Horror 2022 Countdown: Strait-Jacket (1964)

Strait-Jacket (1964), dir. William Castle, William Castle Productions 

Moving onto the master of shlock, Willaim Castle and Joan Crawford together! With an axe! No ballyhoo, no skeletons or winking at the camera. No, the gimmick this time out was Joan herself. A big star doing horror?

Lucy Harbin (Crawford) finds her husband Frank (Lee Majors) in bed with another gal. She doesn't take this very well, as the two decapitated bodies would attest. 

Twenty years later, Lucy has been declared not insane and released. Her daughter Carol (Diane Baker), who witnessed the murders, has been living quietly with her aunt and uncle. Lucy seems healthy enough, but she seems prone to hysteria over even the most minor things. 

She flies into a panic when Carol's beau, Michael (John Anthony Hays), stops by for dinner. When she claims to see two severed heads in her bed that night, well, maybe her release from the asylum was a bit premature, maybe?

When bodies start piling up, will Lucy be sent back to the madhouse or is it someone else?

Darn good; if Crawford is the gimmick then Castle uses her like a floating skeleton. She really does knock it out of the park, especially when she stares down her prospective in-laws.