Sunday Viewing: William Castle’s “Strait-Jacket,” 1964

Who told you about my dreams? Who told you about my nightmares?

--Joan Crawford as Lucy Harbin

Columbia Pictures

Lucy Harbin married a younger man. Her first husband had been an older fellow with money. When he died, she finally got what she wanted. Or did she? Lucy returns home from a train trip to find her husband—still wearing pants and a belt—in bed with another woman. She did what most rational people would do. She chopped their heads off with an axe that just happened to be in grabbing distance. Poor Lucy. What a shame that their small daughter, Carol, witnessed the whole thing.

Lucy finds herself carted off to a sanitarium (“Sanitorium,” “It wasn’t a santitarium. It was an ASYLUM. And, it was HELL.” She notes later) in a strait-jacket that does nothing for her figure. Then, we flash forward to the “present” and by “present,” I mean 1964. Lucy is reunited with her daughter on the family farm. Carol wants Lucy to be just as she was and takes her mother for a make-over. They visit a dress shop and a hairdresser who conveniently seems to stock “Joan Crawford Wigs.” That’s when the trouble really begins. The rest of the picture is a wonderful romp which includes a lot of wax heads, some axes, a neatly placed six-pack of Pepsi, Joan Crawford in a slip, some truly ugly statues, a hand-painted car, nervous knitting, some Scotch, and a lot of shouting.

Showman/Producer/Director and all around fun guy, William Castle was rather thrilled with himself when he managed to wrangle a big name star and a big name writer for an upcoming picture. Robert Bloch—who wrote Psycho—agreed to create a similarly grisly tale for Castle and Joan Crawford agreed to star, replacing Joan Blondell who had injured her back. Castle treated Strait-Jacket as an A-Picture and Crawford delivers her performance as if she’s still “Mildred Pierce.” The result is a thoroughly enjoyable film which despite its campier moments is still rather surprising.

I won’t give the plot away, however, it can be shocking if you’ve not seen it before. Crawford really gives it all she’s got, and Diane Baker (Carol) proves she can hold her own with the great Miss Crawford. The cast also includes a sufficiently oily George Kennedy and marks the screen debut of Lee Majors as Lucy’s unfaithful husband.

This clip is one of my favorite scenes from the picture. Here, we see Lucy in her “Joan Crawford Wig” and frighteningly loud dress (can you imagine what color that thing was) meeting Carol’s boyfriend for the first time. She’s a bit overexcited from the one sip of Scotch she’s had and ends up sticking her finger in the boy’s mouth—as one does.

If you’re looking for a wonderfully bizarre film for Halloween, Strait-Jacket is a good choice.

Sunday Viewing: William Castle’s 1961 Thriller, “Homicidal”



William Castle

 The more adventurous among you may remember our previous excursions into the macabre - our visits to haunted hills - to tinglers and to ghosts. This time we have even a stranger tale to unfold... The story of a lovable group of people who just happen to be homicidal.

If Alfred Hitchock was an artistic genius, William Castle was the genius of showmanship. Castle started his film career as an assistant to Orson Welles—not a bad beginning. He always wanted to be a director. He got his chance. And, now, he’s known as the King of B Pictures. We can credit Castle with films such as The House on Haunted Hill, The Tingler, Thirteen Ghosts, Mr. Sardonicus, Straitjacket and I Saw What you Did. The former two starred Joan Crawford in her descent from Movie Queen and her ascent to Scream Queen. Castle was also the producer of Rosemary’s Baby.

William Castle always had a gimmick to promote his films. From skeletons on wires to seats rigged with mild electrical shocks, Castle was in the business of both baking and selling his films. However, his circus-like showmanship—while a draw to the young audiences he was targeting—tended to detract from any artistic merit his films may have possessed. As an auteur, Castle is better respected today than he was forty years ago. Many of his films have been remade in this century and have found a very loyal fanbase. Castle wanted to be “big,” he wanted to create box office magic. He did, too. Now, it’s just a matter of rediscovering his magic.

Hot on the heels of Hitchcock’s Psycho, Castle directed what some might consider a rip-off and others might consider an homage. Homicidal was William Castle’s answer to Psycho. While there are some shallow similarities, Homicidal holds up quite well as a genuinely thrilling picture all its own.

The story concerns a peculiar family. Miriam Webster’s (no relation to the dictionary) brother, Warren, has returned from abroad. He’s brought with him a young woman named Emily. Emily takes care of the sibling’s former nanny, now elderly and disabled. Some strange things begin to happen with Emily around—not the least of which is the seemingly unmotivated, gruesome murder of a Justice of the Peace.

Emily was played by the lovely Joan Marshall (Herman Munster’s original wife in the pilot of The Munsters”. Marshall is credited as “Jean Arless” in the film. The reasons for the use of the androgynous pseudonym become apparent as the film progresses. I won’t give anything away because William Castle made us all promise not to reveal the ending of the film. However, if you’d like to learn more, I suggest you want this short documentary about the picture. Of course, if you’d prefer to see the film spoiler-free, it’s available on DVD.

Homicidal is a bizarre and frightening picture. When you watch it, put Psycho out of your mind and enjoy it as its own story. You won’t regret it. You even get a “fright break” so you can leave the room before the end of the film if you just find it too, too scary. If you’d seen the picture in 1961 in a theater, you could have left and received a full-refund. However, everyone who left during the “fright break” was forced to stay in a yellow booth called “The Coward’s Corner.” Ah, William Castle—he giveth and he taketh away.