Above are lobby cards and a still for The Iron Maiden (known in the USA as The Swingin' Maiden). Look what the publicity guys do to the lobby cards and posters. The photo on the left is a screen grab. She is clearly wearing a blue dress. The Americans change the dress to the much more aggressive red. Even the British change it, in this case to the mildly agressive yellow. and the full poster pulls no punches either Michael Craig as Jack Hopkins takes Ann Helm as Kathy Fisher across his knee and spanks her backside. Seven spanks are firmly administered, all on screen.
Directed by: Gerald Thomas
Cast: Michael Craig, Anne Helm
Movie Synopsis by: Spiritworks
Screenplay by: Vivian Cox & Leslie Bricusse 1963 Original Story by: Harold Brooke & Kay Bannerman
A classic looking engraved bright red serif typeface used for the film's initial credits instantaniously sets the light hearted tempo of this film, as well, it contrasts the background's brilliantly blue clouded sky.
Set in Great Britain in 1963/64, Jack Hopkins' (played by Michael Craig) love and pursuit for traction engines becomes immediately evident. His own 1921 traction engine, affectionately named 'The Iron Maiden', is put to the test at the Westover Traction Engine Rally, despite the fact that his presence was required at his primary job as an airplane designer for an important flight test of his latest and greatest aeronautical project. The Iron Maiden is linked to his nemesis' engine, named The Dreadnaught, for a tug of war type of match. With both competitors' engines performing at capacity, The Iron Maiden with Hopkins and his mate, Brad, victoriously force the Dreadnaught back over the line of decision.
At the same moment, Sir Giles of the Giles-Thompson Aircraft Company, Hopkins' employer, having discovered the whereabouts of his missing designer who has been delaying the test flight of the company's latest un-named offering, confronts him at the rally "Hhhmmm with all these more important activities, I suppose it's slipped your mind that the test should've begun an hour ago?" Hopkins coils in surprise "Was that today?" Sir Giles in disgust articulates "Yes today! It is customary for the designer to be aboard on these occasions." Hopkins readily leaves The Iron Maiden safely behind and is escorted by his employer, Sir Giles, back to the Giles Thompson headquarters and hanger decks.
The test flight proceeds flawlessly and the executives, including Jack Hopkins follow Sir Giles up into the administrative offices for a post flight briefing. Sir Giles informs the gathering "Mr. Fisher of Trans Global arrives from New York tomorrow, and I've invited him up here for the next day..." Sir Giles now glaring at Jack Hopkins who shrugs innocently continues "...provided you could all spare enough time from your private hobbies. That one hundred million dollar contract is as good as ours." Sir Giles main concern, which he conveys to his executives, is The Polygon Aircraft Company and their shrewd sales staff, which will also be showcasing their planes to Mr. Fisher. An addendum to the meeting, Sir Giles enlightens the gathered that Mr. Fisher will be accompanied by his wife and daughter, who will need social attention. Being the sole bachelor in the group, all eyes turn to Jack Hopkins who frowns "I'm not that kind of designer! I don't go for those types of tactics."
Lord Upshot, chairman of Polygon aircraft, sends his son (also a bachelor), Gord Brown, to welcome the Fishers and escort them back to their headquarters. The Fishers, Mr. Paul Fisher (Alan Hale, the Skipper, of Gilligan's Island fame), Mrs. Miriam Fisher (Jeff Donnell of the Stagecoach Kid), and their pretty daughter Kathy Fisher (Anne Helm), stand on the pier waiting for their own private Cadillac to be unloaded from the liner when Gord Brown approaches them and offers to drive them into London. Mr. Fisher insists on driving in his own car, however, he finally agrees to let Gord Brown lead the way through the vast countryside into the big city. During the drive, Kathy who is driving too cautiously, falls behind Brown, and before long the Fishers are lost and have their noses buried deep in road maps.
