It's so ridiculous how they had to explain the twist in these movies - Strait-Jacket (1964) Discussion

[–] iheartnormi 9 years ago

Yeah I guess back then if a movie had a twist the audience would have left the movie scratching their heads, even now with movies like Inception people can't seem to grasp the ending. I personally am glad that they explained it because I had to fast forward most of the movie; I found it boring at times.

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[–] Limeginger 8 years ago

god, that's sad.

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[–] soulmaned21 9 years ago

It was actually because of Joan Crawford. The trivia section explains it better, but I saw in a documentary about William Castle that Crawford was pretty much running the show and wanted the final scene tacked on at the end to bring the focus back on her instead of leaving the audience thinking about the acting of the actress who plays Carol as she had her dramatic reveal.

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[–] PrometheusTree64 8 years ago

It was actually because of Joan Crawford. The trivia section explains it better, but I saw in a documentary about William Castle that Crawford was pretty much running the show and wanted the final scene tacked on at the end to bring the focus back on her instead of leaving the audience thinking about the acting of the actress who plays Carol as she had her dramatic reveal

Apparently, that's true. The movie was supposed to end with Carol going crazy inside the front door of the Fields' mansion -- which could have been a pretty effective finale.

But not only did Crawford demand the "explanation" scene tacked on at the end, she also demanded that Diane Baker's meltdown scene be edited with Crawford on the other side of the door also breaking down.

So Crawford stole the ending from Baker in two different ways. Reportedly, it created a bit of tension between the two women after the movie was completed, although Baker seems quite philosophical about it now, pointing out that many stars today with any power on a movie set might do the same thing.

That said, the juxtaposition of both women going nut on either side of the door was pretty effective, too. And I'm not one who minds a quaint explanation scene at the end of a movie, as it allows for a certain nostalgic note to close the picture after all the screaming melodrama.

But then, STRAIT-JACKET as not exactly a supreme cinematic achievement. So there wasn't much there to ruin. Sure, Crawford was great and the subject matter was irresistable, but if William Castle was looking to make his classic blockbuster, he did some of his sloppiest directorial work on this movie.

It's an absolute mess.

--
LBJ's mistress on JFK:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcXeutDmuRA

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[–] johnmiller (3318) 6 years ago

To me, the one in "Psycho" is so over done! It stops the movie dead in its tracks. Only the great Anthony Perkins moment at the end rescues the epilogue.

The ending here doesn't pack nearly the same punch, so the explanation part didn't matter that much to me.

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[–] roger1 (2270) 8 months ago

The most famous example is in Psycho (we get it, he snapped and was killing people dressed as his dead mother)

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But that's not ALL that the shrink explains at the end of Psycho. He actually provides THREE major, crucial pieces of information that are important to the plot:

ONE: Norman murdered his mother and her lover. This totally changes the backstory we heard earlier: That mother poisoned the lover and then herself. Sheriff Chambers told us this. But BEFORE then, Norman told Marion that the lover died(only the lover, not the mother): "And the WAY he died...its nothing to discuss while you're eating." So a major mystery is planted early (by Norman) and explained wrongly (by the sheriff) and the shrink changes EVERYTHING: Norman was the killer, Norman was always psycho.

TWO: Norman stole his mother's corpse, gutted it, and filled it with chemicals and sawdust per his taxidermy hobby. The mother we saw in the fruit cellar wasn't just a CORPSE. She was a gutted and stuffed corpse. This was MIND-BLOWING in a censored 1960 movie and made Norman's hobby(and his stuffed birds) much more profound. Remember that both Norman(to Marion) and Mother herself(in Norman's mind) tell us that "Mother is as harmless as one of those stuffed birds." Brilliant writing.

THREE: Norman/mother killed TWO OTHER WOMEN before Marion. This wasn't a one-time killing, he'd killed others and this time he got caught because Marion stole money and a sharp private eye and her loved ones came looking for her.

The shrink's speech in Psycho is one of the great "solution speeches" in movie history. The sad thing is that the speech is so smart and has not been seen as smart after all these years. But Hitchcock HAD to tell us that Norman killed his mother -- and this was the only scene where he could do it.

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[–] roger1 (2270) 8 months ago

I always hated how the early "twist" movies felt they had to explain the twist at the end. Like did they think that little of their audience? The most famous example is in Psycho (we get it, he snapped and was killing people dressed as his dead mother) but the end of Strait-Jacket was probably the most over-the-top offender of this. Did they really need to explain every little detail of the twist in that last scene.

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Keep in mind that the screenplay for Strait-Jacket(an original, not from a novel) was by Robert Bloch, who had written the novel "Psycho" in 1959 that became a 1960 Hitchcock film.

This is sad for Bloch: his "wrap up explanation" scene in Strait-Jacket is much WORSE than the very intelligently written shrink speech at the end of Psycho -- which was re-written by Joseph Stefano(with Hitchcock's expert input) from Bloch's novel.

Simply put, there are different ways to write an explanation, and Bloch was a lot clumsier about it than Stefano.

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