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The poster at right hangs in my living room. I love this William Castle suspense/ horror flick from 1964.
Strait-Jacket is the movie that Joan Crawford made after being fired from Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte. People tell me they think nothing's scarier than Joan yielding a large axe.
Crawford portrays Lucy Harbin, a woman who comes home one night, finds her hubby in bed with another woman, stumbles upon an axe and impulsively hacks them into pieces.
She is put away in a mental asylum and returns decades later to society, only to be haunted by her past. The story was written by Robert Bloch, the author of Psycho.
Diane Baker plays Joan's daughter. Joan liked Diane; they bonded after performing together in the 1959 soaper The Best of Everything.
Baker went on to co-star with Crawford in this film and, later, the tv-movie Della.
Strait-Jacket is good for thrills and chilla and maybe a few laughs. A must-see.
Crawford again co-stars with John Ireland in William Castle's I Saw What You Did (and I Know Who You Are). He also played her lover in Queen Bee. Whenever these two get it on, things don't end up so well for them in the end.
The plot involves two teenage girls who phone random people for kicks with crank calls. Thank Gd for caller i.d., huh? But they didn't have that in 1965, which is when this flick was made. So dial away for shits and giggles!
Leif Erickson, who co-starred with Joan in Castle's Strait-jacket, is also in this.
The film is indeed suspenseful and the acting is strong and convincing. This was Ms Crawford's last film for Castle before working with Herman Cohen in Berserk and -- gulp! -- Trog.
It's silly, its as campy as anything you'll ever see, but you'll certainly get a few scares as well.
Available on dvd from Universal Studio's Vault Series. I originally saw this, age 13, at the Clifton Theater on Main Ave., Clifton NJ.
Columbia Pictures just released the William Castle Horror Collection: five films on two discs. It's available at Amazon.com and includes some of the grade-B maestro's most memorable movies. Castle was also the producer of Rosemary's Baby, directed by Roman Polanski.
My favorite of the five flicks is Homicidal, Castle's 1961 rip-off of Hitchcock's Psycho. It has its own macabre charms, I think you'll find. Like the Hitchcock classic, it's gender-bending and very suspenseful, but has its own clever plot twists. Homicidal's hero is even portrayed by Glenn Corbett, the poor man's John Gavin.
Most riveting is the performance in the film by one Jean Arless. Arless is actually a pseudonym for actress Joan Marshall. Not sure, exactly, why she adopted this name exclusively for Homicidal. Jean sometimes reminds me of Lypsinka, other times like Doris Day's suppressed libido come to life.
After an opening sequence involving a little boy, a little girl and a doll, the film opens properly with a sequence in which the cool blonde Ms Arless checks into a hotel and propositions the young bellboy to marry her for two thousand dollars, promising the marriage will immediately be annulled. What ensues is the first in a series of shocking moments, especially near the climax, that carry the economically 90-minute film along at a brisk pace. The police get involved and an entire mystery involving a family inheritance begins to unravel.
I love Arless' interactions as "caregiver" to a woman named Helga (Eugenie Leontovich), crippled by a stroke, and who gets up and down stairs via motorized wheelchair lift. (One should note this film preceded Robert Aldrich's Baby Jane by two years.)
I highly recommend this if you're looking for thrills and chills. If chilling out is your wont or if you're prone to nightmares, maybe not so much. The phallic symbolism of knives is not lost on this film.
The other films on this collection are 13 Ghosts, 13 Frightened Girls, Mr Sardonicus and The Old Dark House.
Approaching the bassinet with a butcher knife. Now that's a lovely image for starters, no? "Pray for Rosemary's Baby" read the ads at the time of the film's release. See why?
1968. Mia Farrow was best known prior to that time for her role as Allison MacKenzie on ABC-tv's Peyton Place. There was much publicity surrounding the shearing of her famously long, hippie-like locks in favor of a Carnaby Street/Twiggy-like 'do for the Roman Polanski film, Rosemary's Baby. On tonight's Halloween Countdown, listen to Mia guilelessly sing the theme song. It's a lullaby; an eerie, effectively creepy little lullaby, very appropriate to sing to your demon spawn should you have one. It was written by Krzysztof Komeda, the brilliant composer who frequently scored films by fellow Pole, Polanski.
Produced by William Castle ("Strait-jacket"), adapted from a novel by Ira Levin ("The Stepford Wives") and shot at Manhattan's The Dakota apartment building. Farrow received divorce papers from Frank Sinatra while filming there. Polanski's pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, would be murdered the following year by Charles Manson and his followers, who titled their death spree "Helter Skelter" after the 1968 song by The Beatles, one of whose members, John Lennon, would one day live (and in 1980 be murdered) in The Dakota, where Rosemary's Baby had been filmed. In December 1968, in Los Angeles, composer Komeda had a tragic car accident which led to a haematoma of the brain that caused his death. He was 35.
Now, is this song going to lull you off to sleep? You will have pleasant dreams, I hope. Our madonna, Rosemary, wouldn't want it any other way,... babies!
What could possibly be scarier than Joan Crawford running amok with an axe? And note that her hairdo in this video seems to have inspired Billy Ray Cirus' 1980s mullet! The visuals are scenes from the 1964 William Castle film, Straitjacket. The vocals by Rihanna. Sleep tight. (Tonight's video dedicated to Countdown followers Tracey & Merv.) ps: spoiler alert for film.