Returning The Iron Maiden back to his home along a small one lane country road, and as fate would have it, Hopkins and Brad round a blind corner and collides with the Fisher's Cadillac who also had turned onto that same road going in the opposite direction. Jack Hopkins jumps down from his traction engine with a tobacco pipe in his mouth and proceeds to the drivers side of the banged up Caddy. Kathy Fisher, the driver of the Cadillac and Hopkins immediately get off on the wrong foot. Hopkins, completely unaware that these people are the Fishers from New York, who Sir Giles hopes to sell an airplane contract to, coyly remarks to Kathy "Go back there (to America) and take this heap of Detroit tin with you!" Mr. Fisher steps into the heated conversation "Now look young fella..." Hopkins, never for a loss for words, interrupts him "You keep out of this!" Kathy defensively snaps "Don't talk to my father like that." Jack Hopkins confidently presses forward into the open drivers side window, maintaining his aggressive stance, where Kathy is seated. Acting quickly, she closes the window upon the smoking pipe that was resting in Hopkins' mouth. He takes a side step back and watches Kathy re-open her window, releasing his pipe into her waiting hand, and she instinctively throws it daringly to the ground. While turning his back to their car, to retrieve it, Kathy swings open her car door into the back side of the unaware airplane designer, which intensifies the personality conflict between the two. Finally Gord Brown driving along that same road, finds the Fishers, whose car is now undrivable, and again offers to drive them into London. This time they agree. Brown slips his business card and some cash to Brad and tells them to have the car towed and repaired and to notify him when it's all completed. Hopkins decides to repair the car himself at the Giles-Thompson air hanger.
The next day, Mr. Fisher with his family in at his side, attends his scheduled meeting with Sir Giles to discuss the sale of aircrafts. Kathy wanders off to look around, and stumbles into the hanger deck. She sees her family's Cadillac and strolls over to it, only to find Jack Hopkins working under it. She drops a wrench onto him, causing him to sit up and bang his head against the front fender. Young Miss Fisher, now feeling the upper hand, explains to Hopkins who her daddy is, he immediately recognizes his error in yesterday's encounter. She threatens him "If you had anything to do with it (the design of the aircraft her father is now test flying), because if you had, my father wouldn't go within ten feet of it!" Miss Kathy Fisher turns around and stomps away, leaving Jack Hopkins scratching his head in disbelief.
Miss Kathy Fisher is petite and pretty. Her full lips express pleasure with a warm smile when she's pleased, a pout that extrudes from her clear complexion in times of uncertainty, and a scowl that is piercing when she's upset. She has well defined high cheekbones that accent her round childlike rosy features, a pleasant high pitched girlish voice, reddish chestnut hair that curls past her shoulders, and she proudly possesses a curvaceous womanly body in a doll like form. Fully aware of her own large and ample breasts, young Kathy Fisher often wears low cut dresses that expose her highlighted cleavage.
After trying to rectify the situation by visiting Mr. Fisher at his hotel, Hopkins offers to give Kathy a ride. He decides to stop at a fair ground where his traction engine rests, to join Brad who is working on the engine's performance. Kathy whose interest in traction engines is very limited, gets bored from the lack of attention, wanders away. Spying a power switch for a vacant ferris wheel ride, Kathy turns on the switch and quickly seats herself as the giant wheel begins to move. To her dismay, the ferris wheel suddenly stops, leaving her stranded at the utmost zenith. Making her dilemma worse, a violent rain storm erupts, soaking her dress while she helplessly cries out for help. Hearing her desperate sorrowful wailing, Brad and Jack rush off to rescue her. Jack immediately begins scaling the spokes to the ride, climbing dangerously high above the ground, at the same inopportune moment, Brad restarts the ferris wheel, which quickly has Kathy returned to the ground safely. In a sulking huff, Kathy runs off into Jack's car, and drives away leaving him still scrambling to get down from the perilous ferris wheel spokes.
