Strait-Jacket (1964)

By 1964, the year Strait-Jacket was unbuckled and America tried it on for size, producer/director William Castle had a half-dozen horror movies under his ample belt, and none of them were “A” pictures. He’d seen Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? 17 times, pointing to the screen each time while mumbling, “I want one of those.”

He grabbed writer Robert Bloch—after Homicidal in 1961, Castle had broken ties with screenwriter Robb White, who had delivered five of his horror scripts—and Bloch set to work on a story loosely suggested by the Lizzie Borden axe murders of 1892.

Perhaps Castle saw the approaching wave of “hag horror,” generally “B” creepers starring fading actresses who still had the big name but could no longer command big parts in big movies. He signed Joan Blondell for the role of axe murderess Lucy Harbin. Before shooting began, Blondell had an accident that prevented her from making the movie, and Castle went after one of the stars of Baby Jane, Joan Crawford.

Crawford was willing to accept the part, but she demanded cast and script approval. Castle agreed. So arrogant was Crawford, she gave the small role of Dr. Anderson, Lucy’s psychiatrist, to Mitchell Cox, a vice-president of Pepsi Cola, a non-actor but a personal friend, without telling Castle what she was up to. It’s to Cox’ credit that he comes across on screen no worse than many professional actors in “B” horror flicks, and he seems to be having a great time. He’s no Boris Karloff, but he’s no Paris Hilton, either.

Anne Helm was cast in the important role of Lucy’s estranged daughter Carol, but Crawford didn’t like her and out she went. Diane Baker had worked with Crawford in The Best of Everything (1959), and with Susan Hayward in Stolen Hours (1963), so she knew her way around a diva. Crawford liked her and “suggested” her for the role.

The movie opens with a flashback, a trick Robert Aldrich, the director of Baby Jane, would use for his second foray into hag horror, Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte, later that year. We see Lucy’s husband (Lee Majors in his first screen role) flirting and drinking with a young woman. He invites her to his house because his wife is out of town and not expected back for a day or two. The adulterer and his lover make a little whoopee, unaware that they are being watched by three-year old Carol (Vicki Cos).

Then Lucy comes home early. Crawford makes her first entrance in a way that she must have loved. The camera is aimed at the steps that come down from the passenger car of a train. When Crawford steps into the frame, all we see are her legs—and nice looking gams they are still for the 58-year old former dancer. The shot also gives us our first dose of Robert Bloch’s signature black humor. Stenciled above the steps, just below Lucy’s feet, is the admonition “Watch your step.” Listen, too, for lines like “She’s dying to meet you,” and “Sanity is relative.”

When Lucy returns to her house, she finds hubby and his gal in bed. Shocked, she stumbles from the house and trips over a tree stump, imbedded in which is an axe. Bracelets jangling, she pulls the axe from the wood and goes back into the house. We see the outlines of the sleeping lovers in shadows on the wall as Lucy hoists the axe above her head and takes off each of theirs with two manic blows. She then goes to work in earnest.

There is absolutely nothing realistic about these murders. The heads are severed from the bodies too easily and there is no blood splatter as Lucy whacks away. Since Castle cuts a couple of times to close-ups of Carol’s terrified face, maybe we are seeing the crime as the little girl saw it, with full emphasis on her mother.

Okay, Lucy goes to an asylum and Carol is sent to live with her mother’s brother (an amusingly jovial Leif Erickson) and his pinch-mouthed wife (Rochelle Hudson) on a farm somewhere in the Midwest. (Bloch has more fun by letting us know that Lucy’s maiden name was “Cutler.”)

Twenty years later, Lucy is declared sane and she comes to live with the Cutlers and Carol. Carol shows her around the farm and you have everything you need to know to plot the rest of the picture yourself by the 20 minute mark.

Carol decides, in a move reminiscent of Vertigo, to re-make her dowdy mom in the image of what she was when she wielded the chopper. Lucy starts wearing loud print dresses, dangling bracelets, and a black wig with a mid-‘40s hairstyle. Then she begins hearing voices chanting “Lucy Harbin took an axe and gave her husband 40 whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave his girl friend 41.”

One night she wakes to find two disembodied heads and a gory axe in her bed. Not too surprisingly, she takes to drinking a wee bit too much.

