The Steel Lady (1953)

First of all, I have to say that I have been trying to remember the title of this film for about 40 odd years. All I could remember was that it was called 'The Treasure of ???' (UK Title)and that it starred Tab Hunter. Having now found the details and read the reviews, I can only agree with them. I always remember this film as being a terrific adventure story and would love to see it again. Unfortunately, I'm advised that it isn't available on DVD or tape, but if it was, I'd buy it like a shot. I can vividly remember the plane crashing and the occupants finding that radio aerial sticking out of a sand dune, and the resulting finding of the tank. My memory is a little hazy after that, but I can recall them finding some treasure and being pursued by I think some Nazis or Arabs. A marvellous film.

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 watched it on black and white TV in the late 50s or early 60s in Minnesota. My dad, brother, and I sat glued to our seats munching homemade popcorn during the whole thing.The closest thing I've seen to it lately is: "Flight of the Phoenix". Steel lady was far more believable. The old plane, old tank, and action were great. It was a real rush for a collector of old military stuff and old car nut. There is a shot of an ART-13 radio transmitter in the back of the cockpit before the crash.As to the possibility of getting a tank running after being burried for decades, the Confederate Air Force, and others have flown B-29s and a B-47 out of china lake NWC that had been sitting in the desert just as long. Usually an oil change, gassing up, a fresh battery, and repairing vandalism was all it took to get them back in the air. Most tanks used 28 volt (nominally 24 VDC) batteries, as did the planes. Oil and avgas from the plane would work for the tank. It would not take a rocket scientist to get a tank going in a day or so. Much more credible than the redesign and remanufacture shown in "Flight of the Phoenix". I like both movies, but give the Steel Lady a higher mark for technical correctness.I would surely like to get a copy on tape or DVD to relive a pleasant sunday afternoon of my salad years.Larry Backer

I strongly suspect that the reason so many people like this film is that they remember it from years ago, when they were children. Not having seen it since I was a child I feel a little uncomfortable going into either its plot or its virtues except to say that I was tremendously fond of this film and saw it at least twice in its entirety on television. It is a low budget early fifties war movie set in the desert. There is nothing remarkable about it except that it's entertaining. What I do remember is how creatively the low budget was used, and how this was turned into an asset since there are only a few major characters and they are isolated most of the time. The thing is, kids don't like having anything shoved down their throats by adults. Kids, at least of my generation, would tolerate just so much of the Disney-Captain Kangaroo-Howdy Doody stuff, then they'd go crazy. They'd do anything to break up the monotony of wholesomeness,--smash windows, hang from railroad bridges by their fingers, torture the cat--just as long as it wasn't what they were supposed to be doing. Where television and movies were concerned, this meant watching something you weren't supposed to watch. The problem was that Perry Mason bored children to tears; and besides, there was no air of the forbidden to it. But once in a while one would stumble across something that was adult, more or less, and really rang the bell. The Steel Lady is a good example of a movie that probably didn't work too well for adults but was magic for children. They could understand it, since it was all about escape. It was set in an exotic place, which made it automatically exciting, and there was a closeness that developed between the characters simply because they were stuck together and had to make the best of a bad situation, one not unlike the ones children face all the time, except that most of us didn't have the good fortune to travel across the Sahara in a tank.