The Iron Glove

Although I regretfully had to jettison (yet again) my film reviewing habits due to time constraints, I will gladly pick up the pen some more to opine about the 10 William Castle movies I have planned to watch in commemoration of the birth centenary of the late genial producer-director – since I have done so for practically all the films of his I am familiar with. Seeing how I was having my annual Easter epic marathon around this same time, I made it a point to start with this obscure and, in retrospect, modest swashbuckler.

The plot revolves around the attempts of the future King Charles II to regain his rightful place on the English throne currently held by the German monarch George I. The pretender (Richard Wyler) is a young, hot-headed fop, betrothed to an Austrian princess (Rica Owen), and waiting out his political exile in France; the biggest supporters of his cause are a trio of fun-loving Irish soldiers (Robert Stack, Alan Hale Jr. and Charles Irwin) that protect him from various assassination attempts – at a dinner party and during a fox hunt – and save the life of his intended from the clutches of her kidnappers.

Also involved in the scheming are an aristocratic "couple" (Leslie Bradley and Ursula Thiess) who pass themselves off as sympathizers of the dethroned regent: the husband is involved in a pre-planned tavern skirmish at the start intended to unmask Stack's true allegiance; the wife is engaged to seduce Stack and distract him from his duty of safeguarding his sovereign's life. True to formula, the hero and anti-heroine eventually fall for each other for real, the villainous accomplices fall out amongst themselves and the bubbly cronies of the hero are involved in amusing ruses along the way: Irwin drinks an enemy officer under the table, thus enabling Stack to dress up in his uniform and Hale masquerades as a woman(!) – in a dress borrowed from a heavy-set tavern barmaid, of course – out at night on an amorous escapade!

While the film is definitely no great shakes as entertainment, it passes the time adequately enough and its colourful costumes and lovely leading lady – whose facial features and accent were awfully familiar to me despite her very brief career – make it very easy on the eye to boot; for the record, the print I watched was sourced from a TV transmission that, luckily, had its many commercial breaks throughout its trim 73-minute running time edited out. Ultimately, the oddest thing about this Sam Katzman-produced costumer – also responsible for no fewer than 16 of Castle's pre-horror work! – is its completely irrelevant and misrepresentative title

Iron Glove, The (1954)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Incredibly silly production by Sam Katzman with director William Castle trying to keep everything together. Depending on the scene, Scotish or Irish accents are full speed ahead as an adventurer (Robert Stack) is hired to find a bride for James Stuart, the son of King James, so that the crowd of the country can be returned to the Stuart family but there are others who don't want to see that. If you're looking for a history lesson then I'm sure you're going to be disappointed as the director couldn't even keep up with what type of accent the actors should be speaking so it's doubtful he or Katzman were paying too much attention to history details. In his autobiography Stack was pretty hard on this film and for good reason as it's obvious very little time or effort went into making it. Both Castle and Katzman put their names on a wide range of "B" movies but this one here gets off to a bad start and really never picks up any steam. It appears everything from the music score to the cinematography are just going through the motions and for the life of me I couldn't figure out what they were trying to do with this thing. Everything you look at are obviously sets so you never get any sort of epic or realistic feel. Another problem is that the actors seem to either be drunk, don't care or are trying to re-enact their styles when they were in high school productions. All of the actors are incredibly wooden and poor Stack looks incredibly uncomfortable in his role. As mentioned before, his accent is constantly going in and out from one scene to the next and there are moments where the American voice comes through.Ursula Thiess, Richard Stapley and Alan Hale, Jr. round out the supporting cast but none of them inject any life to the picture. At 77-minutes the movie feels twice as long and in the end this is just a very cheap production that I'm sure was sold as the bottom half of a triple-feature. Either way, only those, such as myself, who must see all of Castle's films should bother with this.

This is yet another of the clunky movies Sam Katzman produced for Columbia in the period between the closing of most of Columbia's B production -- with series like 'Blondie' and Boston Blackie and westerns -- and the rise of AIP and other super-cheap producers who developed the teen and monster movie markets.

In the meantime, Katzman turned out this swashbuckler about some Irishmen supporting Bonnie Prince Charlie. It is nominally no worse than most of the Bs of this period; yet director William Castle has done something very stupid to make this at least occasionally annoying, on top of actor Robert Stack. He has entered his stolid phase and spends most of the movie uncertain as to whether his accent should be Scottish or Irish.

If these were the only issues, then I would rate this five, maybe a four for the poor acting. But Director of Photography Henry Freulich has managed to do something actively obnoxious. In cooperation with Castle's blocking, some one has decreed that people can talk, but only when no one is moving for the first fifty-five minutes of this picture. That calls particular attention to the camera movement, which is totally unremarkable. Nominally it is mostly small, classical movement to maintain composition and, were there anything else going on, like dialogue, you'd never notice it. But the artificiality of the blocking calls attention to it and makes the actors seem even stiffer, particularly Robert Stack, who had, at this point, been a competent film actor for more than a decade.

Move, then pose, move, hit your mark, speak. It is a good thing that chewing gum did not exist back then as that would have been beyond the capabilities of anyone involved.

I suppose that you can use this movie to examine camera movement for composition, since it calls attention to itself. However, as the object of such movement is to not be noticeable, what can anyone recommend save that you ignore the whole thing? Unless, of course, you yearn to see Alan Hale Jr. in drag.