One of William Castle’s madcap best. He went out of his way to get a member of Golden Age Hollywood royalty, Joan Crawford, to star in his delightfully sleazy Robert Bloch-written horror job about a lady axe murderer. The effort paid off. Crawford is the whole show here. She’s campy and great at the same time in a plum role as a woman who’s spent twenty years in an asylum after she chopped to pieces her cheating husband and his mistress. When she’s released, Crawford reconnects with her daughter, but is a nervous wreck, constantly on the verge of tears, tantrums, and violence. And do people start dying mysteriously afterward? You bet they do. The kill scenes here are entertaining (and gruesome for the time) precursors to the Friday the 13th-style murders in which the killer toys with the victim first before they bring down the axe.