Movies - Strait-Jacket

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	Movies - Strait-Jacket

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 screenwriter Robert Bloch, 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 fine example of the genre referred to as psycho-biddy.

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 Diane Baker, William Castle and Robert Bloch.

U.S. release: January 9, 1964

89 mins.; English; black-and-white

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 grizzly 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 returns home to the same farm to live with her daughter, Carol (played by Baker), who, after some initial awkwardness, welcomes her. Among the other characters are Lucy's brother and sister-in-law, Bill Cutler (played by Erickson) and Emily (played by Hudson), and 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.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Strait-Jacket ]

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Movies - Strait-Jacket

Synopsis

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