Angered by the loss of his car, Hopkins barges into the Fisher's hotel room, where Kathy is alone, dressed in a terricloth robe having discarded her clinging and wet garments. He finds her soaking her delicate feet in a tub of hot and soothing water. Her pretty face contorts into a scowl upon seeing Hopkins and she haughtily notifies him that his useless car had run out of gasoline, so she just left it unattended in the middle of the road and walked the remaining two miles back to her hotel. Hopkins, barely able to contain his growing rage, contemptly disdains "Of all the selfish, insuperable..." gasping he continues "...spoiled brat. You make a nuisance of yourself wherever you go." Kathy, still nonplussed at the upset Hopkins, casually divulges the approximate location of his abandoned car. Hopkins charges out in furious agitation. Obviously jeopardizing the important contract aircraft sale from his company, Giles-Thompson Aircraft, Jack Hopkins is fired from his position due to his ongoing turbulent dealings with the wealthy Fishers.
Some time later, fine tuning for performance and polishing the Iron Maiden in the driveway of his home, Jack and Brad decide to take the engine off for a ride. The two eager traction hobbyists climb aboard just as Kathy Fisher in her dad's Cadillac stops in the road in front of Hopkins' dwelling. Strolling from her car, the wind gently blows her wavy reddish chestnut hair over her beautiful eyes. With her hand, she brushes the hair free from her eyes. This afternoon, dressed in a tight fitting powder blue sleeveless dress that is low cut revealing the form of her full breasts which are the center focus, Kathy proceeds toward the two busy hobbyists. Her pronounced cleavage is framed by the dress' white trim that runs upward along the hem of her collar. Two thin strips of lacy embroidery run provacatively downward over her abdomen, under the matching powder blue fabric belt that defines her thin waist, and from beneath it her dress flows out freely over her rounded hips in the light wind and it swirls down to her knees. Her shapely legs curve smoothly down to her thin ankles and finally to her white heeled shoes.
Kathy's already petite stature is further reduced when she stands alongside one of The Iron Maiden's huge wheels. Looking upward Kathy greets Jack Hopkins "Good Morning. Say, you're awfully cheerful for a man who's just been fired from his job." "I wasn't fired, I resigned." Hopkins insists as he looks over his shoulder to acknowledge the ringing telephone emanating from his cottage. Brad offers to get the call, and rushes away leaving the two bitter quarrelsome acquaintances behind. Kathy looks up at Jack and wonders "I give up. I don't understand you." Hopkins replies with a question jumping down from his prized traction engine, leans on the wheel and looks her in the eye "Is there any reason why you should?" Kathy in an attempt at getting his job back for him graciously offers "Look, if I were to ask daddy to say a few words to Sir Giles, he'd take you back in a minute." Hopkins unphased by this friendly gesture assuredly points out to her attention "No, please. Please don't bother. I'm quite convinced every airline company in the country will be clamoring for my services the moment they know I'm free!" This response infuriates Miss Fisher and she unmannerly ogles "You are without a doubt the most conceited, insuperable, pigheaded, adolescent idiot that I've ever met!" Hopkins still unphased responds and turns his back to her as he climbs back atop his Iron Maiden "You're perfectly entitled to your own opinion of course." Hopkins proceeds to put the traction engine in reverse, and backs up slowly, narrowly missing Kathy who was storming back to her car. Startled, she jumps awkwardly aside. He stops the engine, blocking the road and hollers for Brad. He climbs down once again to retrieve his friend.
Kathy, now further antagonized, yells out "You can't leave that thing here! You're blocking the roadway." Hopkins smartly notices "So I am." He smiles smugly and walks away non-chalantly into his house in search of Brad. "Would you pleasssssse get that thing out of my way?" She calls after him. Stepping from her blocked car, she yells out a deaf warning "If you don't move it, I WILL!" Miss Fisher stumbles upward into the massive traction engine, releases it's brakes, pulls a few levers, and cranks the turbine. The Iron Maiden chugs, and begins to move ahead. Inside the cottage, Jack and Brad hear the engine roar and rush outside to see it driving away down the road. They begin to madly chase after the runaway vehicle with the angry young lady still in it, yelling from well behind "Stop Kathy, STOP!" Now realizing she can't control the huge engine, she cries out "I can't stop."
