Bosley Crowther in the New York Times (1/23/64)

Joan Crawford has picked some lemons, some very sour lemons, in her day, but nigh the worst of the lot is "Strait-Jacket," in which she showed up at neighborhood theaters yesterday.

In this disgusting piece of claptrap, she allows herself to play a middle-aged woman and mother who returns to her daughter after spending 20 years in an insane asylum, where she has been atoning for chopping the heads off her faithless husband and his light o' love.

Although she wants to be a nice old lady, her daughter cons her into buying a black wig, donning a slinky flowered dress, a jangle bracelet and trying to look exactly the way she did the night she wielded the ax. In this ridiculous get-up, she reverts to type (we are led to suppose), and three more heads are rudely sliced off shoulders by axes wielded in the dark before an absurd bit of criminal abnormality is exposed.

The story is utterly invalid, psychologically and dramatically, and William Castle's direction and production are on the cheapest, sleaziest side. The only conceivable audience for this piece of melodramatic rot is those who have a taste for ghoulish violence (of which there is plenty) and blunt shock-effected thrills.

Time (1964):

    It must also be the first horror film to boast that one of its diehard victims (Mitchell Cox) is a real life Vice President of the Pepsi-Cola Company. As for Pepsi-Cola Board Member Crawford, she plainly plays her mad scenes For Those Who Think Jung.

Judith Crist in the New York Herald Tribune (1964):

    Strait-Jacket should be subtitled What Ever Happened to Baby Monster? and there's a clue for you. [It] proves that lightning does not strike twice and that it's time to get Joan Crawford out of those housedress horror B movies and back into haute couture. Miss Crawford, you see, is high class. Too high class to withstand in mufti the banality of Robert Bloch's script, cheap-jack production, inept and/or vacuous supporting players and direction better suited to the mist-and-cobweb idiocies of the Karloff school of suspense. These make a disappointing low-level melodrama of this madness-and-murder tale that might have been a thriller, given Class A treatment....Miss Crawford is without peer when it comes to diffident neuroses, valiant tears, and prideful motherhood, and she's awfully good to look at even in her gray-haired, dishevelled, fresh-from-the-asylum drabness. But what she does need here is a peer or two to sustain the credibility of the build-up as well as the final twist.

DVD Verdict (2002):

    The film...is Crawford's and if the acting is a bit over-ripe at times, she certainly gives it her all. She's required to age from 25 to 45 and can't really pull off the 25-year old (she was 56 when the film was released), looking somewhat ridiculous in the wig and dress she's required to wear for that part of the role. The rest of the part is more up her alley, requiring shades of Mildred Pierce and Blanche Hudson that she had already demonstrated her capability of handling with skill and believability. And oh yes, she handles an ax with authority as well.  Complete review.

that-movie-site.com (2002):

Sci-Fi, Horror, and Fantasy Film Review (1990):

    Joan Crawford, well into the dregs of her career, makes a fascinating spectacle, flirting with younger men and trying to act young. She plays quite well, especially in the scenes trying to seduce John Anthony Hayes and acting disturbed, although her petulant and confused acts don’t come across terribly convincingly. Complete review.

DVDsavant.com review.

Needcoffee.com review.

Jon D. (June 2008)

Rating: of 5

Strait-Jacket was Joan Crawford's first of two horror film collaborations with William Castle. It was followed by a string of cheapie horror flicks culminating in the release of Trog in 1970. By the 1960s, Crawford's acting career had reached its peak and fallen considerably. Offerings were scarce and the starring roles she was offered were in low-rent productions. Although it followed the release of one of Crawford's most successful films, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Strait-Jacket was a far cry from that film and the pictures she made at Columbia less than a decade earlier.

Strait-Jacket does not contain the subtle plot one might expect from screenwriter Robert Bloch, who wrote Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. The dialogue is clumsy, the direction plays out with the artistic flair of a paint-by-numbers work, and the movie never misses an opportunity to be cheesy or stupid. Crawford plays Lucy Harbin, an axe murderess, who returns home to see her daughter after a 20-year stay in an asylum.  It is no coincidence that her brother's farm is named the "Cutler Ranch," or that everyone is "dying to see her."  When Lucy witnesses her husband cheating at the beginning of the film, an axe just happens to be a few feet from where she is standing.  Even the film's score is loud and tacky, with random screaming and wailing mixed with a cheerful big band rendition of "There Goes that Song Again."

If the technical details of the film can be overlooked, there are some interesting elements which may keep you thinking of the film long after it is over. While the storyline is not particularly fresh, and the twists not especially surprising, the relationship between Lucy (Crawford) and the parents of her daughter's fiance is interesting.

Crawford, as in most of her pictures, represents the working class. Her initial humility, and eagerness to make a good impression on the parents, are charming. However, as in many Crawford films, there is a class conflict. The parents are privileged, and arrogant, and will not accept a mentally ill woman, or her daughter, in their family. This snobbery, and cruel denial of her daughter's happiness, triggers Crawford. Something within her snaps. There is a startling intensity in Crawford's voice, and her emotions, as she exclaims the need for her daughter to have "something more than she had out of life." This is the Joan Crawford star power working full force. The audience knows the connection between the character and Crawford herself, and feels the truth in the performance.

The struggle for acceptance and love is a theme which runs through the majority of Crawford films. The independent characters Crawford played were not invulnerable or immune to the inhumanity in others. While the Crawford character does not always triumph, she usually comes away from the fight a stronger and more resilient person. Lucy Harbin is one of the final interpretations of the steely resourceful yet wistful character which became Crawford's trademark. In the final few minutes of Strait-Jacket, Lucy has come to terms with the past and is seeking to restore the hope and possibility of the future, for her daughter and herself.

