The Iron Petticoat (1956) Directed by Ralph Thomas
Comedy
Film Review
Just what was Katharine Hepburn thinking? Teaming up with Bob
Hope in a Cold War farce in which she had to put on a phoney Russian accent
may have seemed like a good idea at the time but going by the end
result you have to question the woman's sanity.
What most offends with this comedy mishap, apart from the outrageous Russian accents and
half-hearted direction, is the abysmal screenplay. Unsatisfied
with Ben Hecht's original script, Bob Hope passed it on to his team of
writers with the request to make it funny. (The said writers
appear not to have heard the word "funny", or at least they mistook it
for "silly".)
Hecht was so incensed by this that he requested his
name be taken off the credits, and rightly so. The jokes are
appalling, the kind of sub-juvenile attempts at humour you will find in
a child's playground or a student debating society. And the plot
- a cynical bastardisation of the Greta Garbo classic Ninotchka
(1939) - is hardly any better. If you ever have to choose
between watching this film and being subjected to Chinese water
torture, go for the latter - it's far less painful and you won't have
to endure the grim spectacle of Katharine Hepburn subjecting herself to
the histrionic equivalent of hara-kiri.
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Film Synopsis
When a Soviet aviatrix, Captain Vinka Kovelenko, lands at a U.S.
airbase in West Germany, the military mistakenly believe she intends to
defect. In fact, Kovelenko is on a one-woman mission to convert
the West to Soviet-style Communism. Major Chuck Lockwood
believes that he can win Kovelenko round by showing her the advantages
of capitalism and thereby win a propaganda coup against the
Soviets. But Kovelenko's resolve is made of iron and she has no
intention of yielding to western bourgeois decadence, or so it seems...
Cast:Bob Hope (Major Charles "Chuck" Lockwood),
Katharine Hepburn (Captain Vinka Kovelenko),
Noelle Middleton (Lady Connie Warburton-Watts),
James Robertson Justice (Colonel Sklarnoff),
Robert Helpmann (Ivan Kropotkin),
David Kossoff (Dr. Anton Dubratz),
Alan Gifford (Colonel Newt Tarbell),
Nicholas Phipps (Tony Mallard),
Paul Carpenter (Major Lewis),
Sid James (Paul),
Alexander Gauge (Senator Howley),
Sandra Dorne (Tityana),
Richard Wattis (Lingerie Clerk),
Tutte Lemkow (Sutsiyawa),
Martin Boddey (Grisha),
Maria Antippas (Sklarnoff's Secretary),
Cyril Chamberlain (Hotel Doorman),
Alf Dean (Russian Strongarm Man),
Doris Goddard (Maria),
Les Tremayne (Trailer Narrator)
Country: UK
Language: English
Support: Color
Runtime: 87 min
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