The puzzlement of Tod Slaughter’s films, as even his most enthusiastic fans have to admit, is this: are his peculiar performances enough to let us recommend his movies when “by any objective standard they are cheaply-produced rubbish.” (britishpictures.com) If you want to try one, “Sweeney Todd” should be it.
The long journey of “Sweeney Todd” from blood and thunder stage melodrama to Broadway musical began in an urban legend. One of Sweeney’s stops along the way was a “quota quickie,” a movie made in England on the cheap with at least 75% of the paid cast and crew being English. These came about because of the 1927 Cinematograph Films Act, which was enacted to help the British film industry compete with American movies at home.
Slaughter was born in 1885 so by the time he made “Sweeney Todd,” just his third picture, in 1936, he was already in his 50s. He’d spent his early years on the provincial stage, touring England in the kind of be-whiskered melodramas much beloved by the Victorians and kept alive by shamelessly barnstorming theater companies.
George King, a producer and later director of quota quickies, discovered Slaughter and decided that he would be as successful in films as he was on stage if he performed in the same kind of story, and so cast his new aging star in “Murder in the Red Barn.” It clicked with less demanding audiences and Slaughter began his cinematic reign of terror.
In “Sweeney Todd,” Slaughter plays the title roll of a demented barber in Victorian London who uses a tricked-out barber’s chair to “polish off” his wealthier customers. A gentleman sits in the chair, Todd pulls a lever, and the chair and platform on which it rests swivel backward dropping the victim through a hole in the floor and into the cellar. If the fall doesn’t kill him, Todd soon will.
The barber shop shares its cellar with the shop next to it, Mrs. Lovatt’s bakery of meat pies. The movie never explicitly points out that Mrs. Lovatt (a deliciously pinched-face Stella Rho) cuts up the bodies of Todd’s customers and bakes them into her pies, but several hints are dropped. In one scene, a supporting character is eating one of the pies as he ponders on why the corpses of the murdered men are never seen again. Either cannibalism was a taboo that could never have gotten past the censor or it was assumed that the British public already knew what the Todd/Lovatt connection was.
As the film opens, a solid British sailor named Mark Ingerstreet (Bruce Seton) is being greeted on his return from the sea by Johanna, his one true love (Eve Lister). Unfortunately, Mark sails for Johanna’s father, one of those Victorian paters who would never consider a mere employee to be an acceptable suitor for his daughter’s hand (D.J. Williams).
We see Todd standing in the shadows, watching for a likely customer he can murder and rob. “I love my work,” he cackles, slapping his hands together and wringing them. “Money!” he hisses with all the subtlety of a jackhammer when he sees a wealthy nabob come ashore. Todd invites the man into his shop for a close shave and before dropping him through the hole in the floor, he sends his young apprentice Tobias (Johnny Singer) next door for a pie.
As fate, and melodrama, would have it, Todd knows Johanna’s father and wants to invest in his next voyage. Of course, he also has his beady eyes on Johanna and determines to win her either through wooing or through skullduggery, preferably the latter. (I am reminded of the fella in “You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man” who asks Larson E. Whipsnade (W.C. Fields) if he wants to earn an honest dollar. “Does it have to be honest?” Whipsnade replies.)
Weeks pass and Mark sets out on the very voyage in which Todd has invested. The film now offers a diversionary segment in which the captain of the ship is killed by rampaging natives and Mark assumes command. When he returns to London he has with him a sack of pearls. Todd sees him disembark, lures him to the shop and attempts to kill him. This time, the fall doesn’t “polish him off” and, after Mrs. Lovatt spies Todd stealing the pearls so he won’t have to divvy up with her, she helps Mark to escape.
Mark then decides to disguise himself as an old country farmer and goes back to Sweeney’s shop. He’s dropped into the cellar again and with the assistance of another sailor he figures out exactly how Todd performs his evil deeds.
Now we get to the wild-as-a-March-hare conclusion. Johanna discovers what Mark is up to so she disguises herself as a young boy and goes to Todd’s in case she needs to rescue Mark. Todd figures out who she is, knocks her out, and locks her in the closet. He has already killed Mrs. Lovatt, offstage, and in order to cover up his crimes, he sets fire to the shop.
