably. Cattle rancher Clay Bell is wounded in one scene and has to recover while two of his cow hands are beaten brutally in town. In the film, the Alan Ladd hero is named Jim Hadley, but in the novel he is named Jud Devitt, and he is an unsavory gent to the hilt. Interestingly enough, Spelling and "Proud Rebel" co-scribe Joseph Petracca kept rancher Clay Bell's name intact. Nevertheless, the Lyle Bettger character barely resembles his combative counterpart in the novel. Bell does stall the lumberjacks at the entrance to his property. Ladd is allowed a romantic interest (Jeanne Crain) whereas his evil counterpart in the novel lost the girl. Moreover, the Ladd hero knows what he is beaten in the movie and leaves town on a train with his lumberjacks with him.Altogether, "Guns of the Timberlands" doesn't do justice to the Louis L'Amour novel, and it seems pretty lame for a horse opera. The premise is refreshing enough. Instead of cattlemen clashing with sheep herders, the cattle man tangle with timberjacks.

Physically ,Alan Ladd was becoming the ghost of himself:His puffed up face had lost most of its charm;it was even worse in "duel of champions" (aka "Horatio E Curazio"),his Italian sword and sandal,the following year.In his final years ,only "the carpetbaggers"-in other respects an average movie- gave him a prophetic role worthy of himself ,an aging actor down on his luck.This is a western which displays ecological concern : lumberjacks versus farmers (the best scene shows Jeanne Crain taking Ladd to the ghost town :"you would ruin our village too ").The cinematography is fine ,with a good use of the wide screen which enhances the splendid landscapes ,particularly in the scenes of the fire.But the characters are cardboard .For those whose taste runs that way,Frankie Avalon sings two songs ,the first one in a ball and the second after a quarrel with his girlfriend.

Kirk Douglas said the worst film he ever did was The Big Trees, in fact he did it for no salary in order to buy his way out of a Warner Brothers contract. Like Guns Of The Timberland, it's a logging story and was a bad step in the career of both stars.The problem with Alan Ladd, producer and star of Guns Of The Timberland was that there weren't too many steps left for him. Douglas did his timber disaster at the beginning of his career, Ladd towards the end.Ladd and Gilbert Roland are partners in a timber concern and they've got a contract to cut logs in the territory of Jeanne Crain's ranch. The problem for Jeanne and the rest of the valley is that it will leave no watershed for flooding and as her foreman Lyle Bettger so aptly puts it, her cattle will be eating mud next year.Of course the sight of Jeanne in a nice tight fitting cowgirl outfit was enough to make Ladd only concerned about one log in his life. But Roland wants to fight and therein lies the conflict.Like Douglas in The Big Trees, Ladd's conversion to the cause of environmentalism is a bit too unconvincing. And Gilbert Roland going berserk is not the Gilbert Roland I'm used to on the screen. I really hated him in this and Gilbert Roland is one of my favorite players.Ladd produced as well as starred in Guns Of The Timberland and in order to get a little box office from the young, he had current teen heart throb Frankie Avalon make his screen debut opposite his own daughter Alana. I don't think Frankie got any big hit records out of Guns Of The Timberland, he did sing two forgettable songs here.But this was not the worst film Alan Ladd made. That would be next year in Duel Of The Champions, but he was definitely tobogganing down career wise in 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...