Iron Mistress, The (Blu-ray Review)
Director
Gordon DouglasRelease Date(s)
1952 (November 25, 2025)Studio(s)
Warner Bros. (Warner Archive Collection)- Film/Program Grade: C+
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: B-
Review
Leonard Maltin’s late, lamented movie guide describes The Iron Mistress (1952) as “spotty,” the perfect adjective for this overproduced Alan Ladd vehicle. Ladd had left Paramount after ten years, ending with the biggest success of his career, the great Western Shane, going freelance on a Warner deal to make one film per year at $150,000 vs. 10% of the gross per picture. For his first Warner film, Ladd chose this property, about the exploits of American folk hero Jim Bowie (1796-1836).
The picture is spotty in the sense that there are several outstanding action set-pieces, but most of the film consists of a dreary romance between Bowie and upwardly mobile Southern Belle Judalon de Bornay (Virginia Mayo). It’s quickly clear to the movie audience she’s no good for Bowie and vice-versa, but it takes Bowie nearly two hours of running time to figure this out. Most of the film is set in New Orleans, resembling the later television series Yancy Derringer. That program, starring Jock Mahoney, despite its modest budget had richer period flavor, more interesting characters, and was a lot more fun.
The story has strapping backwoodsman Bowie leaving his home in the bayou to sell lumber in New Orleans. There he encounters struggling artist James Audubon (George Voskovec) and pompous aristocrat Narcisse de Bonay (Douglas Dick, from Hitchcock’s Rope) and the three become friends. Bowie becomes attracted, and later annoyingly obsessed, with Narcisse’s sister, the spoiled social-climber Judalon (Mayo), who wants nothing to do with hillbilly Bowie.
Bowie, anticipating the economic shift to cotton shipped upriver by steamship, gets rich buying up undeveloped land along the riverbanks, but this upsets cotton grower Juan Moreno (Joseph Calleia), banker Judge Crain (Jay Novello) and others. Judalon, meanwhile, marries gambling addict Philippe de Cabanal (Alf Kjellin) though she finds now-wealthy Bowie way more appealing.
Lavishly filmed in Technicolor on a budget of probably $1.5-2.5 million, The Iron Mistress—an inapt title—has a couple of outstanding action set-pieces that almost make this mostly tedious film worth sitting through. Director Gordon Douglas was justly proud of one duel in a darkened room with no windows, just a skylight above. It’s nighttime so the only source of light is the flashes from a lightning storm outside a wisp of moonlight in-between the thunderclaps. This is well staged by Douglas and photographed by John F. Seitz (Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Invaders from Mars).
Even better is a later duel based on the historical Sandbar Fight, which erupted into unexpected violence after its duelists, the Bowie-supported Samuel Wells (George J. Lewis) and Thomas Maddox (Gordon Nelson), failed to resolve their differences after shooting and missing their opponents twice, resulting in a melee of gunshots and drawn swords that left two dead and two severely wounded. By 1952 standards, it’s a shockingly violent sequence, like something out of a Tarantino film, though not bloody in that sense.
Unfortunately, these and other lively action set pieces total maybe 15 minutes of the film’s running time, most of it allotted to the uninteresting relationship between the Ladd and Mayo characters. She’s like something out of film noir, a “bad” woman that can only bring ruin to Bowie, who even remarks near the end of the picture that she’s indirectly responsible for the death of nine men. It’s a story that leads nowhere and, indeed, it takes Bowie nearly two hours to learn what the audience figured out after just ten minutes, Bowie rather abruptly marrying someone else at the fade-out.
Ladd’s Jim Bowie isn’t much better. Though an American folk hero, the historical Bowie, in life, was a slave smuggler and a probably-crooked land speculator who married into money. Even though the film avoids or whitewashes Bowie’s unsavory side, he still comes off as unlikable, money-obsessed and moody. The film makes no mention of the death of his eventual family to cholera or Bowie’s death at the Battle of the Alamo.
The picture would have worked better with the Mayo character eliminated altogether and the picture shortened to 90 minutes, with more action scenes added. And had they made the character more appealing, the film might have had an enjoyable if historically inaccurate Davey Crockett-type vibe so well employed by Walt Disney and Fess Parker soon after. Instead, The Iron Mistress is the kind of film that appealed to general audiences of the time—it earned $2.9 million in U.S. and Canadian rentals, making it a substantial hit—but which today plays overlong and generally uninteresting with little flashes here and there where it briefly comes to life.
Warner Archive’s Blu-ray of The Iron Mistress looks splendid, presumably remastered using the original black-and-white separation negatives. Presented in 1.37:1 standard format, the color is vivid and the image razor sharp with no misalignment of the three strips of images. The DTS-HD Master Audio (2.0 mono) is also very good, supported by optional English subtitles. The disc itself is Region-Free.
Extras are the usual uninspired batch one expects from Warner Archive these days: two cartoons and a trailer. The cartoons are Cracked Quack and Hare Lift, both remastered for high-def.
Worth seeing once, if only for its excellent video transfer and fleeting action scenes, The Iron Mistress is reservedly recommended.
- Stuart Galbraith IV