I too watched this movie several times on WBKB (now WLS) in the Chicago area back in the late 50's and early 60's. Yea, there was the "thrill" of these guys finding a "German" (actually a fairly current American tank, painted-up to look like, well, just like a painted-up American tank!) at the bottom of a sound stage sand dune. Entertaining stuff for the ten to twelve year old screen watchers, none-the-less.However, they got the name WRONG. As I recall, the ugly woman painted on the tank's turret had the name beside it that read "Die Eiserne Jungfrau". The translation they gave in the movie, and the title of the film, was "The Steel Lady". Not so! "Die Eiserne Jungfrau" translates as "The Iron Maiden". I think that if the script writers had bothered to translate the name correctly, then the concept of an ancient torture device (the "Iron Maiden", where the victim is ENCLOSED inside a metal human like form, with spikes aiming in towards him as the cage is closed tight), well, that would better explain the "battlefield humor" the "German tank crew" had when they named the tank in this story.Eisen Hund

Like (most) of the others commenting here, I really loved this flick. We oughta form a fan club! Like some others, I saw it on TV back in the early 60s and it's stuck with me ever since. The guy with the 16mm print and all the other stuff is one lucky dude. I'm checking NetFlix continually for it-- but no go. I wonder if we all hit Turner or Movie Channel with e-mails if they could get it on the air again?? Anyways, I endorse all the comments (but for Mr. Lone Grumpy-Pants) that appear here so far.What I'd like to know (being a bit of a WWII history buff) is just how accurate the tank they used was. So many war movies use USA tanks, etc., from the 50s made to 'look' like the German vehicles (TV's Combat and MOST Hollywood productions suffer for me because of that, with Spielberg's films being the significant exceptions). I saw this movie before I became a student of WWII hardware and so a tank was a tank.But the pictures I still see in my mind now seem to be that the tank was either an authentic or very close mock-up of the Mk III or IV Panzers actually used by the German Afrika Korps. Anyone else recall? I'd love to see the film again just to find out that little tidbit.

When I watch a movie like this one, I am not just watching a movie, I'm re-experiencing the simplicity of the early fifties. The details are not important. In 1953, we were convinced that radiation could produce tomatoes the size of Buicks. The improbability of restarting a WWII German tank buried in sand for 10 years would not have been an issue. I would take the simplicity of the fifties over the sophistication of the present any day. But then I watch movies for release, I go to work for reality.

I've written at least a half dozen scathing reviews of this abysmal little flick and none get published, so I must opine that someone at imdb.com really likes this awful movie. The idea that a bunch of oilmen can resurrect a military tank that has set in the desert for over a decade, and make a fighting machine of it again is ludicrous. So is the acting and direction. Pass on it.