The Steel Fist (1952) User Reviews

Dull Despair

[boblipton · 5/10 · 17 March 2021]

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.

anti-Red drama

[SnoopyStyle · 6/10 · 18 March 2021]

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.

Perhaps when the young lovers turn 60 years old . . .

[tadpole-596-918256 · 6/10 · 14 April 2021]

. . . they are able to find each other, rekindle their flame and adopt some half-grown Romanian orphans. THE STEEL FIST is set in 1951, when circumstances leave a pair of 22-year-olds on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain. Since that metallic drapery took 38 more years to rust away, Eric and Mary would be well past their biological "Best By" dates by the time they finally have a chance to consummate their passion for one another. This low-budget spy movie spoof tries harder to generate laughs than evoke bittersweet poignancy, however. For instance, when the star-crossed couple are climbing a desert outcropping in the California vicinity, Eric declares "The air's sure getting thin!" as he's surrounded by brushy vegetation seldom seen more than 2,000 feet above sea level. A cow named "Heidi" does not a Swiss Alp make!

Polishing your anti-Communist credentials

[bkoganbing · 4/10 · 17 March 2021]

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.

I think I liked this more than most of the other reviewers.

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 1 April 2021]

"Steel Fist" is an anti-communist film about life behind the Iron Curtain in Europe. It also marks one of Roddy McDowell's first films away from his familiar MGM studio and one of his first adult roles. And, unlike his earlier films, it was made by the less glamorous Monogram Studios.

When the story begins, there is a student protest at the local university in some unnamed communist bloc nation. Since free speech is NOT allowed, the government is intent on rounding up the students and imprisoning them. One of them, Eric (McDowell), manages to escape and the rest of the program consists of him trying to sneak across the border to freedom....with help of the local underground.

While some might think this anti-communist film is some sort of knee-jerk McCarthy era Red Scare flick, it is rather realistic. Students or anyone speaking out in such nations were imprisoned, placed in mental institutions or killed...there simply was no free speech. As a retired history teacher, the history shown in the film is realistic. However, I only gave it a 7 mostly because McDowell was rather wooden and uninteresting...which is odd since he was an amazingly good actor. I think it was just teenage growing pains and he soon began making better stuff and showing his acting prowess in later (as well as earlier) pictures.

Makes suspense mundane

[michaelchilds · 1/10 · 17 March 2021]

Awkward dialogue ("villagers are indifferent"); dusty, rocky Hollywood Western setting in Central Europe; offscreen action (occupation soldier falls, unseen, to death, unseen, in unseen ravine: "Aaiieeyee!", "He fell into ravine"); contrived, sudden budding love affair between disparate characters; villainous Communist officer ("we'll shoot ten hostages") turns milquetoast ("maybe not") when confronted ("Giorg, don't do this") by his (not her) love interest; lengthy dialogue between suddenly-heroic figures in desperate straits as enemy troops close in; easily-swum, shallow river described as natural, dangerous barrier between free and Communist countries...It's all here: the very hallmarks of a low-budget, Saturday morning double feature film.

Terror in the time of late Stalin (steel)

[rolf_petersen · 7/10 · 18 March 2021]

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.

Rather Strange Film

[malcolmgsw · 4/10 · 4 May 2015]

Since this film was made in 1952 one has to assume that this is one of the "Red Scare" films which were made at the height of the Mccarthy witch hunt.Mcdowell plays a student who gets involved in a riot in an unnamed Communist country.He then has to flee.He is harboured by a friendly young woman till he is able to make his escape over the border.The film looks as if it had a budget of practically nothing and was filmed in someones bathroom.The countryside he wanders through has nothing to do with Central or Eastern Europe and rather more in common with Hopalong Cassidy.It gives some indication of how low Macdowells career must have sunk at this time that he decided to appear in such a Z grade production.

"You lose a lot of old friends doing this kind of work."

[classicsoncall · 6/10 · 13 July 2023]

Turner Classics featured a number of anti-Nazi and anti-Communist films recently that I'm just catching up with. Ones I've already seen are "The Woman on Pier 13" and "The Whip Hand". This one was good for ratcheting up the tension for a university student on the run after inciting a riot over a forced labor camp. Roddy McDowall is the central character in the story as student Eric Kardin, who makes his way to safety surreptitiously with the help of underground resistance organizers and siblings, Marina (Kristine Miller) and Franz (Harry Lauter). McDowall's character is rather perplexed and indecisive in the story, wavering between his quest for freedom and anxiety at putting his benefactors in danger. That doesn't prevent him from killing a soldier, presumably German as the country is never identified, while putting him and his hosts in further jeopardy. I've seen too many films in which the pressure reaches a boiling point and then simply whimpers to a close, this time with Eric fording a river and going on his way to whatever fate awaited him. It was rather anticlimactic considering the chase by his pursuers, and made for an ending that was simply too abrupt.

Interesting spycraft

[cjskama-956-515706 · 8/10 · 30 June 2021]

Yes, this is an old movie filmed on a minimal budget. But The Steel Fist also shows how a good script can make up for that. Especially in this case. I was intrigued with how many people who opposed the communists were involved in the underground escape effort. And they were not always the people who you first thought would be involved. Plus the ever-present tension and danger that any one of them might be caught and captured in their efforts. Thank you, TCM, for finding and showing this interesting little film.

escaping to freedom

[ksf-2 · 6/10 · 12 July 2023]

Good 1950's drama, deep in the cold war. When a student (mcdowall) in an eastern block country almost gets caught protesting at the university, he must flee. The underground network must help him get to the border. Most of the film is spent with the couple who help him at the safe house. Good suspense while they are being chased across the rocks. It's pretty low budget, but it still works. A bit silly, with grandiose quotations at the start and at the conclusion. And this was ten years before the berlin wall went up! The un-american activities hearings were going on in washington, but mccarthy was censured in the mid 1950's (for the second time!) and lost his power. Co-stars kristine miller and harry lauter. Directed by wes barry for monogram. His first, as lead director. From the novel by phyllis parker.

McDowall Shines in this Scathing Indictment of Soviet Totalitarianism and Oppression

[EclecticCritic · 10/10 · 17 April 2021]

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.