Strait-Jacket
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Strait-Jacket is a 1964 Columbia Pictures horror/thriller/mystery motion picture starring Joan Crawford. Others in the cast include Diane Baker, Leif Erickson, Howard St. John, John Anthony Hayes, Rochelle Hudson, George Kennedy, Edith Atwater, Vicki Cos, and Lee Majors.
Directed and produced by William Castle, and co-produced by Dona Holloway, the script was by Robert Bloch (also known for writing the novel Psycho, upon which the film is based), with original music composed by Van Alexander. Crawford's make-up was done by Monty Westmore.
After the phenomenal success of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), Crawford and other aging actresses, including Davis and Stanwyck, made numerous horror movies throughout the 1960s. Strait-Jacket is a rather shlocky but one of the more notable examples of the genre referred to as psycho-biddy or Grande Dame Guignol. Despite the amateurish, low-budget tone of the film, its shuddery flavor (combined with Crawford's powerhouse performance) has kept it a macabre cult favorite for decades.
The DVD release has special features that include two brief axe-swinging screen tests, a collection of make-up and costume tests and a documentary, Battle-Axe: The Making of Strait-Jacket, featuring interviews with Castle, Baker, and Bloch.
89 mins.; English; black-and-white
[edit] Synopsis
Set on the family farm, the movie opens as Lucy Harbin (played by Crawford), wearing a long black wig, garish floral dress and jangling bracelets, returns home and discovers her husband, Frank (played by Majors), in bed with another woman. She becomes enraged and murders them with an axe, while, unbeknownst to Lucy, her three-year-old daughter, Carol (played by Cos), watches the whole grisly spectacle. The movie, however, does not show any gruesome or disgusting blood and gore.
After spending 20 years in an asylum for the criminally insane, Lucy is released and arrives at the farm of her brother and sister-in-law, Bill Cutler (played by Erickson) and Emily (played by Hudson), to live with her daughter, Carol (played by Baker), who, after some initial awkwardness, welcomes her. Among the other characters, there is an unsavory, peculiar farmhand, Leo Krause (played by Kennedy).
Carol, a pretty and popular young sculptress who seems perfect in every way, despite the horror she witnessed as a child, is soon to be married to Michael Fields (played by Hayes). Michael is the wealthiest young man in town and his parents, Howard (played by St. John) and Edith (played by Atwater), are rather snooty about family background.
While mother and daughter attempt a relationship together, it is obvious at the start that Lucy is impossible. She is the type one cannot possibly take to a DAR tea without a great deal of embarrassment. Carol just wants her to return to society and a happy, well-adjusted life. She tries to make her mother more presentable with new clothes and a black wig to hide her gray hair, which looks exactly like Lucy's style of hair and dress before she was committed, complete with jangling bracelets, only to encounter a startling problem, Lucy fancies herself 20 years younger. Abruptly changing from a tired and kindly schoolmarm type, she drinks bourbon heavily, saunters around like the town floozy, lights a cigarette by striking a kitchen match on the grooves of a record on the "hi-fi," and attempts to seduce her daughter's fiancé when he comes to call.
Between scenes of poor, tortured Lucy as a meek and mild old woman trying to adjust to a normal life outside the asylum, knitting with poignant pathos, she reverts back to a trampy vamp and back again several times. She raises hell and quarrels with Michael's snobbish parents at a dinner party, slashes photos out of the family album, is beleaguered by strange voices, nightmares and visions (in one scene there are two Lucys fighting against each other, complete with axes and screams), and shows unmistakable signs that she is losing her struggle against insanity.
In the meantime, gruesome axe-murders begin to occur when the local physician, Dr. Anderson (played by Mitchell Cox), is found headless in a freezer. There is talk of sending Lucy, the logical suspect, back to the asylum.
The movie has a surprising ending, with a startling macabre twist, as it turns out that Lucy is innocent. She must have a showdown with the fiend who is actually committing the monstrous copycat murders.
In what seems to show that the movie is not intended to be taken too seriously, the end credits show the woman holding up the torch on the famous Columbia logo with her head chopped off.
[edit] Trivia
- The screenwriter, Robert Bloch, wrote the novel on which Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) was based.
- He also insisted on having the head of the Torch Lady of the Columbia Pictures logo lopped off, lying at her feet, to foreshadow the film. If you look for it, it's there in the movie.
- Crawford replaced Joan Blondell in the role as Lucy Harbin after Blondell was injured at home prior to shooting and could not fulfill her commitment.
- When the director and producer, William Castle, offered the role to Crawford, she invited him and Bloch to lunch at her apartment in New York to discuss the project.
- Crawford had script and cast approval, received a $50,000 salary and 15 percent of the profits.
- Anne Helm, who was originally cast in the role as Carol, was replaced by Diane Baker shortly after filming began, reportedly at Crawford's insistence. Baker and Crawford had appeared together in the film The Best of Everything (1959).
- Despite Diane Baker's assertion (on the featurette accompanying the DVD for "Strait-Jacket") that she replaced Anne Helm in the role of Carol Harbin due to Helm's alleged inexperience and incompetence, Anne Helm was, in actuality, a more seasoned actress than Baker at that time. By 1964, Anne Helm had been working continuously in films and television for at least 8 years, while Baker had been working up to that point for only 5 years.
- The role of the ill-fated Dr. Anderson was not actually played by an actor, but vice-president of PepsiCo, Mitchell Cox, as Crawford was on the Board of Directors of that soft drink firm.
- The brief role of Frank Harbin was the first movie appearance of Lee Majors, who received no screen credit.
- Castle bought the rights to Rosemary's Baby, which he produced four years later.
- Pepsi-Cola product placements include a scene in the kitchen with a carton of the soft drink displayed prominently on a counter.
- When Strait-Jacket first opened in theaters, lucky moviegoers were given little cardboard axes.
- After Strait-Jacket, Crawford began production of Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte, playing Miriam Deering, but, because she found Davis to be too difficult to work with again, she feigned illness and entered a hospital to get out of appearing in the role.
