The Steel Fist

In the early 1950s, Russia's brutal, murdering leader Josef Stalin (staling is Russian for "steel") became extremely paranoid of Jewish doctors, who he claimed were sabotaging Russian ideology. The controls were tightened and many were falsely accused and executed. The dialog makes many references to Russian soldiers occupying a neighboring country, candidates being Hungary, Rumania, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and the Baltic States. Some of the "border" towns have German names, others have Slavic (e.g., Zarnick) names. The student protest against totalitarian occupation is suppressed by the heroine's ostensible lover, an ambitious Russian Captain - Major wanna-be. The fear endured by Communist occupation continued, despite Hungarian invasion by Russia in 1956, and Czech invasion by Russia in 1968, Stalin died in 1953.

In Central Europe behind the Iron Curtain, student Eric Kardin (Roddy McDowall) leads a resistance to the authorities. They get into a fight and the police seeks him for inciting a riot. He joins the underground resistance.

This starts well enough. There is good tension at the beginning. There is an escape movie. He's on the run and the dread is palpable. The movie slows down as he stays longer and longer at the house. It's a better cinematic move for him to keep going until he gets to the west. It would also make more sense for him to keep going. By the time he gets back on track, the intensity can't quite get back to the initial levels. This was made during the Red Scare era. McDowall's acting is good as a young man. Some of the others are doing a little bit of melodrama. The movie goes over a little. It's stilted at times but it's fine as an anti-Red film.

This tense, realistic, masterfully acted and written drama of what life is like in a country under Soviet domination (though the Soviet Union is never named), is well-worth seeing. Roddy McDowall, best-known for playing Cornelius in "Planet of the Apes", and for being a bon vivant who threw fabulous parties in decadent Hollyweird, shows what he can do when given a script that actually demands something of him. He was so naturally gifted, so instinctive of an actor, that he often appeared to be coasting in his performances. The stakes are too high in this brilliant expose to allow McDowall to do that. He has to dig down as deep as he can, trying to reach an emotional truth that is worthy of the material, and he succeeds beautifully. He is ably assisted by the other actors, who also rise to the occasion, particularly, Kristine Miller, Harry Lauter, and Glen Vernon.

What makes the film so effective is its focus on the characters, and its refusal to oversimplify what is a complex world with many moving parts. By immersing us in the lives of people about whom we care, we see the personal costs of living under a totalitarian regime and the courage required to resist it. It is not a preachy, didactic, cold exercise; it is a living and breathing work of art.

Some reviewers here have used the term, "Red Scare", to pigeonhole this film, a term that is usually used to imply that the fear or "scare" is baseless, a figment of the imagination. In truth, the devastation caused by Stalin and his successors was, sadly, anything but a fantasy, as the millions of lives that were destroyed makes obvious. There actually WAS something of which to be afraid, and "The Steel Fist" powerfully conveys what that something was.

College student Roddy McDowall takes part in a protest against the government. He escapes the reprisals and is sent by his uncle to get out of the country with the aide of the underground.

Although contemporary writing states this is about a communist country, there's nothing in the movie that specifies the matter. Instead we are told the unspecified country with German town names is under the control of invaders. Perhaps the reason for this is to lend a sense of universality to the themes of freedom fighting against oppression. Perhaps it was hope it might play in Communist countries. Regardless of the reasons, the lurking menace by nice-seeming people lends a depressed air to the film.

It's also the first film directed by Wesley Barry. He had begun as a child actor, and had starred as the title character in Marshall Neilan's DINTY. His acting career ended in the late 1930s. After the Second World War, he moved behind the camera, first as an assistant director, later as a director and producer of cheap second features and TV shows. His career seems to have ended in the early 1970s. He died in 1994, aged 86.

The Steel Fist stars Roddy McDowall as a student leader in an unnamed country behind the Iron Curtain who has to flee because heled a student protest against the Russian occupiers. Though the country is unnamed given the German names in the cast I tend to think this is East Germany.

This one was done on the cheap by Monogram which of course is a redundancy. McDowall is lucky to meet up with brother and sister Harry Lauter and Kristine Miller of the underground. When you need friends.............

Miller is the local vamp of the underground pumping Russian major Rand Brooks for information. In fact Brooks comes off as Russian as Keye Luke. Of course as Germans Lauter and Miller aren't much better.

What this film does do is help the cast with their anti-Communist credentials at the time the blacklist and Joe McCarthy.

There were good anti-Communist films made during this period. The Steel Fist ain't one of them.