This outdoor action B movie from the Pine-Thomas stable has an unexpected ingredient humour. The manly deeds of our stalwart hero are neatly laced with the misadventures of a group of Runyonesque hoodlums.
Russ Evans (Richard Arlen), to whom flying a plane comes as naturally as shinning up a giant fir tree, is invalided out of the army and sets about rescuing young war widow Elaine Graham (Mary Beth Hughes, B movies' answer to Shelley Winters) from the machinations of an unscrupulous business man seeking to fleece her of the logging interest she inherited. To make ends meet she is singing in a night club managed by Smacksie Golden (Sheldon Leonard, in a delightful send-up of his usual gangster roles) with the ineffectual assistance of his sidekick "Squirrel" (George E Stone). Lil Boggs (played by June Havoc in a performance worthy of Joan Blondell and Lucille Ball combined) is both Smacksie's long-suffering girlfriend and Elaine's cynical wise-cracking confidante. When Russ whisks Elaine off to fell trees, the others follow, leaving their natural night club habitat to work in a logging camp in the great outdoors, motivated by a heady blend of self-interest, patriotism, and sentimentality.
This is an under-rated film, ignored or dismissed as vapid by most film cataloguers. It is a quite superior B movie, with a talented cast and a witty script adding extra value to the standard outdoor action on which the producers' reputation was based.
Russ Evans (Richard Arlen), to whom flying a plane comes as naturally as shinning up a giant fir tree, is invalided out of the army and sets about rescuing young war widow Elaine Graham (Mary Beth Hughes, B movies' answer to Shelley Winters) from the machinations of an unscrupulous business man seeking to fleece her of the logging interest she inherited. To make ends meet she is singing in a night club managed by Smacksie Golden (Sheldon Leonard, in a delightful send-up of his usual gangster roles) with the ineffectual assistance of his sidekick "Squirrel" (George E Stone). Lil Boggs (played by June Havoc in a performance worthy of Joan Blondell and Lucille Ball combined) is both Smacksie's long-suffering girlfriend and Elaine's cynical wise-cracking confidante. When Russ whisks Elaine off to fell trees, the others follow, leaving their natural night club habitat to work in a logging camp in the great outdoors, motivated by a heady blend of self-interest, patriotism, and sentimentality.
This is an under-rated film, ignored or dismissed as vapid by most film cataloguers. It is a quite superior B movie, with a talented cast and a witty script adding extra value to the standard outdoor action on which the producers' reputation was based.