Back rushes Mark and smashes his way into the building to look for Johanna. As he pulls her from the closet, Todd returns to kill him. Todd ends up in the blazing cellar, Johanna ends up in Mark’s arms, and the ill-gotten gains end up spilled in an alley.
It’s been said that if the Victorians could have made movies, the product would have looked like Tod Slaughter’s pictures. Obviously, there isn’t much in the plot to attract anyone born after 1902 and the production values (except for the costumes) are laughably low. The acting from the supporting players is actually a notch above what you find in poverty row American films of the era—but then there’s Slaughter.
He’s so hammy his performances should have been condemned in Leviticus. His smile is so wide you know his characters have to be faking their bonhomie, and the smile is never reflected in his eyes, which are unmoving and dead. He does a great deal of acting with his hands, double gesturing, wringing, and rubbing palms together. He often speaks in a throaty, raspy whisper that makes him sound like the host of a radio horror series. He doesn’t seem to have figured out that you don’t have to play everything so broadly in front of a camera.
But there’s no denying that the guy is a one-man time machine. Watching him transports you to another era. In fact, you may find yourself hissing the television.
I suppose, though, that the real pleasure comes from watching a performer who seems to genuinely love what he’s doing. I know a critic shouldn’t try to slide by with saying, “I can’t explain it any better than that,” but hell, I can’t explain it any better than that.
Let me go out quoting britishpictures.com once again. “A new generation of fans have stumbled onto his work [seeing it on late night British TV] and asked the question ‘What the bloody hell was that!’"
What indeed.
So is it a good movie? Oh hell no. As a work of cinema, it's abysmal. Okay do I recommend it? I just can't. I want to, but I can't. But if you've read this far, you know I recommend Tod Slaughter. Forget what I say and read what I mean. Seek him out.
Showing posts with label "B" movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label "B" movies. Show all posts
Thursday, May 3, 2007
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
"The Screaming Skull" (1958)
You can tell which schlockfest “B” horror movies manipulate the basic accoutrements of the genre best by the degree to which they scare the bejeezus out of small children, and one of the things that have great power to create a seat-wetting problem is the human skull. You don’t even have to give the ridges over the eyes that Harryhausen touch to make them look more sinister, but it can’t hurt.
I had just turned nine when I saw “The Screaming Skull” (1958) for the first time, and it scared the breath out of me. Almost 50 years later I can still remember being so frightened I couldn’t yell. Ah, those were great times . . . “Macabre” came along later that same year, with “House on Haunted Hill” and “The Tingler” (both 1959) soon to follow. We adolescent horror hounds, readers of “Famous Monsters of Filmland” all, were convinced that William Castle was the greatest filmmaker of all time. Even “Psycho” (1960) couldn’t pull us away as it was a little too adult—but we still read everything by Robert Bloch we could get our sweaty little hands on.
I don’t know if journeyman actor Alex Nicol, who directed “The Screaming Skull” in an effort to expand his career possibilities, could have beaten Castle into our hearts had he continued to make shockers. (Can you imagine a grown man still considering such a question? Neither can I.)
I’ve re-visited TSS several times over the decades. It used to show up on late night TV with some regularity, until even the tube outgrew such hack work, and more than one DVD distributor carries it in the catalogue. No, the original fear is long gone—I wish I knew a nine-year old I could convince to watch it in a dark room just to check out the reaction—but the memory is intact.
In the film, a newly wed couple come to the house the groom lived in with his former wife, the haunting Marion, who died in a sudden thunderstorm when she slipped on a wet leaf and stumbled by the lily pond, cracking her head open on a stone wall and then drowning. I’d think that this plot construct was an accidental reference to Ibsen’s “Rosmersholm” except for the fact that composer Ernest Gold—yes, the same man who would win an Oscar for scoring “Exodus” in 1960—borrows the same brooding Sabbat theme from Berlioz’ “Symphonie Fantastique” Stanley Kubrick used in “The Shining” (1980).
Maybe this movie is smarter than it has any right to be. John Kneubuhl, who would later write the “Pigeons From Hell” episode of Boris Karloff’s TV program “Thriller,” wrote the script based on the legend of the screaming skull of Bettiscomb Manor, in England.
But setting references to classier stuff aside, Eric and Jenni Whitlock attempt to settle into the house. As he introduces her to the grounds, Jenni spots a small outbuilding and asks what it is.
“That’s where Mickey keeps his gardening things,” Eric replies.
