The Big Trees [DVD] [1952]

Ever since slipping into Public Domain, The Big Trees has become one of the most accessible and oft-televised of Kirk Douglas' pictures. Douglas plays an unscrupulous lumberjack who covets the land owned by a religious sect. All that's saving him from being the film's main villain is the fact that there's an even nastier contingent out to claim the sect's territory. His greed tempered by the love of pious Eve Miller, Douglas turns out to be a good guy after all in the film's climax. Most of The Big Trees' action highlights are lifted from its principal inspiration, the 1938 Technicolor feature Valley of the Giants. Watch for Alan Hale Jr. as "Tiny", doubling for his own father, who appears in long-shot in the stock footage.