Strait-Jacket *** (1964, Joan Crawford, Diane Baker, Leif Erickson, Howard St John, John Anthony Hayes, Rochelle Hudson, George Kennedy, Edith Atwater) – Classic Movie Review 3251

‘Tina, bring me the axe’. Joan Crawford stars in the 1964 horror movie Strait-Jacket as an axe-wielding killer.

Producer-director William Castle casts the great Joan Crawford, aged 59 in 1964, who follows up her success in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) by eagerly pursuing the horror trail as an axe-wielding killer, just the sort of movie role she could relish and get her teeth into.

Strait-Jacket is a full-blooded, frantic shocker from the type-writer or perhaps pen of screen-writer Robert (Psycho) Bloch, in which Lucy Harbin (Crawford) is freed from jail at an asylum after 20 years for hacking her husband and his lover to death in a crime of passion.

After Lucy is released by her doctor, Dr Anderson (Mitchell Cox), her brother Bill Cutler (Leif Erickson) takes her back to her farm where he lives with his wife Emily (Rochelle Hudson) and Lucy’s estranged daughter Carol (Diane Baker), who witnessed the murders.

Lucy meets Carol and finds she is going steady with the wealthy Michael Fields (John Anthony Hayes). Lucy starts having nightmares after hearing children singing a bad song about her. When Dr Anderson visits, he finds Lucy is unbalanced and wants to take her back to the asylum…

And of course soon there’s a series of similar killings. Could it be Lucy Harbin at bloody work all over again? It also stars Howard St John as Raymond Fields, with George Kennedy and Edith Atwater.

It is typical of producer Castle’s morbid sense of humour that the Columbia Pictures lady appears beheaded in the final credits. And it is typical of producer Castle’s flashy showmanship that he gave audiences cardboard axes in cinemas and advertised the movie as: ‘When the axe swings, the excitement begins.’

Strait-Jacket is the film debut of the then 23-year-old Lee Majors, who landed the small role of Lucy Harbin’s husband in a flashback scene after Rock Hudson asked Castle to find a part for him. Also in the cast are Patricia Crest, Howard Hoffman, Lynn Lundgren and Robert Ward.

Mommie Dearest (1981) depicts Christina Crawford’s adoptive mother Joan Crawford as abusive and manipulative. Joan Crawford (Faye Dunaway): ‘Tina, bring me the axe’.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 3251

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