Whatever Happened to Babe Insane?

When you watch a Joan Crawford movie, you know you're in for histrionics and scenery chewing and Strait-Jacket has them in spades. Joan screeches, swaggers and swings her way through this cannonball of a film as only she can. Playing a woman emerging from an insane asylum 20 years after decapitating her second husband, she alternates between meek and ashamed and boozy and blowsy with reckless abandon.

Joan Crawford is a woman possessed by a self assurance of the highest order. You can see it in the way she carries herself in every scene, acting like she owns the film and is the sexiest movie star ever to grace the silver screen. She's ferocious and hungry for blood and has the best grimace I think I've ever seen. A truly horrifying actress playing a truly horrifying person in a very bizarre film.

It was directed and produced by William Castle, the man behind "The Tingler" and other gimmicky movies of the 50s and 60s, and it shows his flair for grabbing the audience's attention from the very beginning. It starts with blood curdling screams and quickly follows that up with infidelity, a grisly murder and strait-jacket mayhem. From there, it flashes forward 20 years as Joan attempts to re-enter proper society, moving in with her daughter, brother and sister-in-law. Everywhere she looks there are reminders of her past crime - chickens being decapitated, pigs being fattened for slaughter, numerous busts in her daughter's art studio. And the blades! Knives and axes litter the farm, tempting her at every turn. It was campy and stupid but utterly watchable all the way through to the Scooby-Doo ending where everything is nicely explained to the audience.

I like those explanations. So many modern movies leave it up to the audience to figure out what is going on and what the motives are with Strait-Jacket there was no thinking required. It's nice to sit back and have it all laid out on a platter and for that I give it an 8. Plus, it was filled with so many memorable scenes. Joan coming on to her daughter's increasingly uncomfortable beau to the point that she started fondling his lips. The grisly (by 1961 standards) beheading in the slaughterhouse. And my favorite scene of all of 2009 - Joan Crawford defiantly lighting a match by striking it on a spinning record causing it to screech to a halt as she lights her cigarette. Movie magic.