Strait-Jacket

In 1982, Robert Bloch would publish a sequel to his novel Psycho that satirized the slasher movie trend, while taking a meta approach to the story, having Norman Bates go to Hollywood to stop production of a movie based on his life. While he was writing that novel, Universal would also decide to make a sequel to Psycho the movie, but it would be unrelated to Bloch's novel. It would be about Bates getting out after 23 years and struggling to hold his sanity as things around him make him (and the audience) wonder if he's cracking or being gaslit. Bloch famously disavowed the sequel and turned down any and all overtures from Universal to be part of it. I bring this up because I find Block's anger towards the cinematic Psycho II amusing, when Strait-Jacket -- a screenplay Bloch wrote -- is basically Psycho II. I don't know if he ever noticed the similarities, but I did as I watched this. Unfortunately, it isn't to Strait-Jacket's favor. Strait-Jacket is about Lucy, who, after seeing her husband with another woman, goes nuts and decapitates them with an axe, which is witnessed by her daughter Carol. 20 years later, she's been released from a mental hospital and is coming home to rebuild her life and a relationship with her daughter, but things keep popping up that remind her of her past. And murders start happening. Strait-Jacket isn't 1:1 with Psycho II, obviously. Psycho II was very much Norman's story, as he tries to withstand persecution from Lila Crane, a community that doesn't trust him, and whether he can trust his own mind. Strait-Jacket adds Carol, who desperately wants a relationship with the mother she lost. Lucy's struggle to live with what she'd done and move on, and Carol's need to recapture what she lost, show two different sides of what trauma can do to people. There is a fascinating pair of stories and deep themes to explore about generational trauma and regret, and fairly often, Joan Crawford as Lucy and Diane Baker as Carol capture those themes. Crawford chews scenery in the best way, starting meek and hesitant to even put a toe in the water, until her barely-intact hold on sanity crumbles; Crawford gets to show all sorts of sides at that point, from a vamping older sexpot trying to pretend the years haven't gone by, to raving and paranoia. Baker starts off portraying Carol as dewy-eyed and innocent, a simple farm girl with a boyfriend. But as time rolls on, her desperation comes through, and what seems like naive enthusiasm becomes a pathological need. These two are the pillars holding up Strait-Jacket, keeping it from becoming a tacky B-movie more interested in shock value than storytelling. The problem, though, is that this is a constant struggle, and they don't always win. Strait-Jacket's acting and writing have excellent pedigrees, but in the director's chair is B-movie schlockmeister extraordinaire William Castle. If that sounds like an insult, it isn't; sometimes, a B-movie that has no grander intentions than going for the jugular is what the doctor ordered, and that is most certainly Castle's legacy. But Castle's low-budget, lizard brain-stimulating sensibilities are in direct opposition to Bloch's psychology-driven script. All too often, the struggle is on the screen, with the movie giving in to the baser impulses and clichés of filmmaking. Castle goes for tell-not-show, when the story is begging for the opposite approach (quite literally in the movie's denouement). I don't want to say "Hitchcock could've done it better" because, duh, no shit he could've, he's Alfred Hitchcock, but that’s just it; somebody, almost anybody, could've threaded the needle better than Castle. This story demanded a surgeon's delicacy, and he applied a boxer's bluntness. That's not to say this is a bad movie. Strait-Jacket has its own weird charm to it. It is decidedly quaint by today's standards, of course; what was shocking in 1964 won't move any but the tightest of pearl clutchers' needles in 2025. That's not a bad thing; it allows the "shocking" moments to exist within the movie, rather than be these stand-out moments that probably felt more jarring at the time. As I said, Baker and Crawford are fantastic, and they keep the movie from lapsing into full-on cheese, giving these people and their story actual heft. It's just not the amount of heft this story deserves.