“Who’s Mickey?"
“The gardener.”
Or maybe the movie isn’t any smarter than it has to be. But you know that feeling you sometimes get, the feeling that the filmmakers are playing around a little because they know the kids that make up their audience aren’t going to get it, anyway? TSS engenders that feeling often.
Soon, Marion’s great friends, Reverend and Mrs. Snow, drop by for dinner and via some pretty unsubtle dialogue we learn that a) Mickey is still devoted to Marion and thinks her ghost haunts the house and grounds, b) Jenni had a nervous breakdown and was committed to a sanitarium when her parents were killed in an automobile accident, c) she is wealthy, and d) John Hudson, as Eric, is either the most ham-handed actor of the 1950s or he has been directed to make it clear to even the most naïve members of the audience that he wants to gain control of his new wife’s fortune.
Later that night, Jenni awakens to discover that Eric is missing, a window is banging in the wind, and Marion’s self-portrait looks creepy in the moonlight. The next night, this scenario is replayed, only this time Jenni finds a skull in a cabinet. She tosses it out the window, but on her way back to bed she hears a knocking on the door and, yes, it turns out to be the skull.
It’s not much of a spoiler to admit that Eric is behind all the, uh, skullduggery, but whether or not there is a real ghost on his trail I will leave to you to discover for yourself. If you’ve ever read a pulp magazine weird menace story, or watched an episode of “Scooby-Doo,” you’ll have no trouble figuring out the late night mumbo-jumbo.
Hudson, who was Capt. Hobart in “G.I. Blues” (1960) and Virgil Earp in “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” (1957) was certainly a better actor than this script calls for, and I suspect he was playing the evil genius with deadpan irony. Peggy Webber, as Jenni, looks a bit too robust to make a convincing Mrs. de Winter clone. Like almost every other actor in the film, she found her greatest success on TV. Leading roles in movies were out of the question—bless her, she looks like Nicholas Cage in drag, but with heftier boobs.
Russ Conway, who had unremarkable roles in “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” (1962) and “The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” (1967) gives Rev. Snow a quiet, patient demeanor even though he looks fit enough to beat the crap out of Eric. Tony Johnson, as his wife, has no other credits on IMDB.
Director Alex Nicol, who plays Mickey, will be better remembered from his small roles in movies, including “The Man from Laramie” (1955). He later went to Europe to take part in the spaghetti western boom, coming home for a turn as George Barker in Roger Corman’s “Bloody Mama” in 1970.
In TSS he shows a nice camera eye for the clichés of the genre. His camera roams the empty halls of the house, creeping up on certain doors and importing to them a sense of dread that makes us both want to enter and run screaming away. I suspect that the movie would still work its dark magic on young kids, but many of them would be repelled by the questionable acting and black and white photography.
The film exists as a link between gothic chapbooks, dime novels, spooky radio shows, the pulp horror magazines and EC comics, and TV horror shows like “Thriller” and “The Twilight Zone.” Moments in it seem to have influenced Freddie Francis’ “The Skull” (1965), which, since it was based on a story by Robert Bloch, takes us back to where we started.
“The Screaming Skull” can’t possibly scare adults, and unless you saw it when you were young it won’t have any nostalgia appeal. But honestly, I’ve known several grown-ups who did see it back in the day, and they all remember it fondly as one of the scariest movies they’ve ever seen. Maybe we should let it go at that.
I had just turned nine when I saw “The Screaming Skull” (1958) for the first time, and it scared the breath out of me. Almost 50 years later I can still remember being so frightened I couldn’t yell. Ah, those were great times . . . “Macabre” came along later that same year, with “House on Haunted Hill” and “The Tingler” (both 1959) soon to follow. We adolescent horror hounds, readers of “Famous Monsters of Filmland” all, were convinced that William Castle was the greatest filmmaker of all time. Even “Psycho” (1960) couldn’t pull us away as it was a little too adult—but we still read everything by Robert Bloch we could get our sweaty little hands on.
I don’t know if journeyman actor Alex Nicol, who directed “The Screaming Skull” in an effort to expand his career possibilities, could have beaten Castle into our hearts had he continued to make shockers. (Can you imagine a grown man still considering such a question? Neither can I.)
