Showing posts with label horror films. Show all posts
Showing posts with label horror films. Show all posts
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| An intense Joan Crawford |
"We have to remember that we can't expect everyone to be perfect." -- Diane Baker.
This is an entertaining, if brief, look behind the scenes of the William Castle production of Strait-Jacket, starring the inimitable Joan Crawford. The title refers to the weapon of choice in the movie -- which "realistically depicts axe murders" -- and not to Crawford, who is basically handled sympathetically and whose performance in the black and white B shocker is deservedly praised. Joan Blondell was supposed to play the lead but she was injured in an accident. The part of Joan's daughter, played by Diane Baker, was originally essayed by a more voluptuous but apparently less talented and unnamed actress whom Crawford wanted replaced. There are interesting observations from film historian David Del Valle, as well as comments from Baker, who tells -- not unkindly -- that Crawford drank a bit and had the ending changed so that it would focus on her and not Baker [well, she was the star, after all]. Baker says at one point that the makers of horror films, such as William Castle, are actually "lovable," but apparently she didn't feel that way about Alfred Psycho Hitchcock, whom she doesn't exactly depict as lovable in Donald Spoto's book Spellbound by Beauty [Baker appeared in Hitchcock's Marnie].
Verdict: Interesting featurette on a minor horror classic. ***.
Another shameless plug for my latest book, which covers about forty-five years of horror stories told in comic books. Many of these were influenced by films and radio, and sometimes the stories in horror comic books were turned into movies -- without crediting the comic book. Fans of the controversial and vivid EC horror comics will enjoy reading about the stories that were adapted for such series as Tales from the Crypt as well as for the theatrical films Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror. Then there were long-running comics based on The Twilight Zone and Boris Karloff's Thriller. Giant bugs, bloodsucking vampires, flesh-eating fiends, giant voracious man-eating crabs, psychotic wives with axes, deals with the devil, adulterous husbands with murder on their minds, flesh-tearing werewolves, giant spiders with human heads and fangs, dinosaurs out-of-time and on the rampage, Frankenstein and Dracula -- The Horror Comics has it all. You'll read about such stories as "Airboy vs the Rats;" gory classics like "Foul Play;" weird ones like Simon and Kirby's "Head of the Family;" chilling heart-breakers like "Mr. Reilly, the Derelict" and "The Kid's Night Out;" adaptations of Poe, Lovecraft, Stevenson and Ray Bradbury -- and much more, such as the classic terror tale from Dell's Ghost Stories: "The Horror of Dread End," which gave many a kid nightmares back in the day. You can order direct from the publisher's website or from Amazon and Barnes and Noble.