User reviews

Ah, crazy people movies. Nothing actors like better than free range to ham it up under the guise of being insane. You know what's really sad? Fifty years later and the portrayal of mentally ill people in movies really hasn't changed much. Anyway, this movie is a drama about the goings-on at a hospital mental ward. In particular doctor Robert Stack, who tackles his greatest "unsolved mystery" in this film: Joan Crawford. Joan plays a hard-nosed head nurse named Lucretia who doesn't like softie Stack's approach to dealing with the loonies. Dated and often silly, it can be a tough slog to sit through. But whenever Joan's on screen, things are more interesting. Seeing Joan in a leotard teaching her nurses self-defense is a must for every Joan fan! I see several reviews comparing this to The Snake Pit, which I find ridiculous. The Snake Pit was a million times better than this. This is a forgettable drama with good intentions that is only memorable for Joan Crawford's supporting part.

Sixteen years after The Snake Pit and 13 years before One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, The Caretakers joins their company as `enlightened' explorations of the mentally ill and the institutions that hold them. But The Caretakers stays closer in spirit to Caged, with the female inmates transferred from the Big House to a mental ward called (of all things!) Borderline. (There's actually one holdover from the cast of Caged – Ellen Corby, as a batty old schoolmarm – and one sequence involving a parakeet which almost exactly reprises one involving a cat in the earlier movie.) But while Caged was overwrought but compellingly good, The Caretakers is overwrought and compellingly bad.

The jangly piano music over the titles, with their suggestions of Di Chirico and Picasso's `Guernica,' clue us to the racheted-up, `serious' tone of the movie. But soon we're watching Polly Bergen go flat-out berserk in front of the screen of a crowded theater. An ambulance ushers her into the gloomy shadows (the movie is well photographed) of the mental hospital, where she comes under the care of Robert Stack, who is pioneering progressive and humane methods of treatment (which nonetheless require jolts of electricity to the temples).

But Bergen is but one of the woeful women among whom we divide our time. This is the kind of dramaturgy where, when Barbara Barrie is introduced as never having uttered a word in seven years, we wait 90 minutes with bated breath for her to speak. She's lucky to get a word in edgewise, as recovering prostitute Janis Paige bazoos her way through every scene she's in and steals all the thunder from Bergen's go-for-broke histrionics.

The staff faces its own problems, however. Head of the hospital is Herbert Marshall, looking like he was just trundled in from Madame Tussaud's, but he's just a figurehead who has long since ceded authority to underlings, particularly Joan Crawford. Since she's been saddled with the name Lucretia, with nasty echoes of the Borgias, we know she's not exactly a helping professional. She stands in adamant opposition to everything Stack works for, and relies on head nurse and hard case Constance Ford as her secret agent. Unfortunately, Crawford's role is smaller than we can be sure she hoped it would be (and often her position seems to make sense).

That's about it. We never get to see a promised, climactic board meeting which will decide the fates of Crawford and Stack. That may have been a try for ironic ambiguity, but it looks like the movie just ran out of steam, or money. For some of the patients, rays of hope do pop out of the institutional-grey skies, for Hollywood never acknowledged a problem that couldn't be wrapped up by the last reel. This mixture of high earnestness and wretched overacting is simply stupefying.

Robert Stack, Joan Crawford, Susan Oliver, Herbert Marshall, Constance Ford, Van Williams and Diane McBain are "The Caretakers," a 1963 film also starring Polly Bergen, Janis Paige, Barbara Barrie, Ellen Corby and Sharon Hugueny who are the cared for. Robert Vaughn plays Bergen's husband. The setting is a mental institution where Polly Bergen is brought after she goes insane at a theater showing West Side Story. She wasn't the first. The focus is on her case as the director of nurses (Crawford) and the doctor in charge of an experimental program (Stack) duke it out - naturally Crawford favors things like discipline and confinement (she would) and Stack wants to treat the patients as people and give them therapy. I don't know where the drugs were, unless they didn't have them in 1963. I'm pretty sure they had Librium, though Polly didn't seem to be on it.