A policeman seeing the upcoming traction engine, steps off his bicycle, puts his hand up signalling Kathy to stop. He soon realizes that it's not going to stop, he dives for cover at the last moment and watches the Iron Maiden drive over and mangle his bike. He blows his whistle twice in anger and joins the race after Kathy. Like a child lost in a shopping mall, Miss Fisher seems lost at the controls of the vehicle as the runaway engine rips through a wooden fence leading to a farm. As she approaches the barn, she covers her eyes with her hands shielding them from the moment of impact. The Iron Maiden, and all her mass easily smashes through the side of the barn, tearing down it's walls. Luckily for all concerned, the traction engine comes to a stop after running into a wall of bailed hay.
Hopkins, the first to arrive, runs through the remnants of the barn, past frightened clucking chickens that are scrambling about in a frenzy, and up he climbs into the hull of his beloved traction engine to shut it off. Kathy, looking around flustered and confused decides a quick exit is in order. Jumping down she turns to her right to flee. Jack, fuming mad, jumps down after her and catches the spirited girlish figure by her arm. With a forceful yank, he stops her in her tracks, and brings her stumbling back toward him, her body hobbling after his direction. He spins her around and in one fluid motion sits down on a cut tree trunk. Kathy's pursuing incapable figure is handily inverted over the angered designer's lap. Her head and hair fall downward, her targeted prone bottom bends upward with her flowing powder blue dress just catching up to her flying form. The stinging clashing sounds of Hopkins seeking retributive justice recoil into the afternoons sunshine. Kathy's face flushes rosy as Hopkins rewards her joy ride with a memorable spanking. Her high pitched voice squeals a demand that's ignored "Stop it!" From a distant outset, the parallelism to an exalted child undergoing an immediate corrective spanking is dispelled, rather this is a physically flowering and captivating countess. Her heart squashes down against Hopkins knee, in turn, her escaping breasts are thrust upward, straining against the fine fabric of her fanciful dress. His chastening hand concludes the seventh oscillating collision with Miss Fisher's attentive soft spherical tail. Her flustered beauty is rolled hastily to the earth. Jack Hopkins feeling marginally vindicated, eye brows distorted expressing his anger snaps "You stupid little idiot, you mighta wrecked the Iron Maiden." "Iron Maiden?" Kathy whines, she continues "What about me?" Jack Hopkins growls "You mighta blown her up!" Miss Fisher pouts "I wish I had...I said, I wish I had! And that goes for you and...(sighing) I just hope I never set eyes on you or that traction engine ever again." Turning and running away up the road Hopkins calls out after her "That suits me fine."
Sobbing, Kathy returns to her family's hotel room, running past her parents who are in the continuing midst of Gord Brown's shallow company. Mrs. Fisher following her daughter into another room exclaims "Kathy, what's the matter?" Returning to her husband shortly after, she attempts to relate Kathy's humbling experience "That man, Jack Hopkins, struck Kathy!" Mr. Paul Fisher questions her for more details "Where did he strike her?" Aware of Gord Brown's interest in the conversation, Mrs. Miriam Fisher chokes out "On the bb-b-b-b...we won't go into that now."
Jack, driving the Iron Maiden, stops at Brad's home, so he could gather his last minute belongings for their lengthy journey together to the 'event of events', The National Traction Engine Championships. Brad runs inside to prepare and at the same moment, Mr. Paul Fisher, who's been out searching for Hopkins, arrives on the scene. "Mr. Hopkins, I want to have a word with you, and you're not going anywhere until I get an explanation about your behavior towards my daughter." Fisher demands. Hokpins snidely rumbles "Your daughter is your responsibility, not mine. And you could consider yourself lucky that I'm not suing you for damages." Astonished, Fisher answers back "Suing me? You're lucky I'm not suing you for attacking my daughter." Jack Hopkins, always one to have the final word enlightens "If you would have given that spoiled brat a good hiding years ago, you would've saved me the trouble."
With his baggage in tow, Brad, after concluding his farewell wishes to his wife and son, exits his home, stumbles clumsily, and injures his leg. Hopkins and Fisher help Brad back inside of his home. Realizing that Brad will be unable to join him at the National Traction Engine Championships, Mr. Hopkins exits and prepares for they journey alone. Returning back to his hotel, still unsatisfied with his conversation with Hopkins, Paul Fisher's Cadillac gets stuck in a ditch. Passing by, Hopkins offers him a lift to a nearby station.
