Strait-Jacket

For other uses, see Straitjacket (disambiguation).

Strait-Jacket
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	William Castle
Written by	Robert Bloch
Produced by	William Castle
Starring	Joan Crawford
Cinematography	Arthur E. Arling
Edited by	Edwin H. Bryant
Music by	Van Alexander
Color process	Black and white
Production company	William Castle Productions
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release date	January 8, 1964 (1964-01-08)
Running time	93 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$2,195,000 (rentals)

Strait-Jacket is a 1964 American psychological horror film directed and produced by William Castle, written by Robert Bloch and starring Joan Crawford. Its plot follows a woman who, having murdered her husband and his lover decades prior, is suspected of a series of axe murders following her release from a psychiatric hospital.

Released by Columbia Pictures in January 1964, the film was the first of two written for Castle by Robert Bloch, the second being The Night Walker (1964). The film's plot makes use of the psychological abuse method known as gaslighting.

Plot

In 1943, Frank Harbin goes out with a former girlfriend, Stella, while his older wife whom he married for her property, Lucy, is out of town. The night ends with them asleep in bed together. Lucy unexpectedly takes the late train home and spies her husband's infidelity through the bedroom window. While their young daughter Carol watches, Lucy hacks Frank and Stella to death with an axe. At the trial, she is found not guilty by reason of insanity and confined to an asylum. Carol is sent to live with her mother's brother Bill and his wife, Emily, on their farm.

Twenty years later, Lucy is deemed mentally stable by the hospital's board and released into the care of Bill and Emily. Carol, who still lives with them and works as a sculptor out of the converted guest house, is nervous to meet her mother after so long. When Lucy arrives, she is initially withdrawn and emotionally fragile but gradually seems to improve. With encouragement from Carol, she buys new clothes, jewelry, and a wig, the look causing her to resemble how she did at the time of the killings. One night, she awakens to children's voices singing a nursery rhyme about axe murders and turns to see the severed heads of Frank and Stella on her bed. She runs to the other family members for help, but the heads are gone when they return to her room. Emily dismisses the incident as a nightmare.

The next afternoon, Carol invites Michael Fields, her boyfriend and son of the richest couple in town, over to meet her mother. Dressing in her new clothes, Lucy is friendly at first but quickly becomes drunk and flirts with an uncomfortable Michael, who leaves. Anderson, Lucy's doctor at the asylum passing through town while on a fishing trip, stops by the farm to check on her. Lucy acts erratic and evasive during their conversation before storming off, causing Anderson to tell Carol he thinks her mother was released too hastily and plans to take her back to the hospital. While looking for Lucy, he is lured into the windmill tower and killed with an axe by an unseen assailant. Noticing the doctor's car is still in the driveway at nightfall, Carol hides it in the barn, being watched by farmhand Leo Krause. When she finds her mother, Lucy admits she can't remember the past few hours and fears she may have murdered Anderson.

Leo threatens to blackmail Carol unless she gives him the car. Shortly afterwards, he finds Anderson's body in the slaughterhouse freezer and is decapitated by the killer. Days later, Carol convinces an anxious Lucy to have dinner with Michael and his parents at their mansion, accompanied by Bill and Emily. Though the evening goes well at first, while the rest of the party is touring the property, Lucy and Michael's mother Allison get into an argument over Carol's plans to marry her son, which Allison believes would be beneath his social standing. Lucy flees the mansion in a rage and runs into the fields, with Bill and Michael going out to look for her.

While Allison waits for their return, Michael's father Raymond is hacked to death in the bedroom closet. Investigating his absence, Allison find his corpse and is attacked by the killer, wearing a latex mask resembling Lucy. The real Lucy, returning to apologize for her outburst, surprises and subdues the killer, removing the mask to reveal Carol. In a crazed monologue, she says she always hated Lucy for leaving her without parents growing up and planned to butcher Michael's disapproving mother and father so the couple could inherit the Fields family money, framing Lucy for the crimes. She also reveals she planted the fake severed heads in the bedroom, played the nursery rhyme on a tape recorder, and killed both Dr. Anderson and Leo for interfering with her plan.

Sometime later, Bill and a now-sane Lucy pack up the guest house as they prepare to visit Carol, who is now locked up in the same asylum her mother was held in.

