Grande Dame Guignol

[Snarky Oracle!]

@Crimson , I'll go halvesies if you write the scripts for SLUTTY GRAMMA WITH A BLOW-TORCH.... (sure, it sounds more '70s cinema than '60s, but that's what makes it so shocking for the '60s!) and, also, the Swanson/Anderson/Astor/Hopkins/Roman project (possibly-titled SCORPIO ASCENDS, but I'm not really sure yet).

I'd write it myself but I think I'm too lazy.

I could ask @Willie Oleson to do it, but we're in the middle of an intellectual property lawsuit in which I'm accused of plagiarizing names like "Agatha" and "Ursula". And it's gotten ugly. Plus, he'll inject too much kink into it, and we can't take the NC-17 rating if we want to recoup our investment.

 

[Crimson]

I'd write it myself but I think I'm too lazy.

In a few years AI will not only be able to write it for you, but probably produce the whole thing.

I could ask @Willie Oleson to do it, but we're in the middle of an intellectual property lawsuit in which I'm accused of plagiarizing names like "Agatha" and "Ursula".

There always seems to be melodramatic imbroglios occurring on this forum of which I am unaware. I assume they occur in the DYNASTY sub, which seems appropriate.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

In a few years AI will not only be able to write it for you, but probably produce the whole thing.

And probably supply the audience.

 

[Willie Oleson]

But I always tweak the film in my head whenever I watch it.

Tweak? Tweak?

The story is fine and the murders do have some shock value, but everything else is....words fail me.
The sets are dull and the only reason it's happening on a farm is because of the axe. None of these characters are farm people.
The cinematography and lightning are almost non-existent, resulting in one big grey blur.
Were these people "acting" at gunpoint? That makes sense because nobody would want to be in this film voluntarily. The dialogue is insipid and monotonous, and everybody looks as if they can't wait for it to end. William Castle must have really hated the film industry.
And then, after Diane Baker has already explained the why-and-how, Joan Crawford explains everything again in detail, basically retelling the whole film. As if watching the film wasn't excruciating enough.

To be perfectly honest, there was one scene that made me chuckle.

Leave me alone! I'm not guilty! It was a mistake!

Oh, she mistakenly chopped up her husband and his mistress. Well that changes everything, of course.

There's not going to be any tweaking here. We're just going to deny it out of existence. End of discussion.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Tweak? Tweak?

The story is fine and the murders do have some shock value, but everything else is....words fail me.
The sets are dull and the only reason it's happening on a farm is because of the axe. None of these characters are farm people.
The cinematography and lightning are almost non-existent, resulting in one big grey blur.
Were these people "acting" at gunpoint? That makes sense because nobody would want to be in this film voluntarily. The dialogue is insipid and monotonous, and everybody looks as if they can't wait for it to end. William Castle must have really hated the film industry.
And then, after Diane Baker has already explained the why-and-how, Joan Crawford explains everything again in detail, basically retelling the whole film. As if watching the film wasn't excruciating enough.

To be perfectly honest, there was one scene that made me chuckle.
View attachment 51947

Oh, she mistakenly chopped up her husband and his mistress. Well that changes everything, of course.

There's not going to be any tweaking here. We're just going to deny it out of existence. End of discussion.

In fact, STRAIT-JACKET was supposed to end on Diane Baker going crazy at the front door (e.g., "I love you!," "I hate you!." "You're insane!").

But Crawford was on the set that day, saw Baker's meltdown performance, and in fear of being upstaged for even 30 seconds, demanded that William Castle insert shots of herself on the other side of the door -- sobbing as she hugs a pillar -- having her own meltdown in response to her daughter's meltdown, thus neutralizing the impact of her daughter's meltdown.

Then the final scene in the art studio, where Crawford re-explains everything and becomes the de facto mental health poster-child she desires to be, was added on later. It was not in the original script.

These shenanigans did create some real tension between Crawford and Baker (who usually got along fairly well) because Joan had stolen Diane's climactic moment!

Castle didn't hate movies; he was just incompetent. I see him as like a big-screen Aaron Spelling -- good at casting and concept but not much else.

He wanted STRAIT-JACKET to be his "masterpiece" but it was perhaps his most poorly-executed movie.

I still want to tweak it, however: fix the bottom drawer camerawork and tighten the "direction" and, with a few small changes in the dialogue, you might've had yourself a little sleeper-shocker! As Judith Crist, one of the era's most objective critics, said, "...this madness-and-murder tale...might have been a thriller, given Class A treatment."

But the schism between potential and reality has damaged me somehow. Because the movie sooooo sucks.

