Strait-Jacket

Rating:
Summary: Castle and Crawford - What a Pair!
Review: You can't have a better campfest and good time than with "Strait-Jacket." I saw it on television as a little girl and would say it's good fun for all ages; I remember laughing at the same bits then. Joan Crawford stars as Lucy Harbin, a woman who has just been released from an asylum for killing her husband and his girlfriend with an axe. She is now planning to reunite with daughter Diane Baker who had witnessed the brutal slaying as a child. Everything is going smoothly...until heads start rolling again (literally).

Although the story is played straight, it is so completely over the top that it's delicious. First of all, William Castle was the king of fun, a real showman, and in this case, he doesn't skimp. The bodies and heads are clearly phony like a child's game, and to say Crawford chews scenery is putting it mildly. She is nonetheless effecting -- a true movie star who is always watchable. Diane Baker is fine as the daughter and Rochelle Hudson stars as Diane's aunt. Hudson was the doe-eyed love interest in the Shirley Temple film "Curly Top."

The extras, for once, are almost as much fun as the film and perfect complements. The interview with Diane Baker, who recalls her experience working with Crawford on the set, is wonderful as are the bits about William Castle and the takes of Joan. Highly recommended!

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: 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.