It’s a William Castle film written by Psycho scribe Robert Bloch and starring Joan Crawford as an axe-wielding maniac. This is 1964’s Straight-Jacket and I was entirely onboard with this before seeing a single frame of it.
It opens with Crawford arriving home to find hubby Lee Majors (in his first screen appearance) and Patricia Crest in post-coital bliss. The lovers were so oblivious as to get it on while Crawford’s daughter is sleeping in the next room; at least, to the best of their knowledge, she was sleeping. This is the only axe murder which is definitely committed by Crawford, and she really goes to town in what looks like quite the upper body workout. The vigor with which she throws herself into this is should be fair warning to her real-life daughter, and future scribe of Mommie Dearest, of the consequences of using wire clothes hangers.
Twenty years later, the daughter has grown into Diane Baker. While Crawford was in a mental hospital, Baker had been raised on a farm by her aunt and uncle, played by Rochelle Hudson and Leif Erickson. The latter was likely not the Viking explorer who might have been the first European to set foot on North American soil, but I cannot say that with certainty.
Now Crawford has been released from the institution and is coming to stay with the family. There’s a nice mirror scene where she gets off the train as a much older woman than when we saw her a couple of decades younger disembarking right before dismembering.
It is a happy reunion initially, though Baker seems hellbent on making mom look like how she did the night she took the Eddie Bo song “Pass The Hatchet” way too literally. Soon, she’s wearing a similar dress, a wig that looks her hair back in the day, and the jangliest bracelets since Carol Ohmart’s in The Scarlet Hour.
Baker also has a weirdly tactless demeanor, such as when she’s showing mom around the barnyard and using the word “slaughter” at least 100% more times than necessary. Then again, Crawford has some surprises for her daughter, as well, such as when she comes on hard to the girl’s fiancée (John Baker Hayes). Oh, and there’s the additional murders that start happening, whomever might be committing those.
There’s also the family of Baker’s fiancée. Edith Atwater, as the mother, is obviously going to be a problem, as it is obvious no girl is good enough for her boy. Howard St. John, as the father, is affable enough, though I wondered what the deal was with him drinking milk all the time. I was reminded of a recent conversation on social media initiated by the movie Babygirl, concerning what kind of adult drinks milk. Answer: this guy.
It was possibly because there was so much Pepsi on the set. I noticed some of the more blatant product placement, as mandated by Crawford, since she was on the board of the company. What I didn’t know at the time is Mitchell Cox as her psychiatrist is also a form of product placement, as he was also on the board. I would say it is no surprise this is his only screen credit, except he’s actually pretty good. He holds his own in a scene with Crawford, at least, telling her that she can’t turn back time. She should remind him the Cher song is “If I Could Turn Back Time”. She’s knitting in that scene, which she apparently did I real-life to pass the time on set. She becomes more tense as the conversation goes on, and starts literally unraveling.
Also in the cast is George Kennedy as the farm’s hired laborer. He is younger, thinner and has more hair than I have ever seen him, which doesn’t mean exactly mean he’s young, thin and has a luxurious mane in this picture. He also conveys a great deal of menace. That said, he also is giving a car a new paint job using something brushed on from a bucket, so I doubt he is any kind of mastermind, criminal or otherwise. For that matter, I wondered why Bloch stories tend to involve the necessity of hiding a car—well, in two screenplays, at least.
The highlight of the picture for me was a brief, odd bit where Crawford puts the exclamation point on a statement by striking the match on the surface of a record as it plays on a turntable. It is a record scratch moment with a real record scratch. This may not sound like anything significant, but I haven’t seen anybody in a movie do that before and it was a fascinating bit of defiance.
There are elements big and small I liked in Straight-Jacket. In addition to solid performances and well-composed photography, there are inconsequential elements such as the adorable Fiat 600 Baker drives. Some of the dialogue even has a bit of a spark, such as Hudson’s admonition of her husband for driving too fast when they are taking eggs to market: “They’re not here to buy scrambled eggs.” Yet the biggest surprise is after the movie proper, as the closing Columbia logo with its famous and statuesque lady shows her standing there sans head.
Dir: William Castle
Starring Joan Crawford, Diane Baker
Watched on Mill Creek Joan Crawford two-movie blu-ray