BY FRED BLOSSER
Two
1960s murder thrillers with Joan Crawford have been released by Mill Creek
Entertainment on single-disc Blu-ray. The cover sleeve bills the package as a “Psycho Biddy Double
Feature.†The films are “Strait-Jacketâ€
(1964), the first of Crawford’s three pictures with producer-director William
Castle, and “Berserk!†(1967), her first of two with producer Herman
Cohen. In using the possibly ageist and
definitely sexist phrase “Psycho Biddy,†Mill Creek’s marketing department
clearly hopes that audiences will have fond memories of the frenzied, middle-aged
Joan Crawford in 1981’s “Mommie Dearest,†shrieking “I told you! No . . . wire . . . hangers -- ever!†at her
terrified adopted child, Christina. Never mind that the belittling term “biddy†is problematic in the case
of Joan Crawford. There may be plenty of
biddies in the world, but the imperious Joan was never one of them. Never mind either that it was Faye Dunaway
impersonating Joan Crawford in “Mommie Dearest,†not Crawford herself. For most casual movie fans, the distinctions
are not likely to matter.
In
“Strait-Jacket,†scripted by Robert Bloch, prosperous farm owner Lucy Harbin
(Crawford) returns unexpectedly from a trip to find her younger husband (Lee
Majors -- his first film role) in bed with another woman. Enraged, Lucy seizes an ax and butchers the
pair as her young daughter Carol watches. Released from a mental institution twenty years later, Lucy is welcomed
home by her brother Bill and her sister-in-law Emily (Leif Erickson and
Rochelle Hudson), who have reared Carol in the meantime. Carol (Diane Baker) encourages her mother to
ease back into a normal routine by looking and dressing as she had, two decades
before. The gray-haired Lucy dons a
black, ‘40s-style wig and trades in her dowdy outfit for a tight dress. The tactic goes awry when Lucy, drinking too
much out of nervousness and getting tipsy, puts a move on Carol’s uptight
boyfriend Michael. More stresses
mount. Lucy hears things, sees things,
and dreads meeting Michael’s even stuffier parents, who are unaware of her
history. As they skip rope outside a
store where Lucy is shopping, two little girls appear to be chanting, “Lucy
Harbin took an ax . . .†Bill’s creepy,
disheveled hired hand, Leo (George Kennedy, almost unrecognizable at first
glance), asks if she wants to use his ax to chop the head off a chicken. Lucy’s therapist drops in for a visit and
observing how tense she is, gravely suggests that she’s at risk of a
relapse. Then one murder occurs,
followed by a second, and evidence points to Lucy.
After
the headlong pace and gruesome CGI of modern slasher movies, even older viewers
are likely to find “Strait-Jacket†quaint at best. A similar production today would probably
wind up as a made-for-cable, “my mom is a murderer†melodrama on the Lifetime
Movie Network. The film’s pacing is
deliberate, and the carnage is low-tech and mostly implied, despite the old
lobby poster’s promise in grand William Castle style that “Strait-Jacket
vividly depicts ax murders!†Although
the restrictions on movie violence had relaxed a little by 1964, and a
melodrama filmed in black-and-white like “Strait-Jacket†might tease the MPAA
standards on mayhem with slightly more success than one photographed in color,
studios were still careful not to push their luck too far. Of the three ax attacks in the film, only one
explicitly shows grievous bodily harm. Even so, with quick editing and minimal gore, the effect is more
impressionistic than realistic. These
days, grislier special effects routinely appear on prime-time TV crime shows.
For
younger viewers now, the most striking aspect of the picture might be its
mundane, documentarian details of American life in the early 1960s. If you’re under age 30, you might as well be
watching scenes from the Stone Age. People use landlines instead of iPhones, drive sleek Country Squire
station wagons instead of SUVs, regard ladies‘ wigs as a stylish fashion trend,
and blithely use the term “asylum†for what we’d now call a mental ward. Home computers, big-screen TVs, and other
middle-class conveniences that we take for granted in 2018 are nowhere in
sight. No tabloid TV reporters flock to
town to cover Lucy’s release and unsettle the neighbors. The actors are all white, still a common
casting practice at the time but thankfully not one you’d see today. Now, an
enterprising producer might even cast an Angela Bassett, Viola Davis, or Taraji
P. Henson in the lead for decent box-office returns. Even those very talented actresses might be
daunted by the prospect of following in Crawford’s larger-than-life
shadow.