While Strait-Jacket is ultimately a cheap and tawdry vehicle for such a great star, it is not easily forgotten. It is a testament to Hollywood's contempt for older stars. Crawford, approaching 60 years old when Strait-Jacket was filmed, had lost none of her magic. Her powers of cinematic sorcery were intact, in her eloquent speech and her bewitching eyes. The question may enter your mind: why was Strait-Jacket among the last films she was offered?

There is a moment notable for its poetry at the end of the film. Crawford gazes into the camera. There is a magnificent bust of her face in the foreground, circa the 1930s height of her career and beauty. As the film closes, Crawford covers the sculpted image of her glorious face, and we know the long and wonderful road has ended.

Danny  (August 2006)

Although I’ve seen this movie dozens of times, I still go back to it whenever I want a “Post Baby Jane” fix. This one and “BERSERK” are the only two, in that category, that I like.

As everyone knows, Joan Crawford plays Lucy Harbin, an ax murderess released from an “insane asylum” after twenty years. Kind of like Lizzie Borden with a twist. She portrays the dowdy, gray-haired Lucy with plenty of pathos and sincerity, but when she gets all dolled-up in those Wally Westmore sundresses, black wig, and cheap dangling jewelry rattling loud enough to wake the dead, she goes over-the-top.

Producer/Director William Castle jumped at the chance to lure a real life movie star into one of his commercial exploitations. His gimmick: Ax Murders. And once again, Joan is saddled down with a rotten daughter. But this time she gets to dress sexy, flirt, display Pepsi Cola cartons everywhere, strike a match on a record playing on a phonograph, and mug like crazy.

But I’ve never understood her character’s motivation, when she suddenly turns from a shy, reclusive old woman into a seductive sex-pot. But then everything in this movie is contrived and it’s best not to take it very seriously. Just go with it and have fun!

Jonathan from RI (July 2005)

James (March 2005)

Rating: of 5

Imagine if you will Mildred Pierce coming home late one night and finding her husband Bert having a roll in the hay with Mrs. Biederhof. Furious, Mildred grabs an axe and hacks Bert and the neighborhood floozie to death, unaware that young Veda is watching from another room. Mildred is locked in the loonie-bin for committing such a dastardly deed and Veda gets trucked off to a farm where she’s raised by some down-home relatives. Twenty years go by, and Mildred and Veda are reunited. But then strange things start happening...people mysteriously vanish while Mildred prances around town dressed like an over-the-hill hooker, and Veda worries that her mother’s whacked-out behavior will screw-up her socially ambitious plans to marry a wealthy dairy farmer's son.

In a nutshell, this is the plot of Strait-Jacket, which I fondly refer to as "Mildred Pierce from Hell." Don’t get me wrong...Mildred and Strait-Jacket are entirely different movies made at completely different points in Joan's life. But both movies share a similar theme {mother-daughter angst, with a nasty, scheming daughter pitted against a long-suffering mother}, and both movies were made at precarious points in Joan’s career {Mildred being her first major role after leaving the security of MGM, and Strait-Jacket being her first film after her dismissal from Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte}. In addition, both films feature fantastic performances by Joan, and both are definite must-sees in the Crawford catalogue of films.

There are differences, however. But the differences are precisely what make Strait-Jacket so enjoyably amusing for its camp value. Where Mildred Pierce was a big-budget production made when Joan's beauty remained intact, Strait-Jacket was made for peanuts at a time when Joan looked every one of her approximately sixty years. Right there, the film heads into dangerous and rather macabre territory: the film opens when Crawford’s character is twenty-nine years old, and rather than casting a younger actress for the opening sequence, Joan boldly attempts to turn back the years and play it herself. In a bizarre, ambulance-chasing kind of way, the utter failure of this attempt is more frightening than the gruesome axe murders that pop up throughout the rest of the film.

From the moment the movie begins, it's blatantly apparent that Strait-Jacket is "grand guignol" of the first magnitude. Despite the movie’s obvious shortcomings, Crawford delivers a scene-stealing performance of sheer bravado that far surpasses the material she’s given to work with. Even when she attempts to play twenty-nine, the nuance and sub-text she brings to her character elevates her performance above the absurdity of her costume and the situation she's in. Stepping from a train, Joan swaggers confidently through the town and the audience immediately knows that this is not a lady to be messed with {as her unfortunate hubby and his lady-friend shortly find out, in the worst possible way}. In later scenes, she flirts in an outrageous, almost erotic fashion with her daughter’s fiancé, strikes a match on a record while it’s playing, shimmies and shakes her butt to music, suffers a momentary mental-meltdown in a tackily wallpapered powder room, and thoroughly bawls out her daughter’s snooty prospective in-laws when they deem her daughter "not good enough" for their son. In other scenes where her character is required to be more subdued and insecure, Joan tones it down sufficiently and convincingly conveys nervousness, fear, and mental instability.

In many ways her performance is schizophrenic, but it works for the character she portrays and clearly demonstrates that even in her later years Joan was in full command of her talent. Yes she was getting older, but she was also getting better, and it’s a shame that she was wasted in material that was so often beneath her. What she could’ve done with the roles Katharine Hepburn received can only be imagined, and it’s unfortunate that there weren’t more great parts for older actresses to go around {which, sadly, remains a problem today}. Even though the movie is tawdry, Joan's costumes are absurd, the axe murders are laughably fake, and the plot is about as deep as a saucer, I highly recommend Strait-Jacket as one of the best of the mid-sixties shock-horror genre based solely on the strength of Crawford’s spectacular performance. If it wasn’t for Joan, the movie would’ve been justifiably forgotten long ago. As it stands, Strait-Jacket is like a cinematic Kinder-Surprise: the chocolate is cheap, but the surprise inside {Joan’s acting} will make you glad you bought the egg.