Review – Straight-Jacket

This one’s William Castle bad without being William Castle clever. It’s the first movie he did that didn’t have a gimmick of some kind, and without bed-sheet ghosts suspended on wires or joy buzzers hidden in seats, the only draw this picture musters is Joan Crawford fresh from her appearance in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? She plays an axe murderer released from an asylum and reunited with her daughter. Naturally suspicion falls on her when headless corpses start turning up. Unfortunately screenwriter Robert Bloch occasionally suffered – as he does here – from mentor H.P. Lovecraft’s tendency to reveal an obvious ending at the start, so the only real thrill is the vain hope that it won’t turn out the way we all know it’s going to (especially after the heaps of clues so awkwardly telegraphed that they wouldn’t fool a five year old). At the end of the end credits the Columbia Pictures logo is beheaded, which is as close to entertaining as this picture ever gets. Mildly amusing