Strait-Jacket Is A Perfect Storm Of Joan Crawford, William Castle, And Robert Bloch
Before the days of the scream queen, it was not uncommon for big-name actresses to work within the horror genre. Whether it was in their prime or in the twilight of their careers, women like Audrey Hepburn (Wait Until Dark), Bette Davis (Burnt Offerings, Dead Ringer), Mia Farrow (The Haunting of Julia, See No Evil), and Joan Fontaine (The Witches) would appear in horror movies if the project was right for them.
After nearly forty years in Hollywood, the iconic Joan Crawford (Mildred Pierce) starred in a handful of horror movies in the sixties, the most high-profile being her team-up with Bette Davis, the 1962 camp classic What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?. A couple of years later, in 1964, Crawford made her most off-the-wall film, a low budget exploitation flick called Strait-Jacket.
Strait-Jacket stars Crawford as Lucy Harbin, a woman who, after murdering her husband and his mistress with an axe, is sent away to a mental institution. After twenty years of intense therapy and shock treatments, Lucy is released from the asylum and comes to stay with her brother, Bill Cutler (Leif Erickson from Invaders from Mars), and his wife, Emily (Rebel Without a Cause’s Rochelle Hudson), on their dairy farm. Also living with the Cutlers is the only living witness to Lucy’s crime, her daughter, Carol (Diane Baker from The Silence of the Lambs).
Lucy arrives and is greeted with understanding and open arms from everyone, including Carol’s new fiancé, Michael Fields (Ride the Wild Surf’s John Anthony Hayes). To help Lucy transition into normal life, Carol takes her shopping, buying her a new wardrobe and a wig that makes her look twenty years younger in an attempt to make her feel like herself again. With Lucy’s new image, she begins to have seizures that trigger memories of her past crimes. Lucy’s doctor, Doctor Anderson (Mitchell Cox, who was not an actor but the vice-president of Pepsi, and who was cast in the role because Crawford was on the company’s board of directors), shows up to evaluate her living situation and, concerned with her regression, plans to readmit her into the hospital.
Before he can make the necessary arrangements, the Doctor promptly turns up dead, hacked to death with an axe. As more bodies start to pile up around the farm, the family suspects that Lucy is up to her murderous hacking tricks again, and even Lucy isn’t sure of her innocence or guilt.
After a single viewing of Strait-Jacket, it should come as no surprise to anyone that it was directed by schlock movie veteran and B-movie legend William Castle (House on Haunted Hill, Mr. Sardonicus); it’s got all of the spooky camp and low-budget creativity for which the filmmaker was known. What is a little surprising is that the script was written by Robert Bloch, the screenwriter behind films like The House That Dripped Blood and The Deadly Bees, but who will always be best remembered for being the writer of the novel on which Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho was based.
Castle and Bloch make a great team, both complimenting each others’ strengths while canceling out each others’ weaknesses. Strait-Jacket isn’t as gimmicky as Castle’s earlier work, yet still has all of the fun. It’s by no means a “quality” film; it looks just as cheap as its budget, but it’s a modest enough film to pull it off. When the dust settles, Strait-Jacket is a good, old-fashioned slasher movie that doubles as a psychological thriller. Plus, it’s got a surprise ending, bringing together many of the clues that have been planted throughout the film in a way that can only be described as awesome.
Whether in an Oscar-caliber picture or a low-budget schlock-fest, Joan Crawford always brought her A-game to the table, and Strait-Jacket is an excellent example of this. Crawford’s performance is impeccable, seamlessly transitioning from playing the pre-institution young Lucy in flashbacks to portraying the older, desperate Lucy for the meat of the film. She gives a very passionate and convincing performance, even in the face of the unbelievable script.
Crawford’s performance is typically schizophrenic; Lucy is calm and reserved one minute, manic and shrieking the next. Crawford lays it all out, making it impossible to imagine another actress in the role. For as much of a pop culture joke that Joan Crawford has become, no one can ever say she didn’t give her 110%, even in her less-than-stellar film choices.
Strait-Jacket’s mood and tone are set by the almost gothic cinematography of Arthur Arling, an experienced director of photography who was much more accustomed to shooting light comedic romances like Pillow Talk and Lover Come Back. Arling’s distinct camera work serves two purposes; not only does his haunted house style of shooting give Strait-Jacket the look of a bonafide horror movie, but it helps to hide the budgetary limitations as well.
Whenever possible, Castle and Arling use misdirection in place of gore, letting the audience fill in the blood with their imaginations. In many scenes, axe murders are shown through shadows on the wall, without showing any actual violence at all. In other places, the camera will cut to the axe high in the air, letting the sound effects do the work when the weapon falls. Arling’s creativity is nothing short of ingenious, and his subliminal way of showing the axe murders are just as effective, if not more, than the actual gore scenes in Strait-Jacket.
Of course, because it was a William Castle film, a couple of the murders have to be shown. The film contains some early work by special effects guru Richard Albain, a talented technician who would go on to work with John Carpenter on Assault on Precinct 13 and The Fog. When the violence comes out of the shadows and is shown onscreen, Strait-Jacket’s micro-budget rears its ugly head. For example, in one scene a farmhand named Leo (played by a young, pre-grey haired George Kennedy from the Airport movies) is beheaded, and the effect is so laughably phony that it actually becomes cool again; it is an obvious mannequin head, lopped off by a dull ax with absolutely no blood.
It’s a bit of hilarity that reminds the viewer that, as great as the film looks and as wonderful as Joan Crawford’s performance is, Strait-Jacket is still proudly a William Castle Production.
Of all of the scenes and images in Strait-Jacket, perhaps the most memorable is the opening credits. The film’s cast and crew are listed over a series of basic yet macabre paintings that can best be described as disturbing. The artwork loosely tells Lucy’s story, but not in a way that spoils anything; it’s more like it’s making a premonition, giving the viewer a taste of the film to come.
Whatever the paintings represent, they are horrifying in their simplicity, sort of like the kind of work that a truly maladjusted grade-schooler would produce in an after-school art class. The artist who did the paintings is somewhat of a mystery; theories abound that the artist was either production designer Boris Leven (Anatomy of a Murder), visual artist Burt Schonberg (House of Usher), or William Castle himself. Whoever the anonymous artist is, their work captures the entire mood of Strait-Jacket in the opening credit sequence (and if any readers know the identity of the artist, please share).
After Strait-Jacket, Joan Crawford would team up with William Castle once again in I Saw What You Did while continuing to work consistently until the early seventies. Sadly, she passed away in 1977, but her memory lives on, with the actress having inspired both the exploitative biopic Mommie Dearest (starring Faye Dunaway and introducing the phrase “no wire hangers” into the pop culture vocabulary) and the Blue Oyster Cult song “Joan Crawford” (complete with the lyric “Joan Crawford has risen from the grave”). For better or worse, Joan Crawford left an indelible mark on Hollywood, and she is at her most Crawford-esque in Strait-Jacket.