Well,she certainly worked hard and that's a fact.Through most of the movie she appears to be looking desperately at the other actors as if for their approval,like a puppy having mastered a new trick.She gyrates around the saloon,sings in a sub - sub Dietrich fashion a song or two that brings new meaning to the word "banal" before killing the bad guy with a backshot a sniper would have been proud of. In a logging camp full of exotic Europeans with names like Ole and a positive cornucopia of lousy accents Sterling Hayden searches for the truth about his father's death.Nearly as wooden as the logs he wants to send downriver,Mr Hayden is tall and fair and freckled.Unlike Miss Ralston he doesn't seem to care whether anybody likes him or not. Adolph Menjou is rather sweet as Miss Ralston's father who is killed by the bad guy with a single punch to the chin.Perhaps not surprisingly his hat comes off and is later found by Miss Ralston in the bad guy's office.Thus exciting her suspicions.Steady now.... There's plenty of treetop action - enough to set the Health and Safety boys running for the phone - and a lot of manly fistfights. Hoagy Carmichael does his usual piano - playing saloon bar philosopher part and sings a love song to a dog.Go figure. Not so much a negative experience,more a "Oh,is that it?" kind of movie. Just when you think it can't go on for much longer - it doesn't.For connoisseurs of the slightly camp only.

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.

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.

The gear engine and operation of the log train make this movie a must see and have. It provides an examples of life and operations methods of a small logging operation and the underhanded means used to gain control of the RR and timber. The train operations couple the story line and characters. It is also interesting to see that even the hired thugs have some ethics.