I’ve re-visited TSS several times over the decades. It used to show up on late night TV with some regularity, until even the tube outgrew such hack work, and more than one DVD distributor carries it in the catalogue. No, the original fear is long gone—I wish I knew a nine-year old I could convince to watch it in a dark room just to check out the reaction—but the memory is intact.
In the film, a newly wed couple come to the house the groom lived in with his former wife, the haunting Marion, who died in a sudden thunderstorm when she slipped on a wet leaf and stumbled by the lily pond, cracking her head open on a stone wall and then drowning. I’d think that this plot construct was an accidental reference to Ibsen’s “Rosmersholm” except for the fact that composer Ernest Gold—yes, the same man who would win an Oscar for scoring “Exodus” in 1960—borrows the same brooding Sabbat theme from Berlioz’ “Symphonie Fantastique” Stanley Kubrick used in “The Shining” (1980).
Maybe this movie is smarter than it has any right to be. John Kneubuhl, who would later write the “Pigeons From Hell” episode of Boris Karloff’s TV program “Thriller,” wrote the script based on the legend of the screaming skull of Bettiscomb Manor, in England.
But setting references to classier stuff aside, Eric and Jenni Whitlock attempt to settle into the house. As he introduces her to the grounds, Jenni spots a small outbuilding and asks what it is.
“That’s where Mickey keeps his gardening things,” Eric replies.
“Who’s Mickey?"
“The gardener.”
Or maybe the movie isn’t any smarter than it has to be. But you know that feeling you sometimes get, the feeling that the filmmakers are playing around a little because they know the kids that make up their audience aren’t going to get it, anyway? TSS engenders that feeling often.
Soon, Marion’s great friends, Reverend and Mrs. Snow, drop by for dinner and via some pretty unsubtle dialogue we learn that a) Mickey is still devoted to Marion and thinks her ghost haunts the house and grounds, b) Jenni had a nervous breakdown and was committed to a sanitarium when her parents were killed in an automobile accident, c) she is wealthy, and d) John Hudson, as Eric, is either the most ham-handed actor of the 1950s or he has been directed to make it clear to even the most naïve members of the audience that he wants to gain control of his new wife’s fortune.
Later that night, Jenni awakens to discover that Eric is missing, a window is banging in the wind, and Marion’s self-portrait looks creepy in the moonlight. The next night, this scenario is replayed, only this time Jenni finds a skull in a cabinet. She tosses it out the window, but on her way back to bed she hears a knocking on the door and, yes, it turns out to be the skull.
It’s not much of a spoiler to admit that Eric is behind all the, uh, skullduggery, but whether or not there is a real ghost on his trail I will leave to you to discover for yourself. If you’ve ever read a pulp magazine weird menace story, or watched an episode of “Scooby-Doo,” you’ll have no trouble figuring out the late night mumbo-jumbo.
Hudson, who was Capt. Hobart in “G.I. Blues” (1960) and Virgil Earp in “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” (1957) was certainly a better actor than this script calls for, and I suspect he was playing the evil genius with deadpan irony. Peggy Webber, as Jenni, looks a bit too robust to make a convincing Mrs. de Winter clone. Like almost every other actor in the film, she found her greatest success on TV. Leading roles in movies were out of the question—bless her, she looks like Nicholas Cage in drag, but with heftier boobs.
Russ Conway, who had unremarkable roles in “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” (1962) and “The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” (1967) gives Rev. Snow a quiet, patient demeanor even though he looks fit enough to beat the crap out of Eric. Tony Johnson, as his wife, has no other credits on IMDB.
Director Alex Nicol, who plays Mickey, will be better remembered from his small roles in movies, including “The Man from Laramie” (1955). He later went to Europe to take part in the spaghetti western boom, coming home for a turn as George Barker in Roger Corman’s “Bloody Mama” in 1970.
In TSS he shows a nice camera eye for the clichés of the genre. His camera roams the empty halls of the house, creeping up on certain doors and importing to them a sense of dread that makes us both want to enter and run screaming away. I suspect that the movie would still work its dark magic on young kids, but many of them would be repelled by the questionable acting and black and white photography.
The film exists as a link between gothic chapbooks, dime novels, spooky radio shows, the pulp horror magazines and EC comics, and TV horror shows like “Thriller” and “The Twilight Zone.” Moments in it seem to have influenced Freddie Francis’ “The Skull” (1965), which, since it was based on a story by Robert Bloch, takes us back to where we started.
