Rating: 
Summary: Go, Joan!
Review: This William Castle shocker has the best opening EVER! A scream, shattering glass, and Joan Crawford's contorted face filling the screen followed by the announcement "Lucy Harbin was declared insane today!", before abruptly segueuing into brash Jazz music! I guarantee, you will be blinking, and pressing rewind to relish this moment. The film is a schlocky thriller in which an aging Crawford appears to be responsible for a spate of axe murders following her release from an asylum. She has a great role in this, especially in scenes where she tries to turn back the clock by dressing up as a 1940's tart with jangly bangles and jet-black wig. Most memorable is the scene where she gets drunk and tries to seduce her daughter's fiance, but watch out also for the moment when she laconically strikes a match on an LP record as it is playing...another classic moment. The film belongs entirely to Joan, who chews up the scenery in a way echoed by Faye Dunaway's camp performance (as Joan!) in "Mommie Dearest" There are some great scenes involving axe beheadings, and Joan's nightmares in which severed heads appear to haunt her. It's a shame that too many reviews have revealed the ending...try not to let this put you off, the plot is handled with unbelievable bravado, and the climax is great fun. One of Castles best.
Rating: 
Summary: Divine Madness... but she's not ashamed.
Review: Joan's 1960's outout is generally fabulous because it's just so bad, with the notable exception of the eponymous Whatever happened to Baby Jane? Long gone is the sleek, stylish, achingly beautiful Joan of Mildred Pierce, and what takes her place is something akin to a Harpy, all eyebrows and lips and venom. Yet, for all of that, in Strait-Jacket, Joan manages to turn what could so easily have been just another William Castle mediocrity-fest, into a very enjoyable film, via one of her best performances as disaster-plagued farmer's wife, Lucy Harbin. The plot is thin but totally sufficient - Joan murders vile Husband and Mistress, Joan is locked up for 20 years, Joan is released, and more murders take place. Sounds straightforward enough. However, it's the contrast between tender emotion and outright rage that Crawford so beautifully portrays in her role as Lucy that lifts this film out of the ranks of B-Movie and makes it one of Crawford's finest hours. Her supporting cast are perfunctory, with the exception of a strong performance by Diane Baker as Joan's supportive daughter, and the utterly miscast and woeful John Anthony Hayes as Doctor Anderson, a Pepsi-Cola executive who fancied himself an Actor. Thankfully, his part is minute, and doesn't colour any of the scenes in this otherwise fine thriller. If Bette Davis considered herself a better Actress than Crawford, and indeed, for movie fans in general who consider Crawford a lesser being, check this out. In places it's tired and showing its age, but put Joan's performance in a melodrama instead of a schlock horror and you've got an Oscar. Also, the DVD extras are great - the Crawford ax-swinging screen tests are particularly funny :-)
Rating:
Summary: Mommy Dearest Loses her head, and so does everyone else!
Review: This was Joan Crawford's big comeback film and she puts her all into this Camp Classic! If she doesn't get her way heads will roll. Written by Psycho creator Robert Bloch and directed by William Castle, Crawford gives an Academy Award performance in this B horror film. Her daughter played by Diane Baker takes her in after Lucy Harbin (Crawford) gets out of a mental ward after having chopped off the 6,000,000 dollar man's head (Lee Majors).
When her doctor (played by a non-actor Pepsi executive) comes to take her back to the asylum axes and heads again meet each other. We even get some good scenes with a young and non-fat George Kennedy as a lowlife who does his own take on Marie Antoinette.
The DVD version has some classic head-chopping outtakes as well as a "making of Straitjacket" short.
This was 1963 and though the plot and especially the "twist" ending is ridiculous its got some good surrealism that proved a harbinger of better films later in the decade. If you want to see one of the most hilarious Camp Classics this is the one. If you want to see Crawford in a great performance in a less than great role here it is.
Rating:
Summary: SWING ALONG WITH JOAN.....
Review: I gave this movie 5 stars for two reasons: William Castle and Joan Crawford. What a combo! And the movie's pretty good too. 20 years ago, Lucy Harbin caught her husband with another woman and chopped them up with an axe. She gets committed to an asylum for the criminally insane. Now, she's released in her daughter's (Diane Baker) care on a farm with other relatives and wouldn't you just know it---someone's at it again, chopping up the extra characters. Poor Joan tries to please her daughter in every way to make up for lost time---but daughter dearest still wants her to look like she did 20 yrs ago---like Sadie Thompson! Well things just get downright messy and there's more murders and screaming and then it all blows open. Someone's crazy alright but it's not our Joan. The extras on this DVD are great. There's a telling interview with Diane Baker and a costume test for Crawford that's hysterical. But wait till you see the "axe test"!..."Strait-Jacket" is a must have for fans. Joan (as Lucy) gets all dolled up like an aging hooker, jangling her bracelets and vamping it up while she wonders if she's going off her rocker again. Her portrayal is strong and she seems to be having a good time. Highly recommended for Crawford fans and William Castle afficianados. Get it and enjoy it.
Rating:
Summary: Whatever Happened to Mildred Pierce?