“Strait-Jacketâ€
mostly requires the star to internalize her emotions as a lonely, apprehensive
woman forced to control her anger and cover up her confusion in challenging
situations. The other movie on the Mill
Creek disc, “Berserk!â€, pulls out the stops. It enjoys the luxury of garish color for its flamboyant murders,
although jaded viewers today are not likely to be much more impressed by the
FX. On tour in the U.K, the Great Rivers
Circus faces a setback when its star high-wire aerialist dies. His tightrope snaps, and the loose end
becomes wrapped around his throat as he falls, breaking his neck. The corpse dangles over the heads of the
horrified audience. How does someone get
tangled up in a loose rope? In real life
those physics would stump Einstein himself, but just ignore the scientific
implausibility and enjoy the macabre visual. While the troupe’s business manager, Dorando (Michael Gough), frets
about bad publicity from the death, owner and ringmaster Monica Rivers (Crawford)
is nonplussed: “The show must go on.†Anyway, with seasoned confidence in the baser instincts of human nature,
she predicts that morbid curiosity will attract even bigger crowds to the next
performance. In short order, she finds a
new aerialist in Frank Hawkins, a hunky, arrogant American (Ty Hardin). Frank’s an even bigger risk-taker than his
predecessor. He rides a bike on the
high-wire blindfolded, over a field of bayonets sticking point-up. The healthily sexed Monica finds him
physically attractive as her latest boy toy, and he professes to be infatuated
with her in turn. But he’s at least as
interested in her money as her bod. He
presses her to make him the co-owner of the enterprise. A second death occurs that’s more clearly a
murder, and troublemaker Matilda (Diana Dors) stirs up suspicion that Monica
may be the culprit, even as the other performers eye each other uneasily. A dapper Scotland Yard inspector (Robert
Hardy) is assigned to investigate. In
the meantime, expelled from a posh girls’ school for resisting “discipline and
supervision,†Monica’s daughter Angela (Judy Geeson) joins the tour as the
knife-thrower’s assistant.
Like
“Strait-Jacket,†Cohen’s movie features a decent, horror-tinged, murder-mystery
script and a talented cast of character actors. Largely British this time instead of American, it’s a vintage ‘60s
Cinema Retro dream team. In their scenes
with the star, Dors, Geeson, Gough, Hardin, and Hardy all enjoy wonderful
give-and-take with her. Nearly everyone
in the Great Rivers Circus is eccentric, sharp-tongued, secretive, menacing in
appearance like the circus strong man (the inimitable Milton Reid), on the
make, or flat-out nasty, providing Hardy’s unflappable Detective Superintendent
Brooks with a rich array of homicide suspects. Even Hardin, smoothly playing against his heroic TV cowboy image, is
cast as a sleazebag with a past that he wants to keep quiet. The script and direction sneak in a fair
amount of underplayed black humor, as in the scene where the insouciant
sideshow dwarf (George Claydon) wears a miniature London bobbie’s uniform when
he’s summoned for his interview with Superintendent Brooks. It’s like a bunch of oddballs from Evelyn
Waugh by way of Agatha Christie. Given
this charmingly acerbic collection of petty scolds, backbiters, misfits, and
opportunists, there’s hardly anybody else for the viewer to identify with but
the tyrannical Monica, who would be the heavy in any other picture. While neatly setting up the serial-killer
mystery, the film also highlights the sawdust setting with a series of actual
circus acts. They include a lion tamer,
elephants, trapeze artists, and a performance billed as Phyllis Allen and her
Intelligent Poodles. If you’re not a Big
Top fan, you’ll probably fast-forward to the next whodunit scene, although the
poodle routine may catch your eye. It’s
the sort of cute, silly fluff that people these days record at home with their
pets for Social Media posterity. Elephant and lion acts are no great shakes
for the general public anymore, to the extent that they even continue to exist,
except as rallying points for animal-rights activists. Fifty years ago, though, they were thrilling
stuff for most moviegoers, especially those in small rural towns who might
never see Ringling Brothers for real.
The Mill Creek
Blu-ray presents the two movies in acceptable condition, “Strait-Jacket†faring
a little better. Both transfers are
intermittently grainy, but it’s less apparent in black-and-white than in the
Technicolor transfer of “Berserk!†Aside
from welcome subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing, there are no
extras. Mill Creek may have decided not
to include the original movie trailers on the disc, despite their over-the-top
amusement value, because they give away important plot points. If you’re curious, both are posted on
YouTube, as is an amusing recreation of the “Strait-Jacket†trailer with
Jessica Lange as Crawford, from the 2017 docudrama “Feud.†Watch the movies first to avoid spoilers. Also unfortunately absent from the Blu-ray,
but available on YouTube as well, is “How To Plan a Movie Murder.†In this short promotional feature from 1964,
Crawford, Castle, and Bloch supposedly confer on the plot for
“Strait-Jacket.†It’s five minutes of
unadulterated camp pleasure, in which the participants argue the merits of
various methods for committing fictional murder. Even in today’s troubled climate of seemingly
escalating violence, the obviously scripted discussion is more surrealistically
nutty than offensive. It ends with
Crawford regally ushering the deadpan Bloch and Castle out of the conference
room with axes on their shoulders. The previously released Sony DVD edition of the film does contain this featurette along with other bonus extras for the film. Hopefully, Mill Creek will begin adding supplemental materials to its releases and append these to future editions of the film. (See Don Stradley's analysis of the film in Cinema Retro issue #29).
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