Saturday is "Take Out the Trash" Day.
Strait-Jacket (William Castle, 1964) It wouldn't be Hallowe'en here at BXC without some review of a film by that wacky prankster of the cinema, William Castle. Castle made b-movies cheap and under-budget and that made him well-regarded by studio's. But, he was more than a writer-director-producer, he was also a superb salesman and promoter. "Superb" as in successful, not so much in sophistication. Castle liked to add an element of "extra" to his films to garner them a bit more attention, ala the "3-D" craze of the 1950's. Castle would come up with some stunt for the theater and then give it an exotic consumer name, like "Percepto" or "Illusion-O" or "Emergo" (the last was just a glowing skeleton that rode a wire into the theater from the screen), some cheap little sap-draw that could increase the audience and the box-office "take," a little surprise that might increase interest and lure viewers away from their television sets. But, it was all done with humor, imagination, and the sensibilities of a huckster. Castle is the favorite director of John Waters and Robert Zemeckis, and in Joe Dante's Matinee from a few years back, John Goodman had a grand time playing a Castle-like director.
The consequences of her actions are not execution or life-imprisonment, instead she is committed to an asylum—even given the extremes art direction can take, it's one of the least calming and therapeutic asylums one could imagine. Not to cast aspersions, but Lucy is locked away for a nightmarishly long time.
Mom comes home and Carol, now a sculptress, is overjoyed, showing her the sculpt she made of her Mom's face from memory and encouraging her to put on the old jingling jewelry she used to wear...that she's kept for her all these years, even getting Mom to go buy a wig to restore her looks to the way she was when Carol was a kid and when...you know..."the ax-murder?" Lucy and Carol have completely different ideas about nostalgia and "living with the past!"
The author of the screenplay is Robert Bloch, the fellow who wrote the novel "Psycho", which Alfred Hitchcock turned into a hit film in 1960. Like that story, there is enough ambiguity in the story-telling that the audience is kept off-kilter, not having anybody to root for, and having their expectations—other than to see something gruesome happening—subverted by some deft narrative sleight-of-hand and up-ending how things appear. Bloch was a prolific writer, creating odd little mind-benders from Hitchcock's TV program (including its gruesome "banned" episode "The Sorcerer's Apprentice"), as well as "Star Trek" and popular spy shows of the 1960's. Strait-jacket was just another of his morbid little audience-teasers.
Twenty years on, grown-up Carol (now Diane Baker) is awaiting her mother's release from the asylum she's been in for the past decade or so. She has been living on a farm with her Uncle Bill and his wife (Leif Erickson and Rochelle Hudson—she was one of the kids in Wild Boys of the Road), who have raised her like her own. But the loss of her mother has shadowed her past and, as she tells her beau, rich-guy Michael Fields (John Anthony Hayes), she is looking forward to seeing her Mother again, but not without a little trepidation. Mom is, after all, a convicted ax-murderer. What can possibly go wrong...living on a farm and all?
"Cut...cut...CUT-lery!"
Meanwhile, Lucy tries to keep it under control. But it's tough-going. First, she still feels unsure about being out of the (whispers) "you-know-where" and resists the urge to go back. Then, Carol starts all this "remember when" jazz, then there's that weird farm-hand named Krause (Academy Award-winner George Kennedy, in his early "snaggle-tooth" phase), who always sounds like he's making a threat, then there's the voices she starts to hear—that weird nursery rhyme kids are singing about ax-murders. If those kids don't stop, heads will ROLL...no, no, better not say that!
Then, there are the nightmares...(or ARE THEY?). One night, Lucy wakes up, only to find two severed heads on the pillow next to her and an ax within reach. Screaming, she wakes up Uncle Bill...but (of course) when they enter her room, there is no evidence of heads or of ax. Maybe Lucy is just losing her own head.
She won't be alone. Lucy is so unstrung that she starts drinking and acts rather aggressively towards Carol's beau, which leaves her quite miffed and Lucy unstable. She is visited by her shrink from the asylum who suggests that maybe things are moving too fast and that Lucy should probably come back to the asylum. Lucy runs off and the doc repeats his fears to Carol. They start to search for Lucy, but when the doc starts rummaging around the barn, he is murdered with a swift blow from an ax.
He had to work for it, though. Joan Blondell was originally to star, but had to bow out due to an accident. Crawford came in and insisted on script-changes, including a new epilogue that undercut the way Castle wanted to end it, and had other demands as well, such as having her psychiatrist played by Pepsi-Cola Vice-President (Joan had married the President). It wasn't as if heads would roll if she didn't get her way, but Castle didn't mind her little interferences. He was getting a performance that would pack the theaters, and if there was some controversy, it just helped the picture.
Just another money-maker for William Castle.
Castle tags his film with a ®-slashing joke.
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