A characteristic wedge-shaped iron (Fe) film system, deposited on glass substrates by a DC-magnetron sputtering method and quenched by silicone oil during deposition, has been successfully fabricated. Telephone cord buckles induced by residual compressive stress can be widely observed in the samples. They are shown to nucleate and grow slowly in the atmosphere, but propagate rapidly after disturbance of the film by an external force. Various buckling phenomena, such as generation of disordered telephone cord networks on a isotropic substrate, formation of parallel wavy buckle and circular blister lines on a patterned substrate, partial healing of buckling by pushing the film back to the substrate during the propagation process, occurrence of straight-sided blisters near a step edge, are present in this paper. (C) 2009 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.