Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Just perfect...

Good idea lost in the noise

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Edward Bernds who as a producer/director is mostly identified with the Bowery Boys produced this northern frontier melodrama about a pair of men who share a partnership in trucking company. Bill Williams is the hands-on management type while Leslie Bradley is the front office guy. What brought these two together as business partners God only knows, but the affair Williams is having with Bradley's wife Lyn Thomas will definitely drive them apart.Thomas is the reason to see this B film, she's one piece of work. This could have been a plot for the Northern Exposure series. Fortunately for Williams he has good girl Nora Hayden.Shot on location for nickels and dimes Bernds did not splurge for color and that's a pity. Some colorful Alaskan rustic characters are part of the plot as well.But Lyn Thomas really owns this film

An Associated Producers Production for 20th Century-Fox. Photographed in RegalScope (black-and-white). Location scenes filmed in Alaska. Copyright 1959 by Associated Producers, Inc. U.S. release: February 1959. U.K. release: 15 March 1959. Australian release: 9 April 1959. 6,436 feet. 72 minutes.SYNOPSIS: Al Graham is operator and co-owner of an Alaskan trucking firm which transports goods from the small town of Tanana Crossing to the large city of Fairbanks. Because of high operating costs and hazardous roads which are often blocked by landslides, the business is in the red and silent-partner Gerard Mason journeys up from Seattle to discuss matters with Al. Trouble begins when Gerard's wife, Janet, arrives on the scene.NOTES: First production from Robert L. Lippert's Associated Producers, Inc.COMMENT: Miss Hayden and Miss Thomas are attractive lasses, but anyone who can stand a jot of Bill Williams and Nick Dennis without frequent trips to the bar is superhuman. There is some mild (if unexpected and completely phony in terms of script development) excitement at the climax, but overall this movie is weighed down by a sluggish, boring story, tediously told, with all the zip and pace of an octogenarian tortoise.

Say, wasn't that slick the way Mason (Leslie Bradley) tricked his wife (Lyn Thomas) into revealing she had the hots for business partner Al Graham (Bill Williams). I mean, he wasn't really even trying except for a hunch he might have had. You could tell she felt like a dope.By that point in the story, Janet Mason was firing on all cylinders while playing the angles in her relationship with Al and marriage to Jerry Mason. The scheming two-timer tried to convince hubby that she was only trying to score a few shares of the business away from Al to gain a greater percentage of the trucking operation. When Al didn't buy it, she shot him in the back!! Wow!! - how would you like to be hitched to someone like that? As in more than a few Westerns of the day, and this never ceases to amaze me, Jerry gets shot from behind and clutches his chest like that's where he got hit by the bullet. I just never understood that.Here's another head scratcher - in any scene in which Al and driving buddy Pete (Nick Dennis) are shown in the cab of their truck talking, they're sitting right next to each other. However in the long shots of the truck riding down the road, they're right where they would be on opposite ends of the bench seat next to their respective windows. It just looked goofy because the back and forth views occurred more than once and it was more than obvious.Hey, and how about Tina Boyd (Nora Hayden) astounded by the price of a hamburger at the café diner - it was a buck! I'd normally mention something like this in my old time movie reviews to contrast the price of things back in the day compared to now, but here it was mentioned because commodities were genuinely expensive in Alaska compared to the lower forty eight states in which one could probably get a burger and fries for about half that amount. Younger viewers I'm sure wouldn't even be able to relate to that.Well I mention all these observations because that's what makes some of these old time flicks entertaining for me when the story itself is only so-so. None of the players here were familiar to me, and let's face it, how interesting can a story be about guys who drive trucks for a living. The intrigue between the principals and that business about Al's good will against Mason's capital was about as creative as things got, except of course that wild finish when Janet turned into a crazy woman and lost all comprehension of the laws of physics by forcing poor Barnie to ram down the winding highway at breakneck speed. Don't you just hate to lose a sixteen wheeler that way?

After a brief history lesson regarding Seward's Purchase of Alaska, this thoroughly average Fox second feature introduces us to Al and Pete (Bill Williams and Nick Dennis), two truckers whose deliveries have been interrupted by a bridge washout. Forced to turn around and return home, they happen upon leggy hitchhiker Tina Boyd (Nora Hayden), who's trying to get to Fairbanks but ends up working at the local truck stop instead. Al and Tina start making goo-goo eyes at each other, boss Mason (Leslie Bradley) is more interested in loot than love, and a plane runs out of fuel and is forced to crash land. Nothing terribly interesting happens, but overall this is not a bad little film, and the Alaska location footage helps considerably. Shame Fox Movie Channel is airing this Regalscope feature in pan and scan, though.