Needing a second hand to release the engine's built up steam, Hopkins requests assistance from Fisher who readily complies. Fisher bangs the 'pressure release valve' with a hammer, spraying the release of hot steam into the air. Fisher remarks "Hey! That's dangerous. Can't you make this thing work properly?" Hopkins using this opportunity to further explain his reasons for spanking Fisher's daughter derives "It worked perfectly fine before your daughter took it out for a little joy ride." Developing a mutual respect for one another, Hopkins and Fisher, keep the battered traction engine rolling steadily ahead. Jack asks Fisher what station he'd like to be dropped off at, and to his satisfaction Fisher replies "I'm sticking!"
Passing by a lake presented the team an opportunity to refill the Iron Maiden with water. Both men, jump down, and Mr. Fisher throws a thick hose into the water and calls out "Okay, switch on your pump." Hopkins explains "There isn't a pump, it works by vacuum. It wouldn't surprise me, thanks to your dear little girl, if it won't lift the water." Fisher nods in agreement and adds "Ohhhh that kid again. I could spank her myself."
Back at the hotel, Mrs. Fisher and Kathy, lounge upon a sofa chatting. "I say Kathy. Every time I think about what that crazy man did to you, I can't stop shaking. It wouldn't surprise me at all if he weren't a sex maniac. He's just the type." Mrs. Miriam Fisher harped. Kathy, surprised to hear her mother say that utters "Oh, come on mother! What do you know of sex maniacs?" "Oh, stop that" the mother scolds.
Night falls, and the men in control of the Iron Maiden, pull the giant vehicle off to the side of the road. They prepare for sleep, sipping a flask of booze together, they continue to bond. Fisher, opening up to Hopkins admits "You know, my wife wants Kathy to marry that idiot Gord Brown." Sarcastically Jack Hopkins responds "Well, I'm sure he'll make her a wonderful husband." Fisher jokes with a half truth "Well at least he won't beat the pants off of her every time she steals his traction engine." Jack continues to justify himself "When I spanked her, it wasn't just because of the Iron Maiden. You know, she could've killed herself." Before closing their eyes for the evening, Paul Fisher acknowledges "I believe you Jack, you're right."
Despite a malicious trap set by Hopkins traction engine nemesis (a pit dug into the road), Hopkins and Fisher barely make the championship competition registration deadline. Meanwhile, controlling the social agenda for the Fisher women, Lord Upshot and Gord Brown in their accompaniment, surprisingly attend the National Traction Engine Championships. Sitting in the stands, Mrs. Fisher spots her husband rolling by in the Iron Maiden. She rushes down to confront him, with Kathy in tow. Miriam Fisher, upon reaching her husband, begins her ranting in an effort to, in her view, save him from acting foolish and embarrassing the family name. Mr. Fisher, picks up a hammer (scaring his wife as she cries out foolishly not to hit her with it) preparing to strike the engine's pressure release valve, and strains his back. Hopkins realizes Fisher can't continue, helps him down, but to his utmost surprise, and to Mrs. Fishers dismay, Kathy jumps aboard to carry the torch where her father had left off. She removes her costly covering, and joins Hopkins dressed in a formal sleeveless dress behind the wheel of the Iron Maiden, whose banner reads 'Mighty in Strength and Endurance.' Predictably, Kathy and Jack win the race, and warmly embrace realizing their true love for each other. Finding a quiet moment together after the celebrations, their lips lock in a passionate kiss, just as the Iron Maiden takes her final breath and explodes from over heating. Hopkins informs Kathy that The Iron Maiden is lost forever.
Not surprisingly, Mr. Paul Fisher of Trans Global Airlines awards Sir Giles (who's taken Jack Hopkins back) of The Giles-Thompson Aircraft Company, the hundred million dollar contract. Standing under a gazebo on the tarmac, Kathy and Jack kiss lovingly one final time as the airplane that Hopkins had designed is unveiled with a new name, 'The Iron Maiden.'