On the afternoon she meets Carol’s fiancé Michael (John Anthony Hayes), Lucy gets tight and flirts shamelessly with the younger man. This scene is the most memorable for viewers who like the picture for the wrong reasons—i.e., its camp value—as Crawford pulls out all the stops. She drapes herself over Hayes and even runs her fingertips around and between his lips. This was apparently not in the script nor the direction, and Hayes wondered what God had wrought, and he wondered it in a big way.

To make matters worse, Lucy’s psychiatrist, Dr. Anderson, shows up on his way to a fishing trip and the former patient gets upset. Lucy runs off and the doctor goes outside to look around. He soon loses his head over the place to the accompaniment of the sound of jangling bracelets.

Handyman Leo Krause (a wonderfully dim and degenerate George Kennedy) finds the doctor’s abandoned car and blackmails Carol into letting him keep it. He, too, is soon headed off, and then the film rushes to its conclusion with villainy revealed and honesty triumphant.

You don’t really know the movie is working as well as it is until you get to the murders and find yourself growing apprehensive. Castle’s best moment comes in a scene that finds Lucy watching Leo decapitate a chicken. The sound of the spinning blades on the weather vane builds throughout the brief scene until it reminds you of the jangling of Lucy’s bracelets. By the final reel, every time someone bends slightly at the waist, you expect an axe to enter the frame.

I suspect the participants had four ways of looking at Strait-Jacket. Crawford saw it as a star vehicle, while the supporting cast saw it as a paycheck. Castle saw it as an entry to “A” filmmaking, and Bloch saw it as a huge, sick joke. Viewers today don’t care much about what the supporting cast thought. Castle was wrong, while Crawford and Bloch were dead right—especially Bloch. It’s in the joke that the film is still most enjoyable.

I get the impression from reading Bloch’s later work that the reality of psychopathic murders had taken much of the fun out of creating imaginary ones. He was no longer making deliciously macabre statements like “I haven’t had so much fun since the rats ate my baby sister.”

Come on now … even a rat’s gotta eat.

The Cabinet of Caligari (1962)

Robert Bloch’s screen credits include TV scripts for the series “Star Trek,” “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “Night Gallery,” and “Boris Karloff’s Thriller,” and several screenplays, most notably for William Castle and Amicus Productions. I couldn’t begin to guess how many of his novels and short stories provided the basis for how many film, TV and radio adaptations, but the primary one is Psycho. He missed the opportunity to adapt his novel because an agent with MCA, looking to promote in-house talent, told Hitchcock that Bloch was unavailable, which wasn’t true.

You can’t turn out as many short stories, novels, radio/TV/movie scripts as Robert Bloch did without your foot slipping of the curb once in awhile. Such is the case with The Cabinet of Caligari, (Twentieth Century Fox, 1962) a re-imagining of the silent Expressionistic classic rather than a straight remake. The film has its supporters, but reading them is an exercise in tepid timidity, as if no one really likes the picture all that much, but no one wants to damn it, either.

Glynis Johns (probably best remembered as Mrs. Banks in Mary Poppins) stars as Jane Lindstrom, a young woman who, at film’s beginning, is ripping along the highway in her sports car. The first shot is from her POV as the car moves through a tunnel and then emerges into the sunshine of the afternoon.  This “light at the end of the tunnel” motif hints at the plot, which the astute viewer familiar with the 1919 Cabinet of Dr. Caligari will quickly realize.

Jane’s car blows a tire and she is forced to hike several miles along the road until she arrives at the home of the mysterious and sinister Caligari. He asks his female assistant Christine (Constance Ford) to see to the car. Christine takes a male worker with her to locate the vehicle. They are gone no longer than five minutes of screen time, representing a period of the same length for Jane and Caligari, and then Christine reenters to say that the car needs major repairs to the steering.  It took Jane hours to hike from the car to the house, but it takes Christine minutes to drive to the car, check it over for damage, and then return. Is this a major continuity error or is it a clue that all is not as it seems at Casa Caligari?

Jane stays the night, and then the next night, and soon realizes that neither she nor any of Caligari’s other guests can leave at will. Her host has now become a full-time villain, torturing her with embarrassing questions and even allowing another assistant, David (Lawrence Dobkin) to use a cane to beat an elderly guest (Estelle Winwood) to death.