This film has TV written all over it, including in its choice of the actors, most of whom did major work on television. It's not strong enough for a feature film, though it looks for all intents and purposes like a B movie which it perhaps was. Robert Stack is pretty one-note. Crawford in 1963 still looked good in a leotard but the rest of her is plenty scary. I'm not sure the portrayal of the conflict was correct in its dynamics - nurses have a certain amount of power but riding roughshod over a doctor's orders...I suppose with Crawford heading up the staff, it's more than possible but not realistic.

Janis Paige gives a lively performance as a man-hater, and there is the ubiquitous non-speaker (Barrie), the nice one (Corby), the delusional one (Hugueny), and the one who will probably recover (Bergen). Herbert Marshall plays the head of the institute - by 1963, he was 73 and had enjoyed 50 years on stage and in films. After a distinguished career, "The Caretakers" is thankfully not his last credit. Constance Ford played a nurse from hell who is not a credit to her profession. There were two hunks with the last name of Williams back in the day - Van and Grant - this one's Van. Nice eye candy but he didn't have much to do.

All in all, pretty badly directed and executed.

I don't know why I like this movie so much. I am sure that it has a lot to do with the fact that I love Joan Crawford, especially during the second half of her career. This particular film, in which she plays a severe and unyielding head nurse at a state psychiatric hospital, seems to have crystallized her persona of later years, much as "Mildred Pierce" did the same for the persona of the younger Crawford.

I have little to add to what other reviewers have said about "The Caretakers", except that it is not for everyone. The acting is over the top. The writing is awful. The treatment of the theme is very hypocritical in the sense that the film seems to mean well on the surface, but as it goes on, one feels that someone--the director, producer, et. al.--did their best to cram in as many gratuitous, sensationalistic moments as possible. This, naturally, defeats the film's original purpose, which was apparently to showcase more progressive methods for treating mental illness than were generally used at the time.

So why do I keep coming back to this picture at least once a year? Well, as I've said, it's mainly for Joan Crawford, but it's also for the film's camp value. EVERYONE here contributes to that, whether they knew it at the time or not. Polly Bergen chews her way through every scene with glorious relish, although she does become more subdued later on. Janis Paige--what can I say? She did a great job of portraying a mouthy slut. And so on and so forth.

I have read at least one account which stated that the filming of "The Caretakers" was besieged by script re-writes, which may explain the less-than-stellar results. Nevertheless, there's never a dull moment here, and as far as I'm concerned, that's a good thing. Movies are, after all, meant to entertain more than anything else, so if you watch this, watch it for that reason. And for good old Joan.

One of the most common interest points for me in seeing any film is good concepts or when it takes on a subject not easy to tackle but always worth addressing. Something that was also covered in 'The Snake Pit' and 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'. That was the case with 'The Caretakers'. Plus it had Joan Crawford (though the film was from her twilight years period) and Herbert Marshall in it, Crawford especially was more often than not worth watching despite her film choices being up and down.

'The Caretakers' is not one of her best films, nor does it contain one of her best performances. It is also not one of her worst on either count either. It struck me as a rather disappointing but still semi-watchable film that primarily suffers from how it deals with its subject. It may have had good intentions but it didn't translate in the execution, on this front 'The Caretakers' struck me as somewhat lacking in good taste which was somewhat frustrating.

It is benefitted by some very stylish and atmosphere-laden photography and the setting is suitaably austere. Elmer Bernstein's score has haunting moments.

Did not think much of the acting really, but some of the cast come off well. Polly Bergen may have had some terrible and rather limited dialogue, but she had a quite challenging role and manages to give the character force and nuance. Janis Page also does wonders with a role that sounds one-dimensional but makes it remarkably real.

Elsewhere, we have a stiff Robert Stack looking as if he wanted to be somewhere else, even for a sympathetic character he manages to make the character dull, and Crawford in a part that she should have been perfect for chewing the scenery to smithereens. Marshall also looks ill at ease in a part that has so little to it. None of the characters are written very well at all, too "black and white" so either characters too perfect or ones with not a redeeming bone in their bodies and never really in between (Page's being a possible exception). The direction is bland at best and schlocky at worst.

