From my previous reviews, some may get the impression that I’m a shameless William Castle apologist. True, I may be amongst his most rabid admirers but I’m not an unthinking fanatic. Castle had his share of misses, and I’ll not be dissuaded by sentimentality from calling them such. I’m sorry, but this film is a dog.

The fault for this lies not with Castle himself, per se, but with his choice of star. Joan Crawford was a horrible actress, and I really don’t care who says different . A shrieking, flailing, manic shrew-woman, her performances display all the subtlety of a brickbat to the skull. (I’m beginning to see why she’s so popular with drag queens.) In this film, she’s barely able to ask what time it is without launching into histrionics.

Unfortunately, Castle must bear the blame for casting her. He is a little off his game this time out. The oh so important Castle opening is a clumsy montage which serves to spoon-feed us the exposition. The effects are nothing to write home about; when Crawford hacks up her hubby, she’s obviously decapitating a mannequin. The cinematography possesses Castle’s usual crisp black & white panache, but it totally lacks the ambience of his previous work. This has to do with the rather flat locale. Though well filmed, it‘s pretty much impossible to give a bustling farm the same aura of dread as a haunted house or gothic mansion. This is not to say the film is totally flat. There are some very cool scenes, such as when Crawford finds the severed noggins of her victims waiting for her in bed. (Talk about getting a little head, Ha ha ha ha ha…    ...sorry.)

Castle’s use of expressionist style oil paintings during the opening credits is also a very nice touch.

The screenplay for the film is rather weak. Robert Bloch (yes, the Robert Bloch) penned the original script. However, his work was reportedly butchered due to Crawford’s petty whims. (She demanded, among other things, that her character be re-written as being much younger. ) There’s just a lot of Crawford yelling, and not much else. The movie keeps covering the same narrative ground, over and over again. (Yes! She’s crazy. She can’t assimilate back into normal life. We get it! Let's move on with the plot now please!) The film picks up when the murders begin a’ transpiring. Like Castle‘s earlier film, ‘Homicidal‘ Bloch’s script is heavily derivative of his previous work. Unfortunately, the movie just isn’t scary. There are a few suspenseful scenes, but they’re few and far between. There are also some cheap plot tricks going on here. (If there was no one behind it, why was the shower curtain moving? Ghosts? Cause that would have made the movie more interesting!) But hey, I didn’t complain about Vincent Price’s skeleton puppet, I’m not gonna complain about disappearing heads too much.

Which brings us to the final flaw. The ending is just way too obvious. Spoiler, highlight to read: (Hell, you can tell who’s doing what just by reading my summary of the plot.) However, the climax is well carried out considering the type of el cheapo exploitation film that this is.

As talky melodrama, ’Strait-jacket’ is fairly nice, but it makes for a piss poor horror film.