 

[Willie Oleson]

But Crawford was on the set that day, saw Baker's meltdown performance, and in fear of being upstaged for even 30 seconds

Ha ha! No fear of that in the rest of the film, because saying that Diane Baker's acting was wooden would be an insult to the trees.
I was a little taken aback to see how she came to life in that meltdown performance, the cheesy and hysterical monologue notwithstanding.
The Joan Crawford mask is sufficiently creepy, and also kinda ironic since Joan Crawford herself had become a mask-face.

Then the final scene in the art studio, where Crawford re-explains everything and becomes the de facto mental health poster-child she desires to be, was added on later. It was not in the original script.

Yes, it's astounding to see how she came up smelling like roses. "My daughter needs me. Me, because I am the star of this film"

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

 

[Crimson]

Castle didn't hate movies; he was just incompetent. I see him as like a big-screen Aaron Spelling

That kind of incompetence -- from both Castle and Spelling -- can feel awfully close to contempt for the audience. They're a bunch of morons, so why bother trying to make something good kind of attitude.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

That kind of incompetence -- from both Castle and Spelling -- can feel awfully close to contempt for the audience. They're a bunch of morons, so why bother trying to make something good kind of attitude.

Totally. Although more so for Spelling, who was smart enough to know better. I don't think Castle was.

That said, some of Spelling's co-workers have insisted that his dumbing-down of things wasn't just cynicism on his part but that he really liked it dumb; it was genuinely his taste.

Although that may not really contradict your point.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Speaking of Aaron Spelling, I think there's a karmic connection between the Grande Dame Guignol genre of the '60s and the wealth-based nighttime soaps of the '80s -- one of the commenters in the "BATTLE AXE" mini-doc posted above asserts that the impact of WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE "was comparable to what happened when DYNASTY came out" twenty years later.

No, most of the nighttime soaps weren't as focused on malevolent older women -- you had villainous men, business scandals, youthful bed-hopping, etc. But they all seemed to strangely take focus, suddenly and unavoidably, when the mad Machiavellian former maiden stories were introduced.

FALCON CREST had Angela and, most obviously, Jacqueline Perrault (nazi-bedding, baby-stealing-and-selling super slut whose character, long-after she'd been killed off, seemed the catalyst for anything bad that happened in Tuscany Valley -- at least if that plotline was gonna work. And when the writers eventually forgot about her, replaced by inferior divas, the stories just didn't work). DYNASTY, of course, had Alexis but the dragon lady roles the show needed -- the Denver dowagers -- largely didn't materialize; Sable and Caress were a bit on the young side; Constance was almost entirely a THE COLBYS entity and was only around for a year, and I always want Swanson and Davis and Dame Anderson to make cameos which the tone-deaf producers never thought of. (But then DYNASTY, much like STRAIT-JACKET, had the most potential of the lot and yet did the absolute least with it). KNOTS LANDING had the strongest female cast in all of series television at the time, but even it benefited from the presence of Ava Gardner and Ruth Roman. And even chauvinist-dominated DALLAS seemed to reach its apex when Lady Jessica (one episode was even named "Hush, Hush, Sweet Jessie") rode onto Southfork, the show dropping the ball when, five years later, Jessica returned for a serial murder plot the producers chose to play for campy laughs, thus neutralizing its potential impact; and Sue Ellen, who looked like Crawford's daughter already, seemed headed into granddame territory herself before being routed out of Texas before she could fully percolate.

People just like crazy bitches --- But why? Does it remind folks of their own maternal issues? The maniacal moms and grandiose grandmas or nutty aunties and bullying big sisters in their lives??

Is there some recognition factor going on?

My paternal grandmother had a whiff of Bette Davis and Angela Channing in her (and you'd all see it immediately); my maternal grandmother had a dose of Judith Anderson (whom she adored) and Miss Ellie in her; and my mother, whom I referred to (not to her face) as "Joan Crawford Lite" when I was a teenager, indeed still seems to me rather pointedly like Crawford in BABY JANE and STRAIT-JACKET (not in her homicidal moments but in her histrionic "tormented" shtick, almost exactly).

The camera just seems to tilt when these women enter those spaces.

 

[Willie Oleson]

you had villainous men, business scandals, youthful bed-hopping, etc. But they all seemed to strangely take focus, suddenly and unavoidably, when the mad Machiavellian former maiden stories were introduced.

I think male characters are usually more successful as the active, physical villains. But therefore it also makes sense that the overarching and almost mythical kind of evil comes from a female character. And we got that in Falcon Crest and Peyton Place.
The more specific hag horror happened in EMPIRE, as we saw Lucious Lyon's crazy momma being very creative with sharp objects.

I think the perfect candidate on DALLAS was Rebecca Wentworth, but then I'd want her to be more grande dame, like Jacqueline Perrault.
Heck, they could even borrow from Strait-Jacket and have the scheming daughter Katherine frame Rebecca for the murders (and then, in an ironic twist, just before Katherine is about to set fire to Southfork, she is surprised by the maniacal and stabhappy Lady Jessica Montford).
Talk about a comeuppance.

