User Reviews

Considering all the Westerns and cowboy stars I've seen in action, Roy Rogers pulls a move here I've never seen before and it looked really cool. Near the finale with the bad guys giving chase on horseback, Roy hooks his left leg over Triggers saddle, faces backwards towards his pursuers, and with his right foot firmly in the stirrup, begins shooting at full gallop! So as I'm marveling over that maneuver, good girl Taffy Baker (Jane Frazee) catches up with bad girl Jean Loring (Stephanie Bachelor), knocks her off her horse, and brings her personal battle to an end with a solid right cross! What more could you ask for?

Well I probably shouldn't have started with the way the picture ends, but the film did have an exciting finish. Leading up to it had Roy investigating the murder of old friend Cap Foster (Harry Cheshire) on his way to exposing a poaching racket that had Miss Loring's bunch hunting game out of season and turning a profit on selling illegal venison. I have to say, the Loring character could have given any male villain a run for his money; she's the one who plugged ole Cap while smugly stating, "This is going to hurt a little bit".

So let's see, besides Trigger in this one, we've got Snoopy the squirrel and Jimmy the Crow in supporting animal roles. The animal theme probably made this flick a Roy Rogers favorite back during the matinée days, and it still appears pretty entertaining today. The picture seemed to go out of it's way a bit in the early stages when a piece of stock footage was used to convey an anti-poaching message by calling out professional hunters who do it for the money. The story then goes on to excoriate the poachers for using silencers, telescopic gun-sights and camouflage gear to shoot their prey, thereby taking the sport right out of traditional hunting for food and survival.

With Bob Nolan and the Sons of the Pioneers on hand, the picture offers up a good eight or nine tunes in it's seventy five minute run. Roy does well by the picture's title with an opening rendition and then once more about a third of the way through. Andy Devine sidekicks Roy as his recurring character Cookie Bullfincher, and I was pleased to see the uncredited Pat Brady with a fair amount of screen time.

"This is gonna hurt" the cold-hearted Stephanie Bachelor tells Harry Cheshire, the lovable caretaker of wounded and motherless animals found out in the wild, and there's no mercy from Bachelor or her gang (which includes Cheshire's own son) as she shoots him point blank in cold blood. The wildlife knew to turn to when they needed medical treatment, and in case of a deer with a gunshot inside her, the brief reunion with its fawn is heartbreaking for the audience. It's up to the visiting Roy Rogers to break up this gang of illegal hunters who kill out of season and sell their prey to uppercrust restaurants and most likely to vivicectors as well.

Instead of Dale Evans, Roy's love interest is Jane Frazee, Cheshire's daughter, unaware of the involvement of brother Harold Landon in their father's death. Funny man Andy Devine provides the humor and heart, something that Bachelor (who resembles Maureen O'Hara) lacks in her role as the head of the gang, a fabulous villainess. The trucolor isn't as vivid as Technicolor but it aides in making the outdoor scenes, especially with the variety of wildlife, stand out. Not your traditional Western, it's a rise above the typical B oater and probably one of Roy Rogers' best.

It's always dangerous to be a lovable old timer in a 'B' western, and sure enough, the Sons of the Pioneers are soon singing at the funeral of Harry Cheshire as Cap Foster, proprietor of the local wildlife sanctuary, who has been shot in cold blood at point blank range by the film's stylishly wicked villainess Jean Loring, played by Stephanie Bachelor.

Ms Loring has brought cattle rustling into the Twentieth Century as well as the Sierras when she arrives from the East and installs an enormous deep freeze on her property to store venison obtained from the heinous offence of hunting deer out of season. Not content with already demonstrating herself (in the words of a judge) one of "the lowest, most contemptible breed of all criminals" - and despite having the hulking Roy Barcroft on hand to provide muscle (if not brains) when required - the nefarious Ms Loring doesn't flinch from doing her own dirty work, and personally kills two people without batting an eyelid. She obviously didn't go to the movies often enough, though, or she'd have known better than to mess with Roy Rogers in the first place, and eventually gets her lights punched out by Jane Frazee; who the presence of a female villain satisfyingly provides with someone that for once she too can rough up while Rogers is disposing of Barcroft.

Considering that the plot - despite the jolly title - hinges upon a particularly ruthless murder, the tone of 'Springtime in the Sierras' remains persistently light-hearted for much of its duration, with a ratio of comedy relief and songs to plot in a film that runs only 75 minutes that surpasses even that of a Bollywood movie.

"Springtime In The Sierras" was originally released back in 1947.

Anyway - As the story goes - Roy learns of his game warden friend's death and decides to investigate into the matter. Learning there is a gang of poachers operating in the area, Roy concludes that they were responsible for the death of his friend.