Jane’s only comfort comes from Martin (J. Pat O’Malley), a genial guest, Mark (Richard Davalos) a young guest for whom she develops an attraction, and wise, kindly Paul (Dan O’Herlihy), who finally admits that Caligari is his patient.

Jane’s escape attempts are blocked at every turn. As she grows more panicked, the odd angles of the house are accentuated and the lighting grows more shadowy. Every move comes weighted with sinister meaning. After Jane discovers the real identity of Caligari and the nature of his relationship with Paul, the film speeds to a hasty conclusion that is risibly naïve.

The director, TV veteran Roger Kay, has ambitions beyond his capability to realize them, and Robert Bloch’s screenplay is an obvious attempt to mine the Psycho mother lode one more time. It’s only fair to note that Psycho was not Bloch’s first journey to Wackyland. His first novel, The Scarf in 1947, was a psycho serial killer tale, and one of his best short stories, “Lucy Comes to Stay,” was also in that genre. If you ever come across his story “Final Performance,” perhaps the ultimate crazy killer yarn, you won’t soon forget it.

If Cabinet of Caligari is a valiant effort in a losing cause, Bloch stepped up to the plate again two years later and slammed out a more recognizably Blochian script for that wonderful ham, William Castle, and the rapidly failing one-time star Joan Crawford. The film was Strait-Jacket (Columbia, 1964).

"We All Go a Little Mad Sometimes"

Here’s the thing about what you’re about to read, assuming that you don’t hate pieces that begin “Here’s the thing about what you’re about to read” and go on to something else instead.  This is where I tell you that something you know about Paycho is dead wrong.  I’m writing it, but I don’t know if I believe it or not.

Well, hell, it’s Halloween and if you can’t make a complete fool of yourself at Halloween, when can you?  Oh yeah, St. Patrick’s Day.  Okay, if you can’t make a complete fool of yourself at Halloween and St. Patrick’s Day, when can you?

Here’s the bit of revealed wisdom about Psycho, and I mean revealed repeatedly, in just about every critical essay ever written about the film: the least involving, most boring, most unnecessary scene in the entire movie is the penultimate one in which Simon Oakland, as psychiatrist Dr. Fred Richmond (you never knew the character had a name, did you?) tells the cops, Lila, and Sam that all is not well with Norman’s inner child.

Wait a minute—you have seen the film, haven’t you?  If not, don’t read further, even if you can’t resist pieces in which the fourth paragraph admonishes you “don’t read further.”  Beyond this point are spoilers.  And I promise that I won’t use that gag again, the one in which I repeat at the end of the sentence what I wrote at the beginning, even if you tell me that you love it when I repeat at the end of the sentence what I wrote at the beginning. 

Anyway, that scene in the movie is universally reviled as being unnecessary because it spells out in agonizing detail what the audience has already figured out, i.e., that Norman is a member-for-life of the Ed Gein Fan Club.

But I would like to suggest that in 1960, when the film was new and the world was still able to keep the mask of sanity in place, audiences may not have known as much about what ailed the kid as we do now, and that we know more about it today because Norman introduced us on a pop culture level to this type and degree of mental aberration.  Putting oneself into the mind set of obviously historical characters is hard enough and yet still easier, in some ways, than recapturing the thinking of characters who were contemporary when the film was made but have retreated into history since.  Norman looks, talks, and acts enough like us now that we see him as a 21^st. century man, but he is far from that.

Okay, now we come to my particular hobby horse, the theory that appeals to me greatly while at the same time lacking in rational believability.  For this it’s best that you watch the scene, but I’ll try to describe the relevant action.

Richmond enters the room in which his audience is gathered.  He comes in from the left and crosses to a central position in the room.  Over his right shoulder we see a picture on the wall and, above that, a light fixture.  The fixture has two prongs for the light bulbs, reaching out to left and right from a sort of metal centerpiece.

Oakland doesn’t move around much because Richmond wants to remain in the center of our, and his listeners’ attention.  He occasionally takes a step or two toward the camera to speak directly to Lila (Vera Miles) or to react to something Sam (John Gavin) says, but before he returns to his original spot in the room, he moves a little closer to the light, allowing us to see more of it.  Then he will take a step toward us and resume talking.

His explanation of Norman’s peculiarities is loaded with psychobabble, but whenever he has a point to make that he thinks is particularly telling—“So he began to think and speak for her,” “After the murder, Norman returned as if from a deep sleep,” “These were crimes of passion, not profit”—the lamp on the wall appears directly over his head, sometimes even forming glowing horns.