Although Bernstein's score has moments, too much is ridiculously overblown and over-emphasises the mood too much. The script goes well overboard on the camp, containing some real howlers, and is very awkward such as with poor Bergen in the early stages. The story is a real mess, what could have been a hard hitting and poignant film was instead rather gratuitously distasteful, offered very little insight into the subject, showed no respect for it or its characters and because of its numerous bouts of unintentional humour it was very difficult to take it seriously, something that the writing was not good in general at doing. Almost to an insulting degree.

Concluding, disappointing. 4/10

Dr. McCloud (Robert Stack) is a new doctor at a mental institution. He's trying an new way to cure patients. It's called Experiment Borderline--patients are treated kindly, engage in group therapy and are given greater freedom to walk about. Head of the nurses Lucretia Terry (Joan Crawford) is dead set against this. She believes in using force to subdue and control patients. It's a battle of wills between them with the patients in the middle. Who will win?

Very dated but still worth seeing. It has some great black & white photography and some good acting. Stack is just OK as McCloud; Crawford is just great as Terry--one of her best performances; Polly Bergen engagingly chews the scenery as Lorna, a patient; Janis Paige does wonders with her role as Miriam, the slutty patient; Ellen Corby is pretty good as an elderly patient; Barbara Barrie is very good as Edna, a mute and Constance Ford is very good as gruff, stern Nurse Bracken. The only really bad performances were from Sharon Hugueny and Ana St. Clair (as patients) and Van Williams (a doctor) and Susan Oliver (a nurse).

The real bad parts of this movie are lousy direction and a horrible script. Bergen easily has the worst lines but pulls them off. Also its view of mental patients is very Hollywood--they all look perfect, aren't really dangerous and, by the end, are magically on their way to being OK. I can live with that though--this WAS made for a mass audience. Also the language is (for 1963) pretty rough in spots.

So, it's dated but worth seeing for some great acting and very nice photography. I'm giving it a 7.

Despite good intentions, this silly sanitarium flick from Dariel Telfer's novel is unintentionally funny. 'Stolid' is practically synonymous with Robert Stack, here playing the head doctor at an asylum that welcomes a new patient to the pack, schizophrenic Polly Bergen (who freaks out in a crowded movie-house showing "West Side Story"...she must be a critic). Joan Crawford is on hand too, playing the hospital matron (she's slightly schizo herself; one minute she's flirting with wooden Stack, the next she's chewing him out). Some intense scenes, fine Oscar-nominated cinematography by Lucien Ballard, but otherwise ridiculous. Hall Bartlett is credited with the direction; future TV director Jerry Paris (of "Happy Days" fame) co-produced and co-wrote...wouldn't it have been better if that were reversed and Paris brought Joanie & Chachi on-board to deal with Mommie Dearest? ** from ****

It seems as though every decade puts out another film on mental illness and the treatment thereof. In the Thirties it was Private Worlds, the Forties gave us The Snake Pit, the Fifties the Cobweb, and finally in the Sixties The Caretakers. In the following decade it was One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. You can see a bit of that and the other films in The Caretakers.

Joan Crawford plays the head nurse in the hospital who is a great believer in discipline in the ward. She has an assistant a regular nurse Ratched in training in Constance Ford. She's got no use for the new fangled ideas that Robert Stack is bringing to the hospital, most prominent among them group therapy. In fact my favorite scene is Crawford giving judo lessons to her nurses, the better to protect themselves from some patients who might turn on them in an instant.

Both Crawford and Stack battle for the soul and mind of the hospital head Herbert Marshall who is old and tired and basically listens to whomever talks to him last.

The best acting is done by the women in the group which consists of such varied types as Polly Bergen, Janis Paige, Diane McBain, Sharon Hugenny, Virginia Munshin, Barbara Barrie, Ellen Corby, and Ana St. Clair. The film is almost a combination of The Women and Caged only set in a mental hospital ward for women instead of a prison. Each one of these actresses presents a sharply delineated character.

Joan who after Baby Jane got nothing but horror/terror films was lucky to get this part, the better for her fans to remember her in something other than trash in the Sixties. Stack is his usual professional self who makes psychiatry look like a noble calling. The two have some interesting scenes together as professional rivals who see the treatment of the mentally ill from different perspectives.

But the real heart of this film is the patients. Above all Polly Bergen is one you will remember best from The Caretakers.