Cast

• Joan Crawford as Lucy Harbin
• Diane Baker as Carol Cutler
• Leif Erickson as Bill Cutler
• Howard St. John as Raymond Fields
• John Anthony Hayes as Michael Fields
• Rochelle Hudson as Emily Cutler
• George Kennedy as Leo Krause
• Edith Atwater as Mrs. Allison Fields
• Mitchell Cox as Dr. Anderson

Strait-Jacket featured the first big-screen appearance of Lee Majors in the uncredited role of Frank Harbin, Lucy Harbin's husband, seen in the opening minutes of the film. Patricia Crest, the actress that plays Stella, is also uncredited.

Production

Development

After the success of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), Joan Crawford and other older actresses, including Bette Davis and Barbara Stanwyck, appeared in many horror movies throughout the 1960s. Strait-Jacket is one of the examples of the genre sometimes referred to as psycho-biddy, hagsploitation or Grande Dame Guignol.

Casting

Crawford replaced Joan Blondell in the role of Lucy Harbin after Blondell was injured at home prior to shooting and could not fulfill her commitment. Crawford's negotiations included script and cast approval, 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, reportedly at Crawford's insistence. Baker and Crawford had appeared together in the film The Best of Everything (1959). Baker asserted that the original actress for her part, Anne Helm, had numerous problems with Crawford. According to Baker, speaking on the 'making-of' featurette on the DVD of the film, Crawford had said, "it wasn't working out, her timing was off, she wasn't getting it, she wasn't seeing eye-to-eye, or she wasn't working the way Crawford wanted to work".

Promotion

During the film's original release, moviegoers were given little cardboard axes as they entered the theater. At the end of the closing credits, the Columbia logo's torch-bearing woman is shown in her traditional pose, but decapitated, with her head resting at her feet on her pedestal.

Reception

Drive-in advertisement from 1964.

The film received mixed reviews from critics, while most praised Crawford's performance; the general critical consensus being that she was better than the material. Variety noted, "Miss Crawford does well by her role, delivering an animated performance." Judith Crist commented in the New York Herald Tribune that "it's time to get Joan Crawford out of those housedress horror B movies and back into haute couture...this madness-and-murder tale...might have been a thriller, given Class A treatment." Elaine Rothschild in Films in Review wrote: "I am full of admiration for Joan Crawford, for even in drek like this she gives a performance."

Bosley Crowther, however, wrote a scathing review of both the film and Crawford's performance in The New York Times, declaring: "Joan Crawford has picked some lemons, some very sour lemons, in her day, but nigh the worst of the lot is "Strait-Jacket". He goes on to call the film a "disgusting piece of claptrap." Richard L. Coe of The Washington Post also hated the film, calling it "likely to stand as the worst picture of the year ... Apart from the absurdity of the plot and the chilling predictability of lines and situations, 'Strait-Jacket' is inexcusable for its scenes of violence."

The film is listed in Golden Raspberry Award founder John Wilson's book The Official Razzie Movie Guide as one of The 100 Most Enjoyably Bad Movies Ever Made. The film also maintains an 88% rating on review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 8 reviews.

Assisted by Castle's promotion gimmicks, including in-person appearances by Crawford, the film was a big hit, making in 2019 adjusted grosses $60.8 million at the American box office.

Home media

Strait-Jacket was released on Region 1 DVD on March 12, 2002. On February 4, 2014, it was re-released on Region 1 DVD as part of the Sony Pictures Choice Collection online program.

Shout! Factory released the film on Blu-ray on August 21, 2018. Mill Creek Entertainment also released the film along with Berserk! on a double feature Blu-ray on October 2, 2018.

Legacy

An excerpt from the film is seen on TV in the 1994 John Waters film Serial Mom.

At the conclusion, the Columbia logo is seen decapitated (with her head resting at its base, near her feet) as a tongue-in-cheek ode to the film's axe murder theme.

The promotion of Strait-Jacket by the studio, the director and Crawford are addressed in the episode "Hagsploitation" of the 2017 television miniseries Feud.

See also

• List of American films of 1964

External links

• Strait-Jacket at IMDb 
• Review of Strait-Jacket at TVGuide.com
• Strait-Jacket at the TCM Movie Database
• Strait-Jacket at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films