The Steel Lady

Saw this film with my buddies as a kid many, many years ago. We were 5th and 6th graders, and we all loved the movie. Though perhaps a little contrived, the story was quite original, and kept us glued to our seats. "The Steel Lady" was one of the best action/adventure "B" movies I saw back in the 1950s. Now I'm 60, and my movie preferences are somewhat more sophisticated than they were 50 years ago, but I still would like to see this movie one more time before I'm watching flicks on the big screen in the sky... I'd love to buy it, but for some reason I have not been able to find it on the Internet.

I might add, that before passing judgement on a movie from the past, one should probably take into consideration when the movie was made, and the viewing audience it was made for.

I have seen this film at least 5 time as a viewer from my early teens through late 20's and as a U.S. Army Post theater projectionist I ran the film every night for four days. The picture is about several oil men in a multi-engine transport plane that gets caught in a sand storm which chokes up the engines forcing the pilot to crash-land in the middle of the desert (I believe the Flight of the Phoenix films were remakes of this movie). Using parts from the plane they use to refurbish a German WWII army tank they find (The German name on the side of the tank translates roughly to The Steel Lady), they fight their way to the rescue point for a very heroic ending I will not give away. Decently acted and a must see. I give it a high rating of 8.

It's great to see that this "B" movie hasn't been totally forgotten. In the early/mid '50's there was a movie house in E. Weymouth, MA (The Victor) that charged 14 cents for kids' admission to Saturday matinée's. The films they showed were of the type that became TV 'movietime' fodder later in the 50's, but until then, for 14 cents you got to see a decent double feature on the big screen - great audio, in "air conditioned comfort." Steel Lady was the film I remember most out of dozens of Saturday potboilers. The plot was totally plausible to a ten year old, and it's good to see that some other reviewers are willing to cut it some slack, even today. I look forward to finding a copy to see how it has held up.

I first saw this movie on television in the 60s, and still remember it for its feel of adventure( finding a lost German tank after a sandstorm) and enjoyed some intersting to watch B-movie character actors (Rod Cameron, John Dehner, Tab Hunter as a young hero-worshiping oil hand, and others). The running fights between the tank and the arabs was also fairly well-staged. I have hoped for years that this movie would be finally offered on VHS. I would definitely buy it. Although its scope is considerably smaller than Bogart's SAHARA(a WW2 movie about a wayward tank and its crew struggling to survive) it still holds up well as a simple adventure feature and I'd love it to see it again..

I watched this movie several times when I was about 5 years old. All my older siblings were off to school, and my mother was doing her morning chores. I used to dream about finding that tank in the desert and driving off in it to defeat the bad guys. For years I've been trying to find a copy of it, and I am thrilled to know there are others who remember and enjoyed it as much as I did! I'm surprised there hasn't been a modern remake yet. It's hard to comment though on the quality of acting or direction when you haven't seen this movie since you were too young to know about that stuff, but from a kids point of view, I'd have to say this movie has everything an adventure-minded boy of the 50's and 60's would want to see in a movie.