“The Screaming Skull” can’t possibly scare adults, and unless you saw it when you were young it won’t have any nostalgia appeal. But honestly, I’ve known several grown-ups who did see it back in the day, and they all remember it fondly as one of the scariest movies they’ve ever seen. Maybe we should let it go at that.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
"Strait-Jacket" (1964)
By 1964, the year “Strait-Jacket” was unbuckled and America tried it on for size, producer/director William Castle had a half-dozen horror movies under his ample belt, and none of them were “A” pictures. He’d seen “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” 17 times, pointing to the screen each time while mumbling, “I want one of those.”
He grabbed writer Robert Bloch, whose novel “Psycho” had worked brilliantly for Alfred Hitchcock a few years before—after “Homicidal” in 1961, Castle had broken ties with screenwriter Robb White, who had delivered five of his horror scripts—and Bloch set to work on a story loosely suggested by the Lizzie Borden axe murders of 1892.Bloch was the author of some great short horror stories, a couple of terrific novels, and scores of mediocre scripts. Screenwriting earned him most of his money, but it didn’t produce his most memorable work.
Perhaps Castle saw the approaching wave of “hag horror,” generally “B” creepers starring fading actresses who still had the big name but could no longer command big parts in big movies. He signed Joan Blondell for the role of axe murderess Lucy Harbin. Before shooting began, Blondell had an accident that prevented her from making the movie, and Castle went after one of the stars of “Baby Jane,” Joan Crawford.
Crawford was willing to accept the part, but she demanded cast and script approval. Castle agreed. So arrogant was Crawford, she gave the small role of Dr. Anderson, Lucy’s psychiatrist, to Mitchell Cox, a vice-president of Pepsi Cola, a non-actor but a personal friend, without telling Castle what she was up to. It’s to Cox’ credit that he comes across on screen no worse than many professional actors in “B” horror flicks, and he seems to be having a great time. He’s no Boris Karloff, but he’s no Paris Hilton, either.
Anne Helm was cast in the important role of Lucy’s estranged daughter Carol, but Crawford didn’t like her and out she went. Diane Baker had worked with Crawford in “The Best of Everything” (1959), and with Susan Hayward in “Stolen Hours” (1963), so she knew her way around a diva. Crawford liked her and “suggested” her for the role.
The movie opens with a flashback, a trick Robert Aldrich, the director of “Baby Jane,” would use for his second foray into hag horror, “Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte,” later that year. We see Lucy’s husband (Lee Majors in his first screen role) flirting and drinking with a young woman. He invites her to his house because his wife is out of town and not expected back for a day or two. The adulterer and his lover make a little whoopee, unaware that they are being watched by three-year old Carol (Vicki Cos).
Then Lucy comes home early.Crawford makes her first entrance in a way that she must have loved. The camera is aimed at the steps that come down from the passenger car of a train. When Crawford steps into the frame, all we see are her legs—and nice looking gams they are still for the 58-year old former dancer. The shot also gives us our first dose of Robert Bloch’s signature black humor. Stenciled above the steps, just below Lucy’s feet, is the admonition “Watch your step.” Listen, too, for lines like “She’s dying to meet you,” and “Sanity is relative.”
When Lucy returns to her house, she finds hubby and his gal in bed. Shocked, she stumbles from the house and trips over a tree stump, imbedded in which is an axe. Bracelets jangling, she pulls the axe from the wood and goes back into the house. We see the outlines of the sleeping lovers in shadows on the wall as Lucy hoists the axe above her head and takes off each of theirs with two manic blows. She then goes to work in earnest.
There is absolutely nothing realistic about these murders. The heads are severed from the bodies too easily and there is no blood splatter as Lucy whacks away. Since Castle cuts a couple of times to close-ups of Carol’s terrified face, maybe we are seeing the crime as the little girl saw it, with full emphasis on her mother.
Okay, Lucy goes to an asylum and Carol is sent to live with her mother’s brother (an amusingly jovial Leif Erickson) and his pinch-mouthed wife (Rochelle Hudson) on a farm somewhere in the Midwest. (Bloch has more fun by letting us know that Lucy’s maiden name was “Cutler.”)
Twenty years later, Lucy is declared sane and she comes to live with the Cutlers and Carol. Carol shows her around the farm and you have everything you need to know to plot the rest of the picture yourself by the 20 minute mark.
