The Iron Petticoat (1956)
BOMB (out of 4)
Every once in a while I'll watch a film with a bad reputation and find it not nearly as bad as you'd have believed. When I heard that the Bob Hope Estate pretty much removed this film from circulation I figured it was just a movie not up to his standards but that's nowhere near the truth. I don't often say this but I think everyone would have been better served had this turkey remained in a vault and not seen by the public. The story centers around a Russian refugee (Katharine Hepburn) who learns her country and gets involved with an American (Bob Hope) ordered to watch after her. This is a minor re-working of NINOTCHKA but who knows what the original story was since there were so many production problems including Hope bringing along his own writers to change everything up. I rarely use a BOMB rating for any older movie but man was this thing here horrible. It was really very painful to watch because it's just so unfunny, so bad and it's just hard to believe that two legends would be involved in something this bad. As soon as we see and hear Hepburn with that Russian accent you're brain pretty much shuts off. Hepburn was one of our greatest actresses but I think it's safe to say this here is one of her worst performances. Hope is equally bad and his one-liners, written by his own writing team, are horrendous. The lack of chemistry between the two stars is incredibly bad as well. THE IRON PETTICOAT is about as bad as any movie can get and sadly for the viewer it never reaches a level of camp or a "so bad it's good" level. When I said this film was painful to get through that's the absolute truth and no one should sit through this unless they want to see how bad it actually is.