SECOND TAKE: ALTERNATE OPINIONS ON FILMS PREVIOUSLY REVIEWED BY CINEMA RETRO
BY TIM GREAVES
William
Castle’s Strait-Jacket was a pretty
big deal for Joan Crawford. Her biggest successes lay behind her, but she was
shrewd enough to understand that even a low-budget horror film was money in the
bank and, with the alternative for many actresses of her age (and younger)
being protracted unemployment, she put her heart and soul into it. She participated
in a pre-production featurette entitled “How to Plan a Murderâ€, alongside
director/producer (and unsurpassed gimmick maestro) William Castle and writer
Robert Bloch, jovially discussing the best ways to dispose of someone on
screen. And, upon its release in 1964, she toured with the film, making a
number of personal appearances that drew crowds in their droves. As to her performance
within, if nothing else she should be applauded for having the temerity at the
age of almost 60 to play not only a character some 15 years her junior, but (in
flashbacks) a character some 35 years her junior; the latter, it has to be said,
she monumentally fails to pull off!
In
front of her terrified little girl, Lucy Harbin (Crawford) takes an axe to her
philandering husband and his lover, after which, despite protestations of her innocence,
she is hauled off – in a strait-jacket, no less – to an institution for the
criminally insane. Twenty years later she is deigned fit for release and goes
to stay on a ranch with her brother (Leif Erickson) and his wife (Rochelle
Hudson), and her own daughter (Diane Baker) who has been in their care and is
now an adult on the verge of matrimony. But as Lucy struggles to exorcise the
demons of her past and attempts to forge a relationship with the daughter whose
growing-up she has missed, she begins to have visions of decapitated heads and
bloodied axes. Is she losing her mind, or is something far more sinister going
on? Suffice to say it isn’t long before the murders begin…
A
touch creaky by today’s standards and riddled with some pretty clunky dialogue,
it’s nevertheless easy to conceive that Strait-Jacket
was fairly shocking stuff back in the day. However, it’s fair to say that
it’s still a very watchable little chiller, with a tangible snifter of Psycho running through its veins. Beyond
the fact it emerged from the pen of Psycho-scribe
Robert Bloch and was shot in crisp black and white (which served to lessen the
impact of a number of its sanguinary sins), the premise of an elderly woman with
a penchant for hacking up those who cross her prowling about a remote property certainly
has a ring of familiarity about it. And, as with Psycho, it’s just possible that not everything is as it first
seems. Anyone familiar with the twists in 1964’s Bette Davis starrer Hush…Hush Sweet Charlotte (which, it
should be noted, Strait-Jacket preceded
into theatres by some 11 months) will probably cotton on to what’s going on.
The
cast is strong, particularly Diane Baker as Crawford’s daughter and George
Kennedy as a bad-toothed ranch-hand-turned-blackmailer (who, despite carrying
an axe everywhere, may as well have “red herring†tattooed on his forehead).
Watch out, too, in the opening scenes for the uncredited screen debut of Lee
Majors in the role of Crawford’s so-to-be-headless hubby. But, make no mistake,
this is 100% Crawford’s show, effortlessly traversing personality swings that
vacillate between pitiably timid and contrite and vampishly gregarious and
carefree. Proof, were it needed, that regardless of the quality of the material
at hand, she always gave it her all. (For further compelling evidence on this
score, check out 1970’s Trog.)
Where
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?,
released two years earlier, remains this writer’s favourite Joan Crawford film,
for undemanding chills and spills – or simply to see the actress firing on all dramatic
thrusters – they don’t come much better than Strait-Jacket. And be sure to keep your eyes peeled to the screen
for the closing Columbia Pictures logo, slyly tinkered with by Castle in a
wickedly comic wink that none of this stuff should be taken too seriously.
The
film is available on disc as part of Sony Pictures’ Choice Collection and comes
with a respectable array of supplementary goodies. Along with “Battle Axe†(an
entertaining retrospective that runs just shy of 15-minutes and includes an
interview with Diane Baker), there’s the vintage promo featurette mentioned at
the start of this review, some 1963 Crawford wardrobe test footage, brief axe
test footage (conspicuously more gruesome than anything that made it into the
finished film) and a TV spot. Regrettably the transfer of the film itself is a
little disappointing, the image often resembling that of an old VHS recording
desperately in need of a tweak on the tracking; not a deal-breaker, but
certainly worth keeping in mind.
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CLICK HERE TO READ LEE PFEIFFER'S ORIGINAL REVIEW OF "STRAIT-JACKET"