If you're going to borrow from another soap (as they all did) then you may as well borrow the best bits, and DYNASTY dropped the ball by not creating their own "Jacqueline Perrault".
If the grande dame couldn't be there in physical form then at least it should become clear that Blake's mother Ellen Lucretia Carrington was the great evil behind everything.
It goes without saying that she hated Alexis in a it-takes-one-to-know-one kind of way, and that could perfectly explain why she had her grandson kidnapped.
To punish her son for marrying Alexis against her will. And then later she would burn the house and herself (!) for no other reason than to inflict guilt and conflict on her sons.
I think she should have been that vicious monster, and that's the novel Caress would have wanted to publish, and the facts will come to light during the epic trial that will shake the Denver high society to its very foundations.

Mother Blaisdel (her name has to be Gothel) could be wreaking bloody havoc in season 7. Just because they were all a bit too sensitive.
Sammy Jo could accidentally save the day by running Mother Blaisdel over, but the scheming vixen is going to take all credit for it and that's when the Carringtons decide to forgive her for Rita-gate.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Oh, I forgot about Mother Blaisdel. Yes, there's great potential there -- still angry that Krystle picked up her phone without asking.

 

[ClassyCo]

Here's a five-minute review of SAVAGE INTRUDER/HOLLYWOOD HORROR HOUSE:

 

[Crimson]

Which stars who never did one should've and what would the story be??

Perhaps I earlier overlooked the most obvious of the obvious: Olivia and the other Joan. Of course they probably wouldn't have done it, prevented by Olivia's distaste of both the genre and her sibling -- but what two better divas to bury a hatchet somewhere.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

I'm always afraid 60-somethng Joan is going to slip in her pumps on the floor of the Fields' foyer and break her hip at about 1: 18 :00...

Funny how I didn't used to worry about that.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Yesterday, I saw DEAD RINGER (1964) again as part of a Bette Davis marathon on some broadcast station. Filmed at the same time as Joan's STRAIT-JACKET, Bette's film is the far more polished picture, even though it's still a B-movie. Directed by Davis' old co-star Paul Henreid, DEAD RINGER satirizes Bette's famous "What a dump!!" line from BEYOND THE FOREST before Edward Albee can do so, borrows the evil twins plot from Bette's A STOLEN LIFE (from 1946), dresses the organist (Perry Blackwell of PILLOW TALK fame) with Eve Arden's outfit from MILDRED PIERCE (1945), and offers us a terrific funereal harpsichord score from Andre Previn (oh, if only Previn had done the occasional DYNASTY composition, especially involving Caress' machinations).

Karl Malden plays Bette's stalwart cop boyfriend. Peter Lawford is her slimy boy-toy who is killed by a stuffed great dane. And Cyril Delevanti is the butler who quietly figures it all out.

And it's filmed in and out of the Doheny Greystone mansion.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Finally!!

Now you can compare....

I always want to see a mash-up between the superior CIRCUS OF HORRORS (1960) with Joan Crawford's startlingly similar BERSERK (1967), a film she named herself.

Here are both movies.

CIRCUS OF HORRORS (1960, with Anton Diffring and Donald Pleasance):

BERSERK (1967, with Joan Crawford and Diana Dors):

Even Billy Smart's circus was used for both films!

 

[ClassyCo]

Finally!!

Now you can compare....

I always want to see a mash-up between the superior CIRCUS OF HORRORS (1960) with Joan Crawford's startlingly similar BERSERK (1967), a film she named herself.

Here are both movies.

CIRCUS OF HORRORS (1960, with Anton Diffring and Donald Pleasance):

BERSERK (1967, with Joan Crawford and Diana Dors):

Even Billy Smart's circus was used for both films!

I need to watch both of these movies.

 

[Crimson]

I don't think this is Hag Horror, but on the other hand I don't know what the heck it is. It's got one of those overly cumbersome titles that Hag Horror films started adopting in the late 60s, a past-her-prime Hollywood actress, and an apparently macabre premise.

I'm mot a huge fan of Rosalind Russell, but there was always a lunatic energy to her acting. I could see her chopping people up with a hatchet.

 

[ClassyCo]

I don't think this is Hag Horror, but on the other hand I don't know what the heck it is. It's got one of those overly cumbersome titles that Hag Horror films started adopting in the late 60s, a past-her-prime Hollywood actress, and an apparently macabre premise.

I'm mot a huge fan of Rosalind Russell, but there was always a lunatic energy to her acting. I could see her chopping people up with a hatchet.

Yeah, I'm unsure what this would be classified as. I've never even heard of this movie before today.

Wikipedia calls the movie a "black comedy" and apparently it was re-edited a couple of times because preview audiences didn't like it.