Timber War (1935)
The owners of a lumber mill hire an investigator to find out who is sabotaging their mill.
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Good movie but grossly overrated
The first must-see film of the year.
This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.
It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,
Kermit Maynard's star status didn't last long – only from The Fighting Trooper directed by Ray Taylor (released November 1934) to Roaring Six Guns directed by J.P. McGowan (released September 1937). In those three years, however, Kermit, the star, made no less than eighteen feature movies. Timber War is number 8 and although it is directed by Sam Newfield, who did such a surprisingly good job with Kermit's Northern Frontier (1935) and then followed up with another crowd-pleaser in Trails of the Wild, Timber War is something of a disappointment. For one thing, Kermit does only one stunt in this one – a flying leap into the saddle – and for another thing, aside from the somewhat disturbing spectacle of watching an enormous forest of big trees being felled, there is very little action. Kermit seems to enjoy the fact that the movie is presenting him as the reluctant hero rather than as a policeman to whom violence is a way of life, but I doubt if Kermit's fans will be equally delighted. True, the movie could be described as "spectacular", but I doubt if a restrained hero playing second fiddle to a forest of gigantic trees is exactly what western fans would expect. Available on an excellent Alpha DVD, coupled with Wild Horse Round-Up.