StraightJacket

Straight-Jacket (1964)

This movie is the heart-warming story of a mother and daughter brought back together after being apart for 20 years. Of course they were apart because the mother came home early one night and found her husband in bed with another woman and took an axe to him and his girlfriend, in front of her daughter no less. And of course being completely insane she was sent to the nut house for a couple of decades. But all is forgiven as her daughter welcomes her home, well actually to their new home in California (too many bad memories back home). Carol, the daughter, is engaged to the son of a well to do family and is anxious for her mother, Lucy to meet everyone. But it seems that maybe Lucy isn’t as cured as she would like everyone to think she is. See someone has broken out the axe again to settle some disputes.

This is another of the movies from the William Castle Film Collection and is one of the few Castle flicks that I hadn’t already seen before getting this to review. I have to say that the movie is a blast. The action starts off right away with Lucy doing away with her cheating husband in a rather gruesome (for 1964) profile shot of her loping his head off with an axe. Then we get a nice montage setting up the fact that she was put away in a sanitarium and that her daughter was adopted by her aunt and uncle. Then the action moves forward 20 or so years with Lucy getting released and after a brief bit of getting to know each other the killings start again. The plot is a bit silly and Joan Crawford is chewing up the scenery in an overly melodramatic performance. But that just adds to the already cheesy and campy vibe of the movie. I suppose that if you were trying to take this movie seriously then you might be disappointed. But why anyone would want to do that I can’t understand. I mean you would be totally missing the point of why Straight-Jacket is such a great movie. This is the kind of movie that needs to be enjoyed for the goofy silliness that it embraces from the very start. Especially now some 45 years later when the special effects aren’t all that shocking to an audience that has seen much worse.

Speaking of special effects I do want to mention the murders. You get a couple of nicely done beheadings shown as a shadow, and one particularly fun beheading actually shown on screen. Now I’ll admit the stuff you see on screen is pretty fake looking, but damn it this movie was made in 1964 and for that decade this is some pretty shocking stuff! I also have fun with the effect towards the end that is part of the twist. I can’t really say more than that without spoiling things.

Before I go I did want to mention to everyone that they need to keep an eye out for a very young George Kennedy in one of his earliest roles. If that weren’t enough for you check keep an eye out for Lee Majors as the unfaithful husband at the beginning of the movie. Seriously I had such a good time with this movie that I have to recommend both it and the William Castle collection to everyone.

3 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer