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In another few years coal miner turned boxer turned actor Charles Bronson would have been perfect to star in this film which was almost autobiographical in his case. Like Jeff Chandler in this film, Bronson was brought up in the Pennsylvania coal mining country and took up boxing before acting as a way out of some dire poverty.

Chandler plays coal miner Coke Mason who only wants to earn enough money to start a business and get married to Evelyn Keyes. But his brother Stephen McNally sees a future in Chandler's fists and wants to manage him.

Chandler has one thing that can't be taught. He has a murderous punch and a killer instinct in the ring. Lots of fighters have that, two of the most prominent were Jack Dempsey and Rocky Graziano. In fact in that aspect this version of Iron Man is close to the Graziano film Somebody Up There Likes Me.

The main weakness in the film is there is no real explanation for why Chandler is such an animal in the ring. Especially since one of the supporting characters is Rock Hudson who is from those same mines and also becomes a boxer, but he uses skill and speed and is a fan favorite. Chandler is as unpopular as one of Vince McMahon's patented wresting villains.

It's a good boxing film, but this version of Iron Man will never rank with a film like Champion where another prize fighter has a killer instinct.

A well-cast Jeff Chandler, in his physical prime at about age 32, plays a Pennsylvania miner named "Coke" Mason who reluctantly becomes a boxer in order to earn some extra money. (He wants to use this money to marry girlfriend Evelyn Keyes and open up a radio store.) "Coke" is a mild-mannered fellow who proves to be an indifferent fighter until he's goaded into anger. Then, with an almost audible "click," he turns on his opponent in a murderous rage and attacks him without mercy. This streak of brutality quickly earns him the enmity of the crowd even as it causes his rapid rise in the standings. Meanwhile his friend and fellow boxer "Speed" O'Keefe (Rock Hudson) has the boyish good looks and clean-cut manner which make him a crowd favorite. Inevitably the two meet in the ring to decide the world heavyweight championship.

These ingredients could easily be combined into a serviceable B-movie but there's a problem here: the character played by Evelyn Keyes. The script can't decide whether she's the faithful girlfriend who's appalled by the violence of the boxing ring or instead the greedy golddigger who sees her boyfriend as a means to a life of wealth and comfort. This confusion about her character proceeds to muddle the script's conception of other characters. Stephen McNally as Chandler's ambitious brother also has the makings of a villain as does Joyce Holden as the "other woman." However, since Keyes might (or might not) be the story's real villain, these two characters are often left in a state of limbo -- not quite good, not quite bad. An air of indecision thus lingers over many parts of the movie and keeps it from having the desired impact.

The movie's fight scenes lack the gritty reality of those in, say, "Raging Bull," but this movie almost seems slanted at a female audience so instead of blood and bruises we get attractive "beefcake" shots of Chandler's and Hudson's bare torsos, gleaming with sweat and shaved of hair. (Knowing what we do now of these two actors' private lives, it's easy to imagine how much they enjoyed filming these "beefcake" scenes -- not to mention getting buck naked for the showers that followed!) Fans of "beefcake" get a bonus in also seeing James Arness stripped to the waist for an early fight scene with Chandler.

Though it's hard to imagine Rock Hudson as the heavyweight champion of the world, he has an eager, likable quality that hasn't yet been hardened by the movie-star status soon to settle around him.

This "Iron Man" is a re-make of a 1931 "Iron Man" starring Jean Harlow. Notes indicate that the Jean Harlow version was also re-made in 1937 under the title "Some Blondes Are Dangerous" but information on this movie seems to be missing from the files.

Finally, you can tell how old this movie is by one simple fact: virtually all the boxers in it are white!

An interesting artifact from 1951, "Iron Man" stars Jeff Chandler, Evelyn Keyes, Stephen McNally, Jim Backus, and Rock Hudson.

I will start out by saying I was incredibly distracted by Rock Hudson's high, nasal speaking voice. It's not unusual as a person ages for their voice to drop, especially if they smoked. I don't know if Hudson smoked, but I do know he had surgery to lower his voice.

The surgeon removes a layer of cartilege from the vocal cords. This makes the cords less taut and lowers the pitch. The consequence of that was that he was unable to sing. After hearing him in this movie, it was a small price to pay.

The story concerns a man, Coke Mason (Chandler), a coal miner, whose brother (McNally) wants him to become a professional boxer. His girlfriend (Keyes) does as well, because of the money.

Coke's problem is that when he is hurt in a fight, and the audience boos him, he goes into a rage and becomes a killing machine, usually having to be dragged off of his opponent. He's what is known as a dirty fighter, and the fight audiences hate him.

Originally he wants to quit; then he decides against it and wants to go for the title. By the time he gets to the title, his opponent is Speed (Hudson), a fellow coal miner worker who used to work in Coke's corner during fights.

Chandler and Hudson are unbelievably young in this film. The fight sequences aren't very good, probably because Chandler and Hudson were being marketed as hunks, and the film was intended to appeal to women.

The acting was okay; Rock frankly had a way to go in the acting department.

One of the reviews mentioned Jeff Chandler was a cross-dresser. Jane Russell claims Esther made it up to sell more books, as Williams confided in her often about her affair with Chandler and somehow never managed to mention his cross-dressing. As another actress pointed out, what the heck would he have worn? He was huge. And nobody else saw it?

A coal miner who dreams of his own radio shop is lured into a boxing ring where he becomes a kind of animal hated by the public. Box is a film genre that remains to this day committed to tradition. It underwent few changes in dramatic elements or peculiarities of plots. Old scripts used to tell the same stories. They hardly become outdated. (Take the Rocky franchise for example) Most often (like here) it's the story of a poor guy who finds self-fulfillment in fighting, in order to be successful. At the same time either old friends break with him or he with them. Finally, a decision must be made as to whether the hero will look back to his former values or allow success within such a brutal business lose him in every respect. Director Joseph Pevney has some interesting titles in his filmography, but Iron Man surely isn't the best one.

Jeff Chandler is a coal miner who wants to open a radio store with his girl, Evelyn Keyes. His brother, Stephen McNally, manages him, as much as anyone can. In the ring, Chandler turns into an animal, barely held back from killing his opponents. Sports columnist Jim Backus keeps writing that he should be thrown out of boxing. When Miss Keyes and McNally pay off another boxer to throw the fight, and Chandler finds out, he walks out, determined to become the world champion and earn the respect of the booing crowds.

I haven't seen the 1931 version of this movie, in which Tod Browning directs Lew Ayres in the lead role, but this is as brutal a movie as the Production Code would permit. Carl Guthrie's camerawork makes Chandler look like an animal during the matches. While there's some pop psychology to explain Chandler's savagery, that is the point of this effective movie.

Bob