Strait-Jacket (

1964

)

By the mid-60s William Castle had acquired the reputation of being more skilled as a carnival barker than as a filmmaker. It’s pretty easy to see how this happened. Hollywood was (and still is) a place where you are judged by your appearance. When your films electrocute their audiences with joy-buzzers like The Tingler (1959) or pause before the climax to let the audience leave the theater in fright like Homicidal (1961), or offer to pay a life insurance policy on anyone who dies of fright during the screening like Macabre (1958), then you’re going to acquire the reputation of a showman but not an artist. This is something of a shame because it led to a fine filmmaker being unfairly dismissed both during his lifetime and after. At first, Castle had embraced this reputation, as gimmick horror had made him a successful filmmaker working in a genre he loved. Yet, as time went by he found the desire to not just make a serious movie (he was already doing that though under heavy cover) but also be recognized as a maker of serious movies. I suspect that this played a role in Castle’s decision to not employ one of his trademark gimmicks with Strait-Jacket and instead rely on the strength of his star actress and his own skill as a filmmaker. The fact that he chickened out at the last minute and added a half-hearted gimmick (handing out toy axes to audiences) shows that he wasn’t quite ready to make the jump. It’s just as well when he finally took the plunge and tried to make a completely serious film with Rosemary’s Baby (1968) the studio bosses didn’t trust him with the job and replaced him with Roman Polanski.

An overwrought voice-over narration informs us of the bare facts of the situation: Lucy Harbin is shacked up with a much younger boy-toy. She pays the bills and he keeps her happy. The only problem is that the boy-toy in question is having an affair when Lucy finds out she chops both the boy-toy and his lover to pieces with an ax all while her daughter, Carol, looks on in horror. Lucy spends the next 20 years in the asylum, after a successful insanity plea. At the end of that period, she’s pronounced cured and released. Though Lucy’s relationship with Carol is understandably strained, she goes to live with Carol on the farm of Carol’s adoptive parents.

Right from the start, it’s obvious that despite the assurance of the psychiatrists Lucy is still more than a little bit crazy. She has strange nightmares and when she’s out shopping for dresses with her daughter she hears children chanting a song about her infamous murders; chants which no one else can hear. The fact that she tries to put the moves on Carol’s posh boyfriend, Michael Fields when drunk doesn’t exactly bode well for her sanity either. Still, there’s a long way between being an eccentric with a couple of quirks and a homicidal maniac that chops up people at the slightest provocation. It’s worrying enough that her old therapist decides to check in on her to make sure that she’s adapting well to the world outside the asylum. Lucy is plainly terrified at the prospect of being locked up again but handles the encounter with the doctor about as well as could be hoped for someone under so much stress. The therapist isn’t convinced that Lucy shouldn’t be brought back in for observation though. Before he can do anything though, he’s killed by a shadowy figure with an uncanny resemblance to Lucy. So, is the old murderess up to her old tricks again, or is something a bit more complicated at work here?

Crawford is the main draw here, and both Castle and she are completely aware of it. Unlike Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1962) where she was stuck with the more conventional and boring of the two leading roles, here she really has a meaty character to sink her teeth into. Lucy is crazy, make no mistake about it and she’s desperately holding onto what little sanity she managed to salvage after twenty years in the asylum. It’s a role that demands a certain degree of hamminess, and Crawford is happy to oblige, but she never crosses the line into outright camp. There are surprisingly astute details in her performance, take for instance the way she trembles when drunk as if masking her anxiety with a haze of booze. Hell, I’ve seen that first-hand often enough and I still couldn’t tell Crawford’s performance is anything but the genuine article. She manages to walk the line between horrific and pitiful, so that the audience sympathies are always on her side, even when they are worried about what she’s capable of. The whole twist hinges on Crawford’s balancing act here, and she delivers. Obviously, those of us who have seen Psycho (1961) and know of Castle’s admiration for Hitchcock can see the twist coming miles off, but even so, the movie would fall apart without the performance of its leading lady.

Aside from the obvious strength of Crawford’s performance, Strait-Jacket benefits tremendously from a deft, if somewhat baroque, soundtrack. There’s nothing in here that could be described as a song, instead, it’s all ambient noises complemented by small snatches of disjointed music. It’s a decidedly unusual approach for a mid-century thriller but one that works very effective in the context. Lucy is afraid that she’s once again losing her mind, indeed so is most of the supporting cast and probably the audience as well if they are unusually gullible. The oppressive soundtrack puts the viewer into that same mindset. Add into this a few bizarre editing choices (which become more and more evident as the film goes on) that leave out scenes and catapult the viewer into the future with no warning, and the effect becomes downright disorienting. Castle understands that the best way to build audience sympathy for a lunatic is to make them feel like they’re cracking up as well.

Much hay is made about the “psycho biddy” sub-genre of horror films being the product of Hollywood’s sexism. Once a starlet crested 35 there simply were no roles left for her in conventional films, and she was forced to either retire with millions of dollars or take on the degrading work of appearing as an evil, murderous hag in horror films. To me, the argument would be a lot stronger if it weren’t for the legions of once-famous male actors reduced to similar straights. Consider John Carradine who went from having strong supporting roles in such classics as Stagecoach (1939) and the Grapes of Wrath (1940) to featuring in whatever low-rent horror film would pay him (Blood of Dracula’s Castle (1969), Shock Waves (1977), Satan’s Cheerleaders (1977), the list goes on ad infinitum). George Kennedy (who amusingly plays the role of the filthy handyman Leo in today’s movie) followed much the same arch when he went from Cool Hand Luke (1967) and the Dirty Dozen (1967) to such films as Death Ship (1980) and Uninvited (1988).

It seems to me that the only difference between the “psycho biddy” films and the later works of Carradine and Kennedy is how much sympathy we grant the fallen star. Indeed, if anything the psycho-biddy films were much more respectable films than the ones Kennedy and Carradine contented themselves with. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1962) was a legitimately great film, going so far as to gain the admiration of critics who are normally loath to admit any fondness for the lurid horror genre. While not on the same level as the genre-initiator, later entries like What’s the Matter with Helen? (1971) and Who Slew Auntie Roo? (1971) were far from bad films. Strait-Jacket may be the weakest of the films mentioned here, but it still gave Joan Crawford a meaty and enjoyable role that catered to her talents. The same cannot be said of any of the material Kennedy or Carradine were given to work with in their twilight years. Their roles were small, supporting affairs aimed more at cashing in on a once-famous name rather than capitalizing on their talents. When it’s a once-famous woman cast in a horror movie we feel pity, while when it’s a once-famous man we jeer and laugh at how far his star has fallen. It’s just one more case that demonstrates society’s indifference to male suffering.