BY FRED BLOSSER
Two
1960s murder thrillers with Joan Crawford have been released by Mill Creek
Entertainment on single-disc Blu-ray. The cover sleeve bills the package as a “Psycho Biddy Double
Feature.†The films are “Strait-Jacketâ€
(1964), the first of Crawford’s three pictures with producer-director William
Castle, and “Berserk!†(1967), her first of two with producer Herman
Cohen. In using the possibly ageist and
definitely sexist phrase “Psycho Biddy,†Mill Creek’s marketing department
clearly hopes that audiences will have fond memories of the frenzied, middle-aged
Joan Crawford in 1981’s “Mommie Dearest,†shrieking “I told you! No . . . wire . . . hangers -- ever!†at her
terrified adopted child, Christina. Never mind that the belittling term “biddy†is problematic in the case
of Joan Crawford. There may be plenty of
biddies in the world, but the imperious Joan was never one of them. Never mind either that it was Faye Dunaway
impersonating Joan Crawford in “Mommie Dearest,†not Crawford herself. For most casual movie fans, the distinctions
are not likely to matter.
In
“Strait-Jacket,†scripted by Robert Bloch, prosperous farm owner Lucy Harbin
(Crawford) returns unexpectedly from a trip to find her younger husband (Lee
Majors -- his first film role) in bed with another woman. Enraged, Lucy seizes an ax and butchers the
pair as her young daughter Carol watches. Released from a mental institution twenty years later, Lucy is welcomed
home by her brother Bill and her sister-in-law Emily (Leif Erickson and
Rochelle Hudson), who have reared Carol in the meantime. Carol (Diane Baker) encourages her mother to
ease back into a normal routine by looking and dressing as she had, two decades
before. The gray-haired Lucy dons a
black, ‘40s-style wig and trades in her dowdy outfit for a tight dress. The tactic goes awry when Lucy, drinking too
much out of nervousness and getting tipsy, puts a move on Carol’s uptight
boyfriend Michael. More stresses
mount. Lucy hears things, sees things,
and dreads meeting Michael’s even stuffier parents, who are unaware of her
history. As they skip rope outside a
store where Lucy is shopping, two little girls appear to be chanting, “Lucy
Harbin took an ax . . .†Bill’s creepy,
disheveled hired hand, Leo (George Kennedy, almost unrecognizable at first
glance), asks if she wants to use his ax to chop the head off a chicken. Lucy’s therapist drops in for a visit and
observing how tense she is, gravely suggests that she’s at risk of a
relapse. Then one murder occurs,
followed by a second, and evidence points to Lucy.
After
the headlong pace and gruesome CGI of modern slasher movies, even older viewers
are likely to find “Strait-Jacket†quaint at best. A similar production today would probably
wind up as a made-for-cable, “my mom is a murderer†melodrama on the Lifetime
Movie Network. The film’s pacing is
deliberate, and the carnage is low-tech and mostly implied, despite the old
lobby poster’s promise in grand William Castle style that “Strait-Jacket
vividly depicts ax murders!†Although
the restrictions on movie violence had relaxed a little by 1964, and a
melodrama filmed in black-and-white like “Strait-Jacket†might tease the MPAA
standards on mayhem with slightly more success than one photographed in color,
studios were still careful not to push their luck too far. Of the three ax attacks in the film, only one
explicitly shows grievous bodily harm. Even so, with quick editing and minimal gore, the effect is more
impressionistic than realistic. These
days, grislier special effects routinely appear on prime-time TV crime shows.