(Note: these Strait Jacket posts are part of my lame-ass attempt to contribute to Shocktober! -AKA Halloween- but it's really coming in late because...well, because I have a job.
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Anyways, last time we saw poor luckless Lucy she was stepping off the train, coming home to her brothers dairy farm after being locked up in the nut house for 20 years for killing her husband and his latest bimbo with a really sharp axe.
The first scene , the actual first shot in the entire film following the Columbia logo, is awful. Really.
(Some glass is shattered and then reverses back into form, while Joan Crawford screams).
And then someone (Director William Castle?) revolves a greasy, finger-printy light bulb in front of the camera.
It makes absolutely no sense.
Following the prologue (in which Lucy dispatches of her unfaithful husband in front of her horrified daughters' eyes) a foot steps down, Joan Crawford steps into the frame and then the credits begin, and then it begins to be really great...
It's kind of an emotional moment when the soundtrack swells as the title Strait-Jacket appears on the screen. Huh, I thought, the first time I saw this, maybe it won't be too bad.
Guess what? I was right.
2 comments:
I am such a huge fan of arty opening credits from this era. I really could hear the music in my head!
That's so funny, Toon--because sometimes I've gotten into older movies just BECAUSE the credits impressed me!
(which reminds me, I really need to do a post about Imitation Of Life!)
Oh man, the soundtrack for Strait Jacket is inSANE. It's kind of sleazy, but appropriately so!
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