STRAIT-JACKET (1964) & BERSERK! (1967)
Region Code: A
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 93 Minutes
Audio: English PCM Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.78:1)
Director: William Castle
Cast: Joan Crawford, Diane Baker, Leif Erickson, Howard St. John, John Anthony Hayes, Rochelle Hudson, George Kennedy, Lee Majors
Synopsis: Movie queen Joan Crawford (What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?) gives a terrific performance in this chiller from pioneer horror movie producer William Castle. Lucy Harbin (Crawford) goes berserk when she finds her husband in bed with another woman. Lucy axes the couple to death and spends twenty years in a mental institution for murder. After she is released, she moves in with family and hopes her nightmare is over... but a string of ax murders suddenly start occurring in the neighborhood and police think Lucy has reverted to her old ways.
TOP: Mill Creek Entertainment Blu-ray (2018)
BOTTOM: Scream Factory Blu-ray (2018)
When Lucy Harbin (screen legend Joan Crawford, I Know What You Did) catches her younger hubby (Lee Major, TVs The Six Million Dollar Man) in bed with the town hussy she loses it, taking an ax to him and his lover while they sleep, chopping their heads off right in front of her three-year old daughter Carol! For her heinous crime she's locked away at an asylum for the criminally insane, and is released 20-years later, moving in with her now adult daughter Carol (Diane Baker, the senator from The Silence of the Lambs) who has since been raised by Lucy's brother and his kindly wife on their rural farm. At first dear old mom is a bit meek and fragile, a shadow of her former ax-swinging self, but after a mother-daughter day of shopping and having a few drinks Lucy begins to act a bit too much like her younger self, hardly able to keep her hands off of her daughters handsome boyfriend Michael. Crawford is wonderfully campy as she shamelessly flirts with the young man, sticking her fingers right in his mouth! Not long after the doctor who cared for her at the asylum arrives unexpectedly to check-in on her well-being and soon after the heads begin to roll as an ax-murderer rums amok on the farm.
TOP: Mill Creek Entertainment Blu-ray (2018)
BOTTOM: Scream Factory Blu-ray (2018)
Strait-Jacket offers the best of both worlds, a bit of the William Castle shock and schlock and some of Crawford's tasty, overwrought late-career campiness, a prime example of the psycho-biddy films, which are also unkindly dubbed hag-sploitation, which I am sure would have made Crawford's waddle crawl. There's loads of thrills to be had here, aside from Crawford vamping it up, the ax-murders are surprisingly graphic for the era, there are decapitated heads a plenty in this film.
TOP: Mill Creek Entertainment Blu-ray (2018)
BOTTOM: Scream Factory Blu-ray (2018)
This film marked the debut of Lee Majors who is almost unrecognizable as the short-lived Lothario, as is George Kennedy (Death Ship) as the greasy and impossibly thin hired hand on the farm. Notably the film was penned by Psycho writer Robert Bloch, and there are some similarities to the stories, the most obvious being some serious mother issues throughout. Another nice touch is that the Torch Lady from the Columbia Pictures logo is decapitated at the start of the film, and the opening credits play over some truly surreal/gruesome paintings, a great way to start off this overwrought shocker!
TOP: Mill Creek Entertainment Blu-ray (2018)
BOTTOM: Scream Factory Blu-ray (2018)
BERSERK! (1967)
Label: Mill Creek Entertainment
Region Code: A
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 96 Minutes
Audio: English PCM Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.78:1)
Director: Jim O'Connolly
Cast: Joan Crawford, Ty Hardin, Diana Dors, Michael Gough, Judy Geeson, Robert Hardy
The slightly lesser half of this psycho biddy double-feature is the circus thriller Berserk! (1967) starring Joan Crawford as leggy-ringmaster Monica Rivers who co-owns a British travelling circus with Dorando (Michael Gough, The Legend of Hell House), the big tent attraction has fallen on hard times, attendance is down but but following the suspicious death of the star attraction, a high-wire act whose wire snaps during a performance, the morbid curiosity of the public drive ticket sales. This opener is very pleasing, the wire snaps and coils around the performers neck, his body swinging across the scream like a pendulum, ushering in the title card for the film, it really is a great opener that promises a bit more than it delivers.
As luck would have it a hunky tightrope walker named Frank Hawkins (Ty Hardin, I Married a Monster from Outer Space) is in the audience that very same night looking for work with the circus, and finding she need to fill the very recent vacancy Monica hires him on the spot. Scotland Yard's Detective Brooks (Robert Hardy, Psychomania) arrives on the scene to investigate the suspicious death, and it's not long before another body turns up, that of Monica's business partner Dorado who is found with a tent spike driven straight through his forehead! It's another nice and bloody kill, and thus begin a circus murder whodunit, but unfortunately these early kills which promise more blood laced horror thrills instead settles into a languidly paced melodrama.
The major thrill-killer here is that the film is overly padded with circus sights, which don't get me wrong, are fun for sure, as they are performed by the famous Billy Smart's Circus, who do great work. We get an intelligent poodle act, a couple of high-wire performances, an trained elephant act and a lion tamer, all of which would have fascinated me as a kid if I was at the circus, but sprinkled throughout this whodunit thriller mystery it sort of drags everything to a halt. Most of the tension is positioned between ringmaster Monica and her estranged daughter Angela (Judy Geeson, The Lords of Salem) who shows up unexpectedly after being expelled from college, becoming part of a knife-throwing act, and Frank trying to blackmail his way into a share of the profits.
There are some cool moments sprinkled throughout, such as the aforementioned tightrope walker death and the spike through the head which are well-done, but then there's stuff like a magic trick wherein a woman (Diana Dors, From Beyond the Grave) is to be sawed-in-half, but it goes horribly wrong, and by horribly wrong I mean they go to a reaction shot and cut away from what promised to be a bloody mess altogether, not cool! It just offer more melodrama than suspense or real thrills, but the reveal of the killer is a bit of frenzied with a literally shocking finale.
Director Jim O'Connolly would go on to do more entertaining stuff in the near future with the dino-motion The Valley of Gwangi (1969) and The Tower of Evil (1972) but this circus terror lacks cohesion and is overly padded with circus acts and melodrama to inspire any real thrills. Strait-Jacket offers up some delicious Crawford campiness but here she is way more subdued, and whose watching a late era Crawford film for that? As the second-half of a psycho biddy double feature starring Mrs. Crawford it's a bit of a letdown, but not without some charms and curious circus sights, an interesting slice of Brit horror but not very memorable.
Audio/Video: Berserk! (1967) is presented in 1080p HD 1.78:1 widescreen, the image is reasonable looking with decent contrast and color saturation, there's film grain throughout as well as some grit and white speckling, but still a nice uptick in the A/V presentation from the previous Warner Archive DVD. Audio comes by way of en English PCM Mono track that is a bit boxy, but dialogue is never hard to discern and the John Scott (The People That Time Forgot) comes through nicely, optional English subtitles are provided.
Not sure what the story is with two distributor releasing the same Sony licensed title at the same time, but it's nice to have options if you're a fan. If you're a junkie for extras go with the Scream Factory Blu-ray which has quite a few, if you're just in it for the film and do not care about extras then go with this release from Mill Creek Entertainment, which throws in a second Crawford psycho-biddy title by way of Berserk! (1967), for a great price.
