Strait-Jacket (1964)

It's October. Guess I'd better start paying attention to horror movies. 

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.

Look at the poster; it screeches "WARNING! Strait-Jacket vividly depicts ax murders!" Warning? More like "Come and Watch, Suckers!" And from the beginning, Castle starts with the double ax murder that lands Lucy Harbin (Joan Crawford) in an insane asylum for twenty years punctuated with blasts of electro-shock therapy. Harbin comes home unexpectedly to catch her husband (Lee Majors...Lee Majors?) and his mistress together—and clothed—in bed together. She snaps, and grabs a nearby—handily nearby—ax and decapitates, then dismembers the sleeping lovers, all this in front of her 3 year old daughter Carol. 

EE-yikes. "Mommy Dearest". "No more wires hangers" are nothing compared to an ax murder. 

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.

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?

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!"

"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.

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.

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.

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (Robert Aldrich, 1962) As if Sunset Blvd wasn't perverse enough, Robert Aldrich took the 1960 novel by Harry Farrell and turned it into the Grandest of Guignol's about the passing of Hollywood glamour with two of the greatest stars of the past pitted against each other in a battle for screen supremacy. Reportedly, the filming was contentious as both Bette Davis and Joan Crawford despised each other and didn't care who knew it. That vehemence inspired two very overheated performances that reached deep into both ladies' bags of tricks—Davis' over the top Jane, and Crawford's long-suffering Blanche. Whatever one may think of the picture, no one can't resist looking at a train-wreck...in the middle of a cage-match. And director Aldrich, who could be counted on to make his own fireworks when he needed to, merely had to turn on the camera and watch the material boil over.

And, on occasion, keep it from exploding.

Cautionary placard for ticket-buyers of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

The Hudson family is riding a financial success in 1917, as their daughter "Baby Jane" is a beloved silent film star and doing stage appearances to promote her marketable likeness in the "Baby Jane" doll. America's little sweetheart, however, is, away from the spotlight, a spoiled-rotten brat who dominates the family who give in to her every whim and tantrum to keep the money coming in. Her sister Blanche can only look on and seethe in jealousy.

Cut to 1935. Both Blanche and Jane are appearing in films now, although Blanche's fortunes have eclipsed Jane's and the older film star is drinking to drown her sorrows. But a deliberate auto accident by one against the other reverses all fortunes.

It's modern times (1962) and both sisters live in a Los Angeles mansion in Los Angeles, Blanche (Crawford), confined to a wheelchair from the car accident, watching her old movies on television and reliving her past. Jane (Davis), meanwhile, is still drinking heavily, bitter, and delusional enough that she's teetering on the edge of a psychotic split. Jane is Blanche's "caretaker," with as opposite a definition of "care" as possible. It being 1962, movies didn't show everything involved in caring for a paraplegic, so it's limited to Jane's preparing and bringing of meals. But, in Jane's resentful state, what she uses for protein becomes more than questionable.

What she doesn't make for Blanche is pancakes, presumably because that is what she seems to be using for make-up.

Jane dresses up in woman-sized girly dresses and cakes on the foundation in an attempt to look younger* and acts like a coquettish child while interacting with strangers, but, once you get to know her, she turns into a harridan, dropping the act. Her viciousness is no act, however, and it's escalating, the further she gets away from her fabled childhood and her own dreams of Hollywood success. But Jane is used to getting her way, combined with a twisted guilt for her sister's paralysis, as she was black-out drunk when the crippling accident occurred. 

While Blanche is basically confined to the upstairs, Jane has the run of the house and takes delight in taking any joy she can from Blanche's existence. It is merely the presence of a housekeeper (Maidie Norman) that keeps Jane's more extreme activities in check, and she is beginning to resent it.

It's a battle for control between the two sisters, with Blanche seemingly at the disadvantage. But, she has control of the house, and when she announces to Jane that she intends to sell it, Jane ramps up the abuse, locking Blanche in her room, tossing out her mail and restricting access to the outside world by means of disabling their telephone. Particularly venomous are Jane's manipulation of her sister's meals, at one point using her pet parakeet as an entree, while at the same time living under the illusion that she can revive her career with personal appearances.

But, the public has long forgotten Baby Jane.

Blanche, on the other hand, defends her sister, no matter what cruelty is inflicted on her. Her long-suffering victim-hood has its own deep origins in that accident in ways that are not obvious on the outside.

It is an extraordinary, squirm-inducing example of bat-shit-crazy film-making, with an extra level of cruelty than the usual hard edge Aldrich put on his films as the two sisters have a battle of wills that almost guarantees mutually assure destruction. It has a sardonic nastiness reminiscent of Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

It would almost be unwatchable if it weren't for the two actors involved in the struggle (which spilled over to their antics against each other on-set). The casting is key with Davis and Crawford in opposite corners, diametrically opposed in both technique and performance goals, with Crawford falling back on her woman-martyr characterizations and Davis careening in the opposite direction going for manic intensity. Given how the film plays out, it shouldn't work, but both actresses can't help give it their all for screen-domination. It is one of the miracles of casting that couldn't be more ideal.

"We're getting along. Really, we are."

Although she seemed far more stable, there are rumors than "Baby Jane Hudson" was based on 

Diana Serra Carey, who starred in silent pictures as "Baby Peggy"

* When Davis' daughter saw her "Baby Jane" make-up, she reportedly said: "Oh, Mother, you've gone too far this time!"

The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1937)

The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (Richard Boleslawksi and Dorothy Arzner, 1937) Remake of the 1928 stage adaptation with Norma Shearer and Basil Rathbone, this one has a little bit more of the star-wattage of M-G-M behind it with Joan Crawford (rarely better) as well as William Powell, Robert Montgomery, Frank Morgan, Nigel Bruce and Jessie Ralph. 

The movie starts stodgily with Montgomery's Lord Arthur Dilling meeting and becoming entranced with widower Mrs. Fay Cheyney (Crawford) on a transatlantic sail. He's intrigued that she takes a fancy to the equally rich, more elderly (and more susceptible) Lord Francis Kelton (Morgan), and keeps an eye on her when they disembark, for though he's smitten, he's curious to see if she might be a gold-digger.

She's not. She's an international jewel-thief in cahoots with Charles (William Powell), the man posing as her butler.  

It's hard to pin-point, but around the time the cast all gets together at the estate of Lady Embley (Ralph) after a charity event, the tone suddenly lightens and everybody, especially Montgomery, get several notches better. Now, at some point, the original assigned director Richard Boleslawski died of a heart attack, to be replaced by Hollywood's only working female director at the time, Dorothy Arzner, and while one is hesitant to say this is entirely due to a change in directors, it is unarguable that the film starts to take off, whereas before it has a strained and stuffy feeling to it. Maybe, it's the presence of Powell—though it's doubtful because Crawford starts to light up, too—maybe because the entire cast is pinging off each other, there's more cross-talk between them and more energy zapping between each and every player. Maybe it's the script because the last half is where the change-up's, turn-around's and surprises in character and situations are clustered, a perfect case of the tail wagging the dog (without a chase, explosion or clinch to be seen). But it makes one want to check out Dorothy Arzner, the lone woman in the field (besides Leni Riefenstahl) to be making films at the time. Not to be sexist or anything, but it does make a difference.