One of the earliest Pine-Thomas B films from Paramount casts Ellen Drew as a young woman who had a choice between honest forest ranger Robert Lowery and businessman Regis Toomey. She chooses Toomey and finds out that the business he's in is the black market. At that time in 1944 a business frowned on what with war rationing an all.
Gangster Toomey gets involved with two killings, one a cop who rather stupidly tried to bust Toomey without backup and an associate Elisha Cook, Jr., who made it a habit in getting bumped in films one way or another. Now he's a fugitive and he and Drew are hiding out in a mountain cabin provided by Lowery for Drew, although the ranger is no fool and he's getting mighty suspicious.
The leads are attractive enough and Robert Lowery had a decent enough career as a lead in B films like Dark Mountain. But this film really belongs to Regis Toomey. In his rather long career Toomey mostly played nice guys, usually second leads or support. You probably best remember him as the soda jerk in Meet John Doe and as the police lieutenant in The Big Sleep. On television he was a regular in the first incarnation of Burke's Law.
Dark Mountain gave Toomey an opportunity to play a villain and he does well with it. Being stuck up in that mountain cabin for days gave him one of the worst cases of cabin fever I've ever seen on the screen. The lonely life is what a Forest Ranger signs up for, but city boy Toomey is really going stir crazy up there with only Drew to talk to.
Some nice forest fire sequences are in Dark Mountain. Since I haven't seen that film in years I can't say for certain, but my guess is that they're from the Paramount A feature, The Forest Ranger. Dark Mountain is a good noir feature and likely to give shut-ins a bit of familiarity.