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Strait-Jacket

United States

1964

93 Min
Black and White
1.85:1
English
  • Currently 3.7/5 Stars.
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DIR William Castle

PROD William Castle

SCR Robert Bloch

DP Arthur E. Arling

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

ED Edwin H. Bryant

PROD DES Boris Leven

MUSIC Van Alexander

Synopsis

Lucy Harbin has been in an asylum for 20 years after axing her husband and his mistress during a crime of passion, witnessed by her young daughter, Carol. While trying to renew ties with Carol, who is now a young woman about to be married, heads begin to roll again. Is Lucy repeating her past? —IMDb

Director

Original

William Castle

William Schloss was born in New York City to a Jewish family. Schloss means “castle” in German, and Castle probably chose to translate his surname into English to avoid the discrimination often encountered by Jewish entertainers of his time. He spent most of his teenage years working on Broadway in a number of jobs ranging from set building to acting. This put him in a good stead to become a director, and he left for Hollywood at the age of 23, going on to direct his first film 6 years later. He also worked an as assistant to director Orson Welles, doing much of the second unit location work for Welles’ noir classic, The Lady from Shanghai.

Castle was famous for directing films with many gimmicks which were ambitiously promoted, despite being reasonably low budget B-movies. Five of these were scripted by adventure novelist Robb White. Recently, two of his films have been remade, House on Haunted Hill in 1999, and Thirteen Ghosts in 2001 (the latter retitled Thir13en Ghosts… read more

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João Romeiro

22Dec12

Joan Crawford was perfection in this.

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Andres Pff

27Sep12

didnt see that coming.

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MikeEverleth

3Aug12

Fantastic performance by Joan Crawford who veers from bat-shit crazy to a meek little mouse, sometimes it seems like in the same scene. The mystery isn't hard to solve, especially considering the screenwriter, but is fun enough to go along with the ride. And absolutely love George Kennedy's Boo Radley-like performance.

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Gary Wood

21Jan11

Hands down Mr. Castle's best film. No matter the caricature most people see her as, Joan Crawford is actually very good in this film; sympathetic, creepy, and sad.

Amy and 3 others like this

Matthew Landry, Ryan Clark, Owen Sound

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Ida Lupino, William Castle, FrightFest

By David Hudson on August 26, 2010

"By any standard, [Ida Lupino's] body of work is intriguing, but as a female in sexist mid-century Hollywood, it is particularly remarkable

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