Your Daily Horror Digest for June 23, 2025
“Lucy Harbin took an axe, gave her husband forty whacks.” – Strait-Jacket (1964)
Welcome to another daily horror digest from Creepy Catalog with movie recommendations, news, trivia, and more. I’m trying something a little different again today. Instead a brand-new movie recommendation, I’d like to talk about an older movie I recently watched for the first time. Maybe it can be a once a week thing? Retro Mondays maybe?
What I Watched Last Night
One of my new year’s resolutions this year was to watch more classic horror movies. My goal was at least one new-to-me classic every week. I haven’t kept up with that as much as I wanted, but I’m trying to make up for it. With that in mind, over the weekend I watched Strait-Jacket (1964) for the first time.
Strait-Jacket stars Joan Crawford as Lucy Harbin, a “murderess” who kills her husband and his mistress with an axe, in full view of her young daughter Carol. After spending the next twenty years in an asylum, Lucy is released into the care of her brother and sister-in-law, Bill and Emily. Carol has lived with her uncle since her mother was first sent away, and, now in her twenties, Carol is eager to welcome Lucy back into her life. The problem is, Lucy doesn’t seem to be fully recovered from her mental instability, and too much stress might send her hurtling back towards her axe-murdering ways.
Strait-Jacket is the result of a few influences. For starters, it is a direct result of the success of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). That movie kicked off a genre often referred to as “psycho-biddy” which features older women in psychologically disturbed roles. Strait-Jacket also owes a lot to Psycho (1960), which becomes increasingly obvious as the movie nears its end. It’s probably no coincidence that Robert Bloch wrote the script for Strait-Jacket. He also wrote the novel Psycho which Hitchcock and scriptwriter Joseph Stefano adapted.
I enjoyed Strait-Jacket, but it’s nowhere near as good as the two movies mentioned above that directly inspired it. William Castle directed it, the same director who did House on Haunted Hill, The Tingler, and 13 Ghosts. Those movies are all good fun, but they’re not effective psychological thrillers like Psycho and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane. Strait-Jacket is good, and Joan Crawford is great, but I did not like how the story was wrapped up. I won’t say what happens just in case you want to watch it, but it was kind of a letdown for me.There was a much more impactful way to finish the movie, but they chose subversion instead.
It’s still worth watching though. If you want to check it out, Strait-Jacket is streaming free on Fawsome TV.
Events On This Day
Born today in 1972 is Selma Blair. She had her breakout role in 1999 as Cecile Caldwell in Cruel Intentions. Selma has also appeared in multiple horror (and horror-adjacent) movies throughout her career, including The Fog (2005), Mom and Dad (2017), In Their Skin (2012), and, of course, as Liz Sherman in four of the Hellboy movies (two live action and two animated).
Also born on June 23rd are the following two actors from franchise sequels. Marielle Jaffe was born on this day in 1989, and she played Olivia Morris in Scream 4 (2011). She’s one of Jill’s friends, the one who is murdered in her bedroom by Ghostface as Jill and Kirby watch from across the street.
Emmanuelle Vaugier was also born on this date, in 1976. Emmanuelle first appeared in the Saw franchise in Saw II (2005) as Addison, the woman trapped in the house who pushes her hands into a box and gets her wrists encircled in razors.
On this day in 1972, Ben was released. Ben is the sequel to Willard (1971), and it continues the story where the first movie left off. Ben is the name of the lead rat in a pack of vicious killer rats. Ben befriends a young boy, but the body count piled up by the pack makes them a target for extermination. Michael Jackson famously performed the ending theme song for Ben.
In the News
This biggest horror news from yesterday is the announcement that season three of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon will begin airing on AMC and AMC+ on September 7, 2025. The end of season two saw Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Carol (Melissa McBride) leaving France to find their way back home to the United States. That journey takes them to Spain in season three.
Other than maybe The Ones Who Live which follows Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira), Daryl Dixon has been the best spinoff series in the whole Walking Dead TV franchise. The makers of the show know how good it is, because season four is reportedly already in the works.
That’s all for today. Tomorrow it’s back to normal with a brand-new movie recommendation!