I'm clearly not on the same page as most of the reviewers. First, it's classic Joan Crawford camp. Not only is Joan campy and hilarious as the "head nurse" but the cast of characters kept me enthralled. Look, I don't expect too much "realism" in films about mental illness in the 1960's so I'm not quite getting the disgust that's being expressed.

Marion was also a special treat and her energy shined.

If there is any historical relevance in it is the fact the social norms around the mentally ill were being reconstructed in the 1960's. Not that there was any real legitimacy in how it was portrayed, the fact that it was part of the movie as evidenced by the "borderlines". Even the term "borderlines" is made up, but the point about the conception of the mentally ill having capacity to heal was discussed. I guess 'borderline' was meant to express "only borderline insane".

Look, if you love a good camp film film with great outrageous female characters, this is a great film to watch. A special bonus for those that love Joan Crawford!

I especially appreciated your (Craig.net(?) 'Never Boring' review, because your description of how you're compelled to watch this movie once a year plus the list of it's mediocre at best qualities ... I had to laugh at myself as you've captured my assessment of Mildred Pierce, a melodrama of a movie that I am compelled to watch once a year too. I try to answer a friend of mine who complains about unrealistic over-the-top black & white movies (he puts all of them into that category..? ) and I have to say "And that's the point! What's wrong with not real or un relatable? Don't you get = Escapism. Realism is for the birds ..". And I do mean that. At least during that era people went to a movie (My parents told me) for a break. Not for reinforcement of their daily struggle and stress. So I say "stop listening too intently and critically to the music that annoys you because it tells you how to feel !" ... (he says he feels manipulated into feeling the way the writers intend him to feel) "Instead just allow yourself to be manipulated. In other words .. let go and be entertained by NOT relating". Does that make any sense to you ? Because overdone soapy cornball movies are actually great fun. Reality is highly overrated.

Reminiscent of 1949's "The Snake Pit" in that it treats mental illness in an exploitative manner with patients locked up in dark cages, looking wild and dangerous. "The Snake Pit" was acclaimed in its day despite promoting a misleading and damaging portrait of mental illness. "The Caretakers" was not accorded the same applause, perhaps because people were slowly becoming more sophisticated in regard to mental illness, seeing it as an ILLNESS, although even in 1963 (and probably in 1999, as well), it was still fashionable to equate it with the arm flailing, wild-eyed image created in film. Robert Stack, a one-note actor if there ever was one (he has, post-"Airplane," shown more versatility) swaggers through the film, portraying the doctor the same way he did Eliot Ness, while Polly Bergen as the patient, engages in the kind of histrionics that usually come across as a desperate campaign to snag an Oscar nomination. It's what Clint Eastwood once called "emotional gymnastics." The black and white cinematography is exceptional, however, although it too lends itself to the exploitative nature of the film. All those dark shadows and dimly lit corridors make you wonder if Stack and company will cross paths with Dracula. They might as well because "The Caretakers" is a horror film, and although mental illness can be horrifying, it's irresponsible, to say nothing of insensitive, to portray it for shock value. That is what this film does.

The Caretakers (1963)

It's hard to imagine actually going to the movie to see this movie as a kind of entertainment, because it is more an experience and an emotional plea than a good idea for a first date. There's no question it's powerful, sometimes disturbing, and acted and filmed with intensity. It is, in its own way, a great movie, if you measure it only in terms of being moved. It is also a questionable movie in how it portrays these women, all of whom are "borderline" cases, and none of whom are openly diagnosed for us. Still, some of the most radical behavior is stuff I've seen first hand, and so it isn't completely unreasonable.

The big theme is interesting to see in retrospect: this seems to be about the very first shifts from large hospital care of the mentally troubled to residential care. The key to this is the notion that the patients (they call them "consumers" now) can form small, interactive "families" that encourage emotional and psychological support. It's a kind of giant co-counselling, and I think it's been shown to work in the fifty years since.

There are several equally strong characters as the plot follows one and then another, from patient to nurse to doctor. Joan Crawford gives a steely, power-performance as the head nurse, though only now and then. Herbert Marshall briefly appears as an aging, wise figure in his second to last film. The rest of the cast is made of lesser known actresses who act out the different characters of this woman's ward with disarming conviction (or theatricality, if you don't buy into their illnesses). The lead doctor is played by Robert Stack who never strikes me as quite up to any acting task, but then he's just a figurehead of authority and progress. The movie is in the hands of the women.