Here’s what I see: a cartoon in which someone is expounding an idea he thinks explains the ways of the world, with a light bulb coming on over his head to let us know how bright he thinks he is.

It’s as if Hitchcock, whose earliest job in films was providing illustrations to adorn the dialogue title cards in silent movies, is winking at us, letting us know that he thinks all this psychiatric gobble-de-gook is just whistling in the graveyard to hide our fear of the boogie man.

As Richmond snaps a cigarette out of a pack to light up and take a bow, Hitch cuts to the outside of the room and follows a policeman carrying down the hall a blanket for the chilled Norman.  We cut to the inside of the room where Norman, as Mother, sits before a blank wall.  As Richmond delivered his monologue in front of a wall with a couple of items on it—one of which served to ridicule everything he had to say—Mother delivers her monologue in front of a wall that is blank, as empty as a serial killer’s conscience, as spotless as a freshly cleaned bath tub.

There it is.  Do I really believe Hitchcock intended the scene with the doctor to be read this way?  I wish, but no.  I think it’s there to explain to the unworldly what the hell has been going on.  But do I think Hitch was aware of the cartoon cliché regarding the light bulb over the head?  Sure I do.  Maybe he set and blocked the scene the way he did because unconsciously he wanted to suggest that Dr. Richmond was just too content living in his jargon of earthly delights.   

You can’t have too many ways of looking at a film as rich as Psycho.  And it is Halloween.  Trick or treat.

THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD (1971)

Well, you can’t hit one over the fence every time at bat. The House That Dripped Blood is the third of Amicus Productions’ portmanteau horror anthologies, and it’s at best a shaky single achieved as the result of a fielder’s error.

The script is by Robert Bloch and based on four of his short stories: “Method for Murder,” “Waxworks,” “Sweets to the Sweet” and “The Cloak.” The last two are classic Bloch, but here, the scripts are weakened, especially in “The Cloak,” by producer Max Rosenberg’s insistence on putting humor onscreen and keeping the horror off.

The cast makes the film sort of worth watching. Denholm Elliott stars in the first story, about a writer of horror stories who begins to think that his creations are coming to life. Peter Cushing and Joss Ackland are in segment two, about a creepy wax museum and the nutjob who operates it. Christopher Lee tops a tale of a man trying to live with an adolescent witch, and Jon Pertwee and Ingrid Pitt finish off with a comic vampire yarn.

The film contains no thrills or chills — not even a weak shiver — and is for Cushing/Lee fans only. Note that Vincent Price was originally offered, but turned down the role of the snotty, egotistical horror movie star eventually played by Pertwee. Price got his chance to burlesque hammy actors two years later in Theatre of Blood, and that one’s a must-see.

Robert Bloch--My Favorite Psycho

In the coven made up of the mothers in my neighborhood when I was a kid, my mom was the only one who allowed copies of FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND magazine into the house. This made me very popular — and it was the only thing that did — at least on the Saturdays after the new issue hit the street.

My pals and I loved looking at pictures from monster movies, and it didn’t matter whether or not we’d seen the flick, or ever would. In those pre-home-video days in that small town, we had no hope that we’d ever be in a position to see films like the silent THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI or even the Lon Chaney PHANTOM OF THE OPERA.

Which brings us at last to Robert Bloch, who frequently used FM as a bully pulpit to introduce us kids to the fading grandeur of silent horror films — or those pictures that passed for horror films before sound. I had no idea at that time that Bloch wrote fiction. I don’t remember now how I found out, but it was probably at the time Hitchcock’s PSYCHO came out and suddenly Bloch’s books were on every paperback spin rack in town.

Okay, here’s where I embarrass myself by admitting that I was too scared to see PSYCHO during its first run. Here’s why: I’d read Bloch’s novel on the assumption that no book could be as scary as a movie. Word circulated around the horror-movie fan underground in town that this movie was the goods, more terrifying than a William Castle picture, and that would make it scarier than all hell on a rainy weekend.

So my plan was to read the book so I’d know what the story was and I could bluff my friends into thinking I’d seen the movie, just in case I wasn’t, you know, able to see it. Damn good plan for an 11-year old, except for one thing: Bloch’s novel is not the standard mystery/thriller, like Hitch’s film is not the standard horror movie.

