STRAIT-JACKET (1964)

 

Directed by: William Castle

Screenplay by: Robert Bloch

Starring: Joan Crawford, Diane Baker, Leif Erickson, Howard St. John, John Anthony Hayes, Rochelle Hudson, George Kennedy, Edith Atwater, Mitchell Cox, Lee Majors

93 minutes

(NR - adult language, adult themes, adult situations, violence)

PLOT:

Lucy Harbin has been imprisoned in an insane asylum for twenty years for murdering her husband Frank Harbin and his paramour that night, Stella Fulton, Lucy who decapitated their heads with an ax before indiscriminately wielding it to other parts of their bodies. The murders were witnessed by Lucy and Frank's then adolescent daughter, Carol Harbin, who was eventually adopted by Lucy's brother and his wife, Bill and Emily Cutler. With only a brusque hand named Leo Krause helping, the Cutlers now live on a farm in California, far away from the Harbins' house in Ohio where the murders were committed so that Carol could get away from the public scrutiny of her mother's murderous act. The Board at the asylum, believing she now reformed and well enough on new medications, is releasing Lucy into Bill and Emily's custody, the decision against the advice of Lucy's physician, Dr. Anderson. Carol, an up-and-coming sculptress, is nervously excited about seeing her mother after twenty years. Carol wants to be as open as possible about her mother's situation to others, however she tells only one person not in the know about Lucy, namely her boyfriend, Michael Fields, the son of wealthy dairy owners, Raymond and Alison Fields. As Carol and Michael are planning on getting married, Carol wants no secrets of this nature from Michael. Seeing how scared and depressed her mother looks, Carol wants to brighten her life by transforming her into the young, vivacious woman Carol remembers as her mother. However, that transformation as well as other issues in general life evoke the murders and the incarceration for Lucy, who still seems to be suffering from mental illness exacerbated by these emotional triggers. Eventually, some people within this situation go missing, the collective, with the exception of the perpetrator, not knowing that the missing have been killed by someone wielding an ax. Has Lucy reverted back into her ax murdering ways?

TRAILER: