Straight-Jacket is directed by Richard Day, the author of the stage play of the same title. Similar to Far From Heaven (2002), a major premise of the film is that gays were very much in the closet during the 1950s. Movie star Guy Stone (played by Matt Letscher), who lives in a magnificent estate with a sweeping view of the lights of Los Angeles, complete with a gay butler (played by Michael Emerson), is accustomed to secret one-night stands to protect his masculine reputation. Those who have sex with him are so dazzled that he is a star that they never betray his secret, though everyone on movie sets is keenly aware. He is too arrogant to be a Rock Hudson clone, if that is the intended role model. When the plot begins, he desperately wants to play the title role of Ben Hur. His agent Jerry (played by Veronica Cartwright) is trying to persuade movie mogul Saul Ornstein (played by Victor Raider-Wexler) to give him the part over a rival competitor. However, one night a scandal-hungry rival snaps a picture of him as he leaves a clandestine gay club that has been raided by the police, who in turn have been tipped off by the same photographer, who shares the snapshot with the press. Now that the entire world knows that Guy is gay, Ornstein cannot offer him the part of Ben Hur. His agent then dreams up a solution to save him and her own career from disaster. If Guy will marry Ornstein's airhead secretary, Sally (played by Carrie Preston), who has been fawning over Guy for years, he can play Ben Hur, and the publicity about the marriage will expose the gay bar arrest photo as a hoax. Guy agrees. However, he is not expecting that his bride will redecorate his house, scare off potential tricks, and demand sex that he is ill prepared to perform; that problem is solved when Guy finally puts his foot down. Meanwhile, the House Un-American Activities Committee is seeking the names of Communists in the film industry. The committee head and staff worker positively salivate at the prospect of also identifying gay Communists. Along comes handsome Rick (played by Adam Greer), the author of a novel that exposes exploitation by the bosses of mine workers. His novel has been selected for a film adaptation, starring Guy, but Ornstein wants the worker exploitation angle toned down to avoid censure by the House Committee. Guy, instantly recognizing that Rick is gay, intervenes with the suggestion that he will work on the script personally with Rick, hoping that they will quickly hop into bed as soon as he arrives at his estate. Rick, nevertheless, wants to go to work and declines a quickie. As a result, Guy gains greater respect for Rick, and inexplicably the reverse, as the script demands that the two fall in love. The film then must sort out Guy's marriage as well as save the studio from a debacle after a loose mouth rival implicates Guy as someone who might name names for the Committee. However, Straight-Jacket does not appear to translate well from the stage to the screen. Indeed, the product appears almost as a filming of a live stage performance, with camp one-liners spoken too quickly in the film to collect the laughter that the writer-director intended. Two musical numbers seem entirely out of place in the film, as if added gratuitously. However, as one who lived through the painful 1950s in Hollywood, I can recall nothing amusing about the blacklisting era, and Straight-Jacket utterly fails to score by portraying the morality police of the day as trivialized cartoon dummies. The stereotypic portrayal of ditsy gays is equally unimpressive. MH
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