Carol decides, in a move reminiscent of “Vertigo,” to re-make her dowdy mom in the image of what she was when she wielded the chopper. Lucy starts wearing loud print dresses, dangling bracelets, and a black wig with a mid-‘40s hairstyle. Then she begins hearing voices chanting “Lucy Harbin took an axe and gave her husband 40 whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave his girl friend 41.”
One night she wakes to find two disembodied heads and a gory axe in her bed. Not too surprisingly, she takes to drinking a wee bit too much.
On the afternoon she meets Carol’s fiancé Michael (John Anthony Hayes), Lucy gets tight and flirts shamelessly with the younger man. This scene is the most memorable for viewers who like the picture for the wrong reasons—i.e., its camp value—as Crawford pulls out all the stops. She drapes herself over Hayes and even runs her fingertips around and between his lips. This was apparently not in the script nor the direction, and Hayes wondered what God had wrought, and he wondered it in a big way.
To make matters worse, Lucy’s psychiatrist, Dr. Anderson, shows up on his way to a fishing trip and the former patient gets upset. Lucy runs off and the doctor goes outside to look around. He soon looses his head over the place to the accompaniment of the sound of jangling bracelets.
Handyman Leo Krause (a wonderfully dim and degenerate George Kennedy) finds the doctor’s abandoned car and blackmails Carol into letting him keep it. He, too, is soon headed off, and then the film rushes to its conclusion with villainy revealed and honesty triumphant.
You don’t really know the movie is working as well as it is until you get to the murders and find yourself growing apprehensive. Castle’s best moment comes in a scene that finds Lucy watching Leo decapitate a chicken. The sound of the spinning blades on the weather vane builds throughout the brief scene until it reminds you of the jangling of Lucy’s bracelets. By the final reel, every time someone bends slightly at the waist, you expect an axe to enter the frame.
I suspect the participants had four ways of looking at “Strait-Jacket.” Crawford saw it as a star vehicle, while the supporting cast saw it as a paycheck. Castle saw it as an entry to “A” filmmaking, and Bloch saw it as a huge, sick joke. Viewers today don’t care much about what the supporting cast thought. Castle was wrong, while Crawford and Bloch were dead right—especially Bloch. It’s in the joke that the film is still most enjoyable.
Sadly, as a vehicle for Crawford, it’s really just the first step toward “Trog,” and there’s nothing funny about that.
dgb
He grabbed writer Robert Bloch, whose novel “Psycho” had worked brilliantly for Alfred Hitchcock a few years before—after “Homicidal” in 1961, Castle had broken ties with screenwriter Robb White, who had delivered five of his horror scripts—and Bloch set to work on a story loosely suggested by the Lizzie Borden axe murders of 1892.Bloch was the author of some great short horror stories, a couple of terrific novels, and scores of mediocre scripts. Screenwriting earned him most of his money, but it didn’t produce his most memorable work.
Perhaps Castle saw the approaching wave of “hag horror,” generally “B” creepers starring fading actresses who still had the big name but could no longer command big parts in big movies. He signed Joan Blondell for the role of axe murderess Lucy Harbin. Before shooting began, Blondell had an accident that prevented her from making the movie, and Castle went after one of the stars of “Baby Jane,” Joan Crawford.
Crawford was willing to accept the part, but she demanded cast and script approval. Castle agreed. So arrogant was Crawford, she gave the small role of Dr. Anderson, Lucy’s psychiatrist, to Mitchell Cox, a vice-president of Pepsi Cola, a non-actor but a personal friend, without telling Castle what she was up to. It’s to Cox’ credit that he comes across on screen no worse than many professional actors in “B” horror flicks, and he seems to be having a great time. He’s no Boris Karloff, but he’s no Paris Hilton, either.
Anne Helm was cast in the important role of Lucy’s estranged daughter Carol, but Crawford didn’t like her and out she went. Diane Baker had worked with Crawford in “The Best of Everything” (1959), and with Susan Hayward in “Stolen Hours” (1963), so she knew her way around a diva. Crawford liked her and “suggested” her for the role.
