Strait-Jacket (DVD), Sony Pictures Home, Horror

Movie queen Joan Crawford (Mildred Pierce) gives a terrific performance in this chiller from pioneer horror movie producer William Castle (House on Haunted Hill). Crawford plays Lucy Harbin, a woman who goes berserk when she finds her husband in bed with another woman. With her three-year-old daughter accidentally witnessing the grisly act, Lucy axes the couple to death then spends twenty years in a mental institution for the double murder. After she is released, she moves in with her brother (Leif Erickson, on the Waterfront), his wife and her own daughter (Diane Baker, the Silence of the Lambs), now twenty-three. Her nightmare is over... or is it? When a series of ax murders suddenly starts occurring in the neighborhood, police think Lucy has reverted to her old ways. The truth is finally revealed in a rousing, blood-chilling finale. Newly remastered.