The book scared me. Badly. Profoundly. Everlastingly. So much, I was even more afraid to go to the movie than I had been in the first place.

I’ve cleared my conscience.

So, this Bloch guy pulls the plow, huh? Oh, yeah. By 1960, he had been sharpening his blade since he published his first WEIRD TALES short story, “The Secret in the Tomb,” at age 17 in 1934. He had been on the fringes of the H.P. Lovecraft circle since 1933, when he initiated a correspondence with the old gent that lasted until Lovecraft’s death in 1937.

Honestly, in those early stories, derivative of HPL’s concepts and frequently overwrought style, Bloch didn’t show much promise that he would ever be anything more than a precocious acolyte.

If stories like “The Feast in the Abbey“ and “The Shambler from the Stars“ rely too heavily on Lovecraftian themes and atmospherics, Bloch soon found his own voice. More than one, actually. After all, what kind of schizophrenic has only one voice whispering in his ear?

And Bloch’s best imaginary friends were schizos, serial killers, mass murderers and just all-around boy-or-girl-next-door psychopaths. They dispatched their victims with butcher knives, scarves, axes, saws, shoves off of cliffs, and even the unimaginative handgun. He more than made up for that last with a death by gorilla costume. Of course I’m serious. Joe R. Lansdale selected Bloch’s “The Animal Fair” for the 2004 anthology MY FAVORITE HORROR STORY. Check it out.

Bloch never lost his affection for Lovecraft, and even as late as 1978, his novel STRANGE EONS was in honor of his mentor, but after the publication of his first novel, 1947′s THE SCARF, he was wedded to psychological horror in the public’s mind. Short stories like “Lucy Comes to Stay” and “Final Performance” – which is wonderfully ghastly, showing up regularly in everything from the crime pulps to PLAYBOY – kept that association alive.

He missed out on the screenplay assignment for PSYCHO, but Bloch scripted for radio, films (including two for Castle), and television. He finally linked up with Hitchcock, sort of, by writing 17 episodes of ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS. In all, Bloch provided scripts for 19 series, including STAR TREK, THRILLER and NIGHT GALLERY.

Many of his best post-SCARF stories are a blend of supernatural and psychological horror. “The Cheaters” is about a pair of eyeglasses that allow the wearer to read people’s minds, and what they think is scarred by greed and lust. “Catnip” is about a rotten high school student who accidentally burns down an old woman’s house and is then stalked by her cat. I’ve always been a big fan of “Sweets to the Sweet,” about a little girl and her favorite voodoo doll. Very nasty ending to this one. Yummy.
He wasn’t a perfect writer. Having published more than 200 stories and two dozen novels means there are several clinkers in the bunch, but when he was clicking, he was as good as anyone.

One more thing I have to mention: Bloch was one of the funniest horror writers ever. He was a popular emcee for science fiction and horror conventions, and in print, his stuff is littered with sick in-jokes and unexpected puns. Remember all those sick gags in the movie version of PSYCHO? “Mother isn’t herself tonight” and “A boy’s best friend is his mother” both originated in the novel. I still remember the pleasant chill I felt the first time I re-read the book and Mrs. Bates accuses the effete Norman of being “only half a man.” Heh, heh, heh.

Bloch once famously said of himself, “People think I must be a monster, but really I have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk.”

But my all-time favorite Bloch moment comes in an otherwise disposable British film from 1966 called THE PSYCHOPATH, in which a sick, aging German war widow who collects dolls sends her feeble-minded but physically strong son out to murder the men she thinks killed her husband. In the film’s climax, the son injures his back while being pursued but manages to get home. The police show up to arrest him and his mother. Mom puts up a small struggle and the son, who is hiding in the attic, hears what is going on and begins howling. The police open the door and we are faced with the now-paralyzed young man seated in a chair. His fruitcake mother has powdered his face to remove his natural coloring, and rouged his lips and cheeks to make him look like a giant Kewpie doll. A tear runs down his cheek as he sobs, “Momma. Momma.”
Comic shocks don’t come any sicker than that.

Robert Bloch died of cancer on Sept. 23, 1994. Every time a new anthology of horror or crime stories is published, I look to see if it includes a new story by him. It’s a silly habit I don’t want to break.