The movie opens with a flashback, a trick Robert Aldrich, the director of “Baby Jane,” would use for his second foray into hag horror, “Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte,” later that year. We see Lucy’s husband (Lee Majors in his first screen role) flirting and drinking with a young woman. He invites her to his house because his wife is out of town and not expected back for a day or two. The adulterer and his lover make a little whoopee, unaware that they are being watched by three-year old Carol (Vicki Cos).
Then Lucy comes home early.Crawford makes her first entrance in a way that she must have loved. The camera is aimed at the steps that come down from the passenger car of a train. When Crawford steps into the frame, all we see are her legs—and nice looking gams they are still for the 58-year old former dancer. The shot also gives us our first dose of Robert Bloch’s signature black humor. Stenciled above the steps, just below Lucy’s feet, is the admonition “Watch your step.” Listen, too, for lines like “She’s dying to meet you,” and “Sanity is relative.”
When Lucy returns to her house, she finds hubby and his gal in bed. Shocked, she stumbles from the house and trips over a tree stump, imbedded in which is an axe. Bracelets jangling, she pulls the axe from the wood and goes back into the house. We see the outlines of the sleeping lovers in shadows on the wall as Lucy hoists the axe above her head and takes off each of theirs with two manic blows. She then goes to work in earnest.
There is absolutely nothing realistic about these murders. The heads are severed from the bodies too easily and there is no blood splatter as Lucy whacks away. Since Castle cuts a couple of times to close-ups of Carol’s terrified face, maybe we are seeing the crime as the little girl saw it, with full emphasis on her mother.
Okay, Lucy goes to an asylum and Carol is sent to live with her mother’s brother (an amusingly jovial Leif Erickson) and his pinch-mouthed wife (Rochelle Hudson) on a farm somewhere in the Midwest. (Bloch has more fun by letting us know that Lucy’s maiden name was “Cutler.”)
Twenty years later, Lucy is declared sane and she comes to live with the Cutlers and Carol. Carol shows her around the farm and you have everything you need to know to plot the rest of the picture yourself by the 20 minute mark.
Carol decides, in a move reminiscent of “Vertigo,” to re-make her dowdy mom in the image of what she was when she wielded the chopper. Lucy starts wearing loud print dresses, dangling bracelets, and a black wig with a mid-‘40s hairstyle. Then she begins hearing voices chanting “Lucy Harbin took an axe and gave her husband 40 whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave his girl friend 41.”
One night she wakes to find two disembodied heads and a gory axe in her bed. Not too surprisingly, she takes to drinking a wee bit too much.
On the afternoon she meets Carol’s fiancé Michael (John Anthony Hayes), Lucy gets tight and flirts shamelessly with the younger man. This scene is the most memorable for viewers who like the picture for the wrong reasons—i.e., its camp value—as Crawford pulls out all the stops. She drapes herself over Hayes and even runs her fingertips around and between his lips. This was apparently not in the script nor the direction, and Hayes wondered what God had wrought, and he wondered it in a big way.
To make matters worse, Lucy’s psychiatrist, Dr. Anderson, shows up on his way to a fishing trip and the former patient gets upset. Lucy runs off and the doctor goes outside to look around. He soon looses his head over the place to the accompaniment of the sound of jangling bracelets.
Handyman Leo Krause (a wonderfully dim and degenerate George Kennedy) finds the doctor’s abandoned car and blackmails Carol into letting him keep it. He, too, is soon headed off, and then the film rushes to its conclusion with villainy revealed and honesty triumphant.
You don’t really know the movie is working as well as it is until you get to the murders and find yourself growing apprehensive. Castle’s best moment comes in a scene that finds Lucy watching Leo decapitate a chicken. The sound of the spinning blades on the weather vane builds throughout the brief scene until it reminds you of the jangling of Lucy’s bracelets. By the final reel, every time someone bends slightly at the waist, you expect an axe to enter the frame.
I suspect the participants had four ways of looking at “Strait-Jacket.” Crawford saw it as a star vehicle, while the supporting cast saw it as a paycheck. Castle saw it as an entry to “A” filmmaking, and Bloch saw it as a huge, sick joke. Viewers today don’t care much about what the supporting cast thought. Castle was wrong, while Crawford and Bloch were dead right—especially Bloch. It’s in the joke that the film is still most enjoyable.
Sadly, as a vehicle for Crawford, it’s really just the first step toward “Trog,” and there’s nothing funny about that.
dgb
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)