Review: Joan Crawford plays Lucy Harbin, a woman who has been institutionalized for 20 years, after having hacked her unfaithful husband and his girlfriend to pieces with an axe. She is reunited with her estranged daughter, Carol (played by Diane Baker, who specialized in playing devious females at the time). Carol encourages her mother to dress like she did 20 years earlier,i.e. flower-printed dresses, jingly charm bracelets, and a black, 40s-style wig. Lucy does, and watch out! In what is my favorite scene in the film, Joan, looking like the world's oldest hooker, comes on to her daughter's handsome YOUNG fiance. It is almost obscene to watch this, but try and take your eyes off the screen! Mysterious axe-murders begin to take place. Joan's psychiatrist, (played by Mitchell Cox, Vice-President of Pepsi!)sleazy farmhand Leonard Kraus, played by George Kennedy, and then Carol's future father-in-law, played by Howard St. John. Naturally, we assume it's Joan, right? Wrong! I won't tell who the real murderer is, but I DID drop a clue earlier on. William Castle directed this Robert "Psycho" Bloch- scripted opus, and it is just what you'd expect from Castle-low-budget, full of cheap shocks, and just plain FUN. Miss Crawford is a hoot to watch, especially in her later films, such as this one. The film also has an entertaining cast, which includes Rochelle Hudson, Leif Ericson, and Edith Atwater, as Carol's bitchy future mother-in-law.
Rating:
Summary: Go, Joan!
Review: This William Castle shocker has the best opening EVER! A scream, shattering glass, and Joan Crawford's contorted face filling the screen followed by the announcement "Lucy Harbin was declared insane today!", before abruptly segueuing into brash Jazz music! I guarantee, you will be blinking, and pressing rewind to relish this moment. The film is a schlocky thriller in which an aging Crawford appears to be responsible for a spate of axe murders following her release from an asylum. She has a great role in this, especially in scenes where she tries to turn back the clock by dressing up as a 1940's tart with jangly bangles and jet-black wig. Most memorable is the scene where she gets drunk and tries to seduce her daughter's fiance, but watch out also for the moment when she laconically strikes a match on an LP record as it is playing...another classic moment. The film belongs entirely to Joan, who chews up the scenery in a way echoed by Faye Dunaway's camp performance (as Joan!) in "Mommie Dearest" There are some great scenes involving axe beheadings, and Joan's nightmares in which severed heads appear to haunt her. It's a shame that too many reviews have revealed the ending...try not to let this put you off, the plot is handled with unbelievable bravado, and the climax is great fun. One of Castles best.
Rating:
Summary: Joan Crawford as Norman Bates
Review: When William Castle (the director of the gimmick classics "The Tingler" and "13 Ghosts") saw Psycho, he liked it so much that he hired the writer (Robert Bloch) to create this gem. Unlike most of Castle's other famous movies, this one doesn't really have a cheesy gimmick, unless you count Joan Crawford decapitating people with an axe as a gimmick. Yes it has definite camp value, but it's a surprisingly well made horror movie that contains many genuinely suspenseful scenes. Joan Crawford's over-the-top performance in this movie is a great example of why she has such a strong cult following today. The DVD is enhanced for widescreens and the print is in very good condition. Although the audio is only mono, it sounds very good. The DVD also contains a very good documentary on the making of this movie titled "Battle Axe".
Rating:
Summary: MOTHER AND DAUGHTER
Review: In watching this movie for the first time in almost 40 years, I found myself wondering why I liked it the first time around and again in re-watching. Joan Crawford was undoubtedly a "star" in the truest sense of the word; in the special features, William Castle and Diane Baker both confirm the many demands and conditions Ms. Crawford placed on the film. Her performance is definitely camp, but watching her play someone yearning for her youth, it hit home how Crawford's real life was shaping into the fall of a movie goddess.
But in the film, notice the strength Crawford and Baker give in their reunion. Without a word, the two actresses strongly display the range of emotions they are both feeling.
Diane Baker, who unlike one reviewer mentioned, had to this point played the innocent young ingenue, e.g. Best of Everything, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and in this one, she capitalizes on this innocence, so that when the venom comes, it's quite a transition. Seeing a young Lee Majors in his pre Big Valley days just reminds me how much time has elapsed!
Castle's films were gawdy, manipulative, but above all, they were entertaining.
Joan Crawford and Diane Baker are to be commended for rising above the inevitable and making this a classic camp film.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating, embarassing, and ultimately sad.
Review: Strait-Jacket was one of my very first Joan Crawford movies. I had seen The Damned Don't Cry, Mildred Pierce, and Baby Jane by the time I was 11 and was absolutely in love with Joan Crawford from seeing her movies on AMC. To me she was the most beautiful, talented, and rather tragic of creatures. Of course, I expected Strait-Jacket to be of the same quality as Baby Jane. What a disappointment it was to me at that time, but now that I look back I see that this film introduced me to another side of Joan Crawford; the rather lonely, sad last years of her life. The Crawford of Baby Jane is remarkably different than the Crawford of Strait-Jacket. Gone are the subtlety and the last remnants of a great beauty that were still apparent in Baby Jane. Gone is the masterful acting of Mildred Pierce, Humoresque, and even Queen Bee. What is left is a tired shell of Joan Crawford, clinging to the last remains of the glamour; the faded star. Of course, Joan's star has never faded, even 25 years after her death. Her fame was just too great to ever really die during her lifetime or generations after. But although Strait-Jacket appears to be nothing more than a cheap B-movie thriller, it is actually a striking look into the fateful last years of a legend. The movie will leave you thinking for a long, long time after you've seen it. The image of Crawford at the end of her career will burn in your mind. You'll be captivated and repelled at the same time, but what will remain is the fascination. Who was Joan Crawford really? Will we ever know?
Rating:
Summary: big fan
Review: Being a Joan Crawford fan I really enjoyed this movie! Of course it doesn't have all the action and effects of horror films today but it is good and simple and fun to watch! Great movie!
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