What a terrible movie. Well, let me qualify that. The photography by Lucien Ballard is fine.
First we have a psychiatric facility, basically run as a prison by stern and unyielding Joan Crawford, who works under the spineless director Herbert Marshall. Crawford teaches her scowling nurses judo. Then psychiatrist Robert Stack arrives with his assistance, full of new ideas such as group therapy and grounds privileges. Nasty sparks fly between Crawford and Stack. I will not spoil things by mentioning who wins. I needn't bother since you already know.
But this is all unimportant anyway. The main point of Hall Bartlet's and Harry Greenberg's screenplay is to put a lot of suffering on the screen. Polly Bergen is a middle-class housewife who has taken to hallucinating and is committed by her loving husband, Robert Vaughn. We see Bergen reassured by the reassuring Robert Stack, then subject to electroconvulsive therapy and rape. We get to enjoy Janis Paige's rants against everything in the world, especially men. There is a mute patient. (There is always a mute patient, sometimes several.) We get to see a pet bird squashed by a demented inmate. There is a good deal of blubbering about formulaic personal problems in the group therapy sessions.
First, the clinic or whatever it is could have been designed by Princess Cruise Lines. It's plain gorgeous. And you get to smoke whenever you want, and you can smuggle in a bottle of booze and have a party without the screenplay explaining just how you are able to do that.
Then the facility must have a make up department of its own, perhaps run by Max Factor Incorporated, and a hair salon staffed by Sidney Guilaroff's students. The wardrobe is exquisite. Patients get to lounge around in gear derived from the tailored clothing of China, with just a touch of elegance in the hand-embroidered frogs.
Polly Bergen is an attractive woman and a decent actress, but I do wish she'd quit being raped on screen. In "Cape Fear" it was the brawny and feral Robert Mitchum. Here it's a grim gang of frowning, determined, love-starved male patients -- in a dark room with the radio blaring some crummy jazz. She's probably been raped in all her other movies as well, though the assaults may have taken place off screen and never mentioned in the dialog. I wouldn't go so far as to argue that she got to like rough sex but it wouldn't surprise me if she had. Who knows what games one plays in the boudoir? I don't mean to single out Polly Bergen. Half her dialog seems to consist of hoarse screams and there's nothing she can do about that. Robert Stack, on the other hand, has made two or three good movies. In "To Be Or Not To Be," he was animated. Here, he acts according to the configuration he so successfully parodied in "Airplane." When he tries to smile, the viewer hears an agonized creak.
It's not really worth going on about. It's a psychiatric soap opera. The movie dissolves in sobs of relief at the end. Birds chirrup joyously. A new sun peers over the horizon. Flowers sprout buds and then bloom in quick motion, as in a Walt Disney nature film. The atmosphere is suffused with hope and the poor viewer with a sense of having wasted part of his life.
First we have a psychiatric facility, basically run as a prison by stern and unyielding Joan Crawford, who works under the spineless director Herbert Marshall. Crawford teaches her scowling nurses judo. Then psychiatrist Robert Stack arrives with his assistance, full of new ideas such as group therapy and grounds privileges. Nasty sparks fly between Crawford and Stack. I will not spoil things by mentioning who wins. I needn't bother since you already know.
But this is all unimportant anyway. The main point of Hall Bartlet's and Harry Greenberg's screenplay is to put a lot of suffering on the screen. Polly Bergen is a middle-class housewife who has taken to hallucinating and is committed by her loving husband, Robert Vaughn. We see Bergen reassured by the reassuring Robert Stack, then subject to electroconvulsive therapy and rape. We get to enjoy Janis Paige's rants against everything in the world, especially men. There is a mute patient. (There is always a mute patient, sometimes several.) We get to see a pet bird squashed by a demented inmate. There is a good deal of blubbering about formulaic personal problems in the group therapy sessions.
First, the clinic or whatever it is could have been designed by Princess Cruise Lines. It's plain gorgeous. And you get to smoke whenever you want, and you can smuggle in a bottle of booze and have a party without the screenplay explaining just how you are able to do that.
Then the facility must have a make up department of its own, perhaps run by Max Factor Incorporated, and a hair salon staffed by Sidney Guilaroff's students. The wardrobe is exquisite. Patients get to lounge around in gear derived from the tailored clothing of China, with just a touch of elegance in the hand-embroidered frogs.
Polly Bergen is an attractive woman and a decent actress, but I do wish she'd quit being raped on screen. In "Cape Fear" it was the brawny and feral Robert Mitchum. Here it's a grim gang of frowning, determined, love-starved male patients -- in a dark room with the radio blaring some crummy jazz. She's probably been raped in all her other movies as well, though the assaults may have taken place off screen and never mentioned in the dialog. I wouldn't go so far as to argue that she got to like rough sex but it wouldn't surprise me if she had. Who knows what games one plays in the boudoir? I don't mean to single out Polly Bergen. Half her dialog seems to consist of hoarse screams and there's nothing she can do about that. Robert Stack, on the other hand, has made two or three good movies. In "To Be Or Not To Be," he was animated. Here, he acts according to the configuration he so successfully parodied in "Airplane." When he tries to smile, the viewer hears an agonized creak.
It's not really worth going on about. It's a psychiatric soap opera. The movie dissolves in sobs of relief at the end. Birds chirrup joyously. A new sun peers over the horizon. Flowers sprout buds and then bloom in quick motion, as in a Walt Disney nature film. The atmosphere is suffused with hope and the poor viewer with a sense of having wasted part of his life.