Strait-Jacket: A Review

STRAIT-JACKET

This review is part of the Summer Under the Stars Blogathon. Today's star is Joan Crawford.

One of the many infamous moments in Mommie Dearest is when Joan Crawford screams out to her adopted daughter, "TINA! BRING ME THE AX!" Crawford then proceeds to chop down a tree in her garden, swinging the ax with crazed frenzy while wearing an elegant evening gown. While this moment has been parodied and become a joke, there was a film where Joan Crawford did swing an ax with crazed frenzy. Strait-Jacket will entertain the viewer, though whether it is in a camp manner or not depends on said viewer.

Lucy Harbin (Crawford) comes home early to discover her husband Frank (Lee Majors) in bed with his ex-girlfriend, Stella Fulton (Patricia Crest). Lucy is shocked and devastated by this discovery. She does what any other woman would do in this situation: she stumbles onto an ax and hacks them to death. The so-called "Love Slayer" is found to be insane and for the next twenty years is locked up in the booby hatch.

Making things worse is that Lucy and Frank's daughter Carol saw both the liaison and the ax murders. Now, the adult Carol (Diane Baker) has revealed the truth about her bonkers mother to her boyfriend, Michael Fields (John Anthony Hayes). Why has Carol revealed all now? Simple. Lucy has finally been released from the funny farm and will be living on a real farm. She will stay with Carol, who has been living with Lucy's brother Bill (Leif Erikson) and his wife Emily (Rochelle Hudson). 

Lucy is uncertain and afraid of the outside world. Carol, however, is understanding and patient, welcoming her mother back to life. They go shopping and appear to start bonding. However, Lucy begins having terrifying dreams and hears childish taunts about her ax-murdering days (we'll leave aside for the moment her oddball flirtation with Michael). A visit from the hospital psychiatrist appears to push Lucy over the edge. It also pushes the psychiatrist into being the first person literally axed out.

Could Lucy have returned to her whacking days? Carol fears that her mother has gone all loony again. Less afraid is farmhand Leo Krause (George Kennedy), but he too gets cut out of things. Has Lucy gone loca? Who is behind these new killings? The answer proves shocking.

I admire films that do not pretend to be anything other than a good time. Strait-Jacket is such a film. This is a slasher film with bits of humor. The credit for such a curious blend belongs to three figures behind the film. The first is Robert Bloch, who wrote the screenplay. The man who wrote the novel Psycho gave us an interesting story of a woman driven insane who may be driven insane again.

As a side note, I like the title Insane Again for this stab at the "hagsploitation" or "Grande Dame Guignol" genre. 

We get nice twists and turns as the story rolls on. There are bits of sly humor, such as when Leo thinks that he is getting attacked but is really hit by clothes on the clothesline. One line in the opening section does come across as I presume unintentionally funny. In Carol's voiceover, she says of her mother, "She was very much a woman, and very much aware of it". That particular line seems more suited to a noir film than a psycho-biddy film. It does not help that Joan Crawford appears to make a valiant but ultimately unhinged effort to try and pass herself off as a woman in her twenties. 

The plot is not perfect. If one looks at Strait-Jacket, there are parts that do not make sense. For example, Lucy hears the Lizzie Borden children's rhyme; instead of "Lizzie Borden took an ax, gave her mother forty whacks" it's "Lucy Harbin took an ax, gave her husband forty whacks". We learn that this was a recording as part of the plot to drive her bonkers. However, Strait-Jacket shows two little girls playing jump rope outside the store where Lucy hears this taunting rhyme. They begin singing it to her. They even throw in a second rhyme, "Take the key and lock her up, my fair lady" that only Lucy can hear. Those two elements could not have been part of the master plan. That came from Lucy. 

I figure that this might have been a bit of misdirection from the second figure behind Strait-Jacket: director William Castle. Castle, a man not averse to cheap gimmicks to promote and make his films, showed some surprising touches in Strait-Jacket. There is a wonderful shot of Kennedy's Krause looking at slaughtered pigs that seems a bit of foreshadowing. He also did his best to shoot Crawford in literally the most flattering light. 

We still have some oddball moments that show how Castle was more showman than auteur. The actual killings look comical and extremely fake. 

It is unknown if slipping into the film a shot of a Pepsi pack, which Crawford heavily promoted while married to its head Alfred Steele, was a Castle promotional stunt.

The third and perhaps strongest element in making Strait-Jacket enjoyable is that formidable force known as Joan Crawford. I once heard someone remark that Crawford played Strait-Jacket as if it were Mildred Pierce except with an ax. The thing about Crawford is that she never cheated on a performance. She never winked at the camera. She always took whatever material she was given seriously. It did not matter how awful the film was. It did not matter how outlandish the material was. She always played things seriously.

You can see that in some of her other post-What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? films. If you stumble onto something like Berserk! or Trog, Joan Crawford took the same professional tone there that she did here. I would argue that Joan Crawford was actually quite good in Strait-Jacket. She made Lucy into a sympathetic figure, a woman attempting to keep her sanity even as it teeters dangerously close to collapsing. She and Diane Baker have a wonderful chemistry, with their scenes being a highlight of the film. In her at times crazed defense of Carol to her prospective in-laws and genuine sadness at the end, Joan Crawford does a standout job.

The part where she openly flirts with Michael is so bizarre, but again, bless Crawford for trying.

There is granted, one element in Crawford's performance that is simply too impossible to ignore. In the early section, her vanity got the best of her. There is no way that Joan Crawford, who was anywhere from 56 to 60 years old when Strait-Jacket was released, could pass for a woman in her forties. I'm not sure that she was supposed to be in her sixties for the bulk of Strait-Jacket. Her character may have technically been in her forties given that Carol was supposed to be in her early twenties. Crawford does look too old for any of this to make sense. However, I find it oddly brave of her to even try.

In terms of the acting, I think Castle did a serviceable job directing his cast. Diana Baker did a very respectable job as Carol. Baker made Carol into a woman torn between loving and hating her mother. Sometimes, she shows a very sympathetic and protective side. Other times, her hostility and anger come through. This film is an early role for George Kennedy as the loutish farmhand. He is delightfully despicable as Leo Krause, taunting Carol by calling Lucy a loony. It is to where one enjoys him getting his comeuppance.

One should give Castle credit for directing Mitchell Cox as Dr. Anderson, the psychiatrist who literally gets the chop. Why? Cox was not an actor. He was a Pepsi executive who got this role in Strait-Jacket due to Crawford's connections to Pepsi. He was clearly not an actor, but he did not embarrass himself either. 

The film has a very effective score from Van Alexander, part spooky part dramatic. There are also some wonderful close-ups of Crawford, a credit to cinematographer Arthur Arling. 

One final note about Strait-Jacket. In both Strait-Jacket and Mommie Dearest, we see Joan Crawford wielding an ax in a crazed manner. We also see in both films a scene where the male partner's heads are cut out of pictures. I do not offer anything other than an observation on how there are similarities in both stories. 

Slightly campy, slightly creepy, Strait-Jacket balances genuine thrills with a bit of amusement. The film has a strong and committed Joan Crawford performance (one that is perhaps too committed to the material). I am always entertained by Strait-Jacket, even it is a bit second-rate. It is, however, a cut above her later work. 

DECISION: B-