By Lee Pfeiffer
William Castle, the legendary gentle giant of horror film producers, had become obsessed with Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? when the the film was released in 1962. Starring two aging "has-beens" - Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, who Jack Warner said he wouldn't give a "plugged nickel" for- the film became an unexpected hit with both critics and audiences and revived both women's careers. Crawford, who remained very much the diva even during the lowest points of her career, was delighted with the renewed attention. As she was nearing sixty years old, he found herself in the unlikely situation of appealing to both her traditional fans and also a younger generation. In order to achieve the latter goal, however, she realized she had to change with the times and appear in films that had broad appeal to teenagers. So the former Mildred Pearce was quite enthused when Castle approached her with his own spin on the Baby Jane bandwagon. With horror films all the rage, Castle had carved a sizable niche in the marketplace by producing "B" movies and backing them with "A" marketing campaigns that usually found him front and center in promoting the fare. Castle's dream project, however, was to finally make a film that would be seen as a legitimate horror classic. He enlisted writer Robert Bloch, then red hot as the author of the novel Psycho, to develop a script based on the premise of an aging sexpot who had turned into an ax murderess. He originally envisioned Joan Blondell for the role but an accident left the veteran actress unavailable. Castle then approached Joan Crawford, despite the fact that she was known to be virtually impossible to work with due to her endless list of demands. Nevertheless, Crawford was eager to build on her revived fame and accepted Castle's pitch to star in a film titled Strait- Jacket. The movie got off to a rocky start when the actress playing Crawford's daughter didn't live up to her expectations. Crawford had her fired and Diane Baker, who Crawford liked and had worked with previously, was hired on a minute's notice to step in. Baker had only 24 hours to study the script but was eager to reunite with Crawford.
Strait-Jacket presents Crawford as Lucy Harbin, who we see as a woman in her twenties (yes, the notion of Crawford playing a character that age is as absurd as it sounds.) Lucy is a small town girl with a checkered past. She dresses and acts like a vamp but has finally settled down and has found happiness with her younger husband, Frank (Lee Majors, uncredited, in his first feature film). Returning home from a trip a day early, however, Lucy spies Frank in their bed with an ex-girlfriend, sound asleep. Worse, Lucy and Frank's young daughter is in the next room. Outraged, she creeps into the bedroom wielding a handy ax from the woodpile and proceeds to decapitate them- all in full view of their daughter Carol. The film then jumps twenty years ahead to the present day (1964) and Carol (Diane Baker) is now an attractive, responsible young woman who is living with her aunt and uncle (Rochelle Hudson, Leif Erickson), Lucy's brother and his kind, sympathetic wife. They have raised Carol to adulthood after Lucy was sent to a mental asylum. Now they are nervously awaiting her arrival at their farmhouse. Carol is determined to make her mother feel welcome again and never bring up the past. Lucy's arrival is anything but joyous. There are some awkward sentiments displayed but it is clear that Lucy is frightened to death and consumed by guilt over the pain she has caused her loved ones. Every innocent aspect of the farm seems to bring back terrible memories, from the slaughter of chickens and hogs to everyday implements laying around that remind her of murder weapons. Not helping matters is the presence of a slovenly farmhand (a virtually unrecognizable George Kennedy), who has the demeanor of a serial killer. Nonetheless, Carol and her aunt and uncle try to ease Lucy back to a normal life, showing great patience and compassion. However, things start to go awry, as one would imagine in any William Castle movie of this nature. At Carol's urging, Lucy tries to recapture happier times by donning a wig and the same type of clothing she wore as a much younger woman. The desired effect doesn't occur, however. Instead, Lucy's personality changes to that of the sex-crazed vamp she once was and, in one of the film's most unintentionally hilarious sequences, she attempts to seduce Carol's finance, Michael (John Anthony Hayes) directly in front of the horrified Carol. More weird occurrences begin to happen, culminating in some gruesome ax murders. Lucy is the only logical suspect, but there are some neat twists to the tale that would be inexcusable to reveal here.
Strait-Jacket is an enormously entertaining flick that was a substantial hit at the boxoffice, thus consigning Ms. Crawford to more films in the shock/horror genre. Sony's burn-to-order DVD is yet another example of the company failing to capitalize on excellentspecial features that are included in this edition (or we should say, "reissued", as this content had been available on a previous DVD release.) There is an amusing promotional short that shows Crawford, William Castle and Robert Bloch in a campy promotion of the film (Bloch totes an ax!); an informative documentary, Battle Axe, about the making of the film with interesting insights from movie historians; Joan Crawford silent wardrobe tests and fascinating silent footage of Crawford's rehearsals for gruesome ax murder scenes and, rounding out the bonus items is a short TV spot. None of these features are even mentioned on the DVD sleeve. In all, highly recommended.
(In the next issue of Cinema Retro (#29), writer Don L. Stradley provides an in-depth examination of how horror movies saved the careers of aging leading ladies, including Joan Crawford, who went on to have several hit films in the genre including Strait-Jacket.)