Director Hall Bartlett doesn't have much of a career as director, but he's managed to get a terrific cinematographer, Lucian Ballard, to make it a visually brooding and beautiful experience. And the music is by one of the best, Elmer Bernstein. The copy of the movie that streams on netflix has a flaw in the sound which was unfortunate--the quiet portions, including some important conversations, were very quiet, and then when the music and screaming explodes in other scenes it'll hurt your ears. Very very loud. It made for a clumsy viewing, moving the volume up and down, backtracking now and then to see what we missed.

Expect to be impressed and moved and possibly slightly shocked. Overlook some of the neatened up psychology that is a product of both the era and the era the movie was made. And don't look for a surprising plot. Instead you'll get to know a few of the women and when it gets to the final scenes it'll be moving and even a little joyous. If you let it.

It's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" for the ladies with 2 Nurse Ratched's (Constance Ford and Joan Crawford), a mute character who finally speaks, electro shock therapy, and an impromptu party thrown by the inmates. Though seriously intended, watching Polly and friends go crackers is seriously funny. Bergen will have you rolling in the aisles, and the supporting cast of inmates, who are much more lively and entertaining than the dull staff, provide many moments of hilarity. Though she looks more like Medusa, Crawford plays Lucretia, and easily dominates every scene she's in. It's Crawford vs Robert Stack whose approach to psychotherapy seems to encourage the patients to fight with one another during group sessions! Hall Bartlett's direction combines expressionistic effects with documentary-like scenes. Elmer Bernstein's music is appropriately overwrought, and the excellent cinematography is by Lucien Ballard. No less overwrought than Suddenly Last Summer, The Snake Pit or Girl Interrupted, it's a lot more fun. It's memorably over the top and the 8/10 rating designates it as so bad it's good. Like The Big Cube (69), The Legend of Lylah Clare (68), The Happy Ending (69) and Doctors' Wives (71), it needs to be seen to be believed.

Aside from the karate movie, this is the only Joan Jett talkie that I've never seen before. Excuse me, I meant Joan Crawford. I was literally dictating this into my phone, and accidentally said Joan Jett. But Joan Crawford sort of predicted Joan Jett for me, so I'll keep it there. It was kismet!

I have a feeling Crawford's part is going to be small. I hope I'm wrong. The only reason I'm watching it is because of her, one of my favorite actresses of all time!

I'll check back later, and let you all know if I was right.

UPDATE: I was right. Joan has a relatively small part, and she doesn't come in until at least a half hour into the film. That being said, she does play an important role.

The film itself is well made, considering the subject matter. It isn't my favorite subject matter, so this film for me defies a rating. All I can say is that it's an important movie, because it was made with such heartfelt purpose. And it has a rather hopeful ending. I would even say a rather happy ending. So for such a dreary subject matter, this did wind up being a pretty optimistic film, which I appreciate. I also appreciate the casting of Robert Stack, who I first became acquainted with in the A&E biographies, as he was the voiceover. The first film role I think I ever saw him in was the 1939 film, first love, starring another of my faves from back in my childhood, Deanna Durbin. So, I love seeing him. His voice is just amazing! He's one of those people we could listen to reading the phone book and still be mesmerized.

Other highlights of the film include Herbert Marshall, known primarily as a 1930s leading man. So it was very interesting seeing him as an older actor here. Also Janice Paige was very charismatic. She reminds me of the hip hypnotist, Pat Collins. There was also a Christina Crawford look-alike nurse, which I thought was very ironic. There was also a Hayley Mills look alike nurse! I kid you not! So, this film is worth seeing.

Something else of note is the opening credits, which contains a song that sounds a lot like the West Side Story opening. I guess that was intentional, since the lead character in the film is walking into the West Side Story movie being shown in the theater, before she gets carted off to the mental hospital.

All in all, very interesting movie.

By the way, this is not the first time Joan Crawford had been in a film about a mental patient. She was also in Autumn Leaves, which dealt with this very issue, but from a romantic angle. That one was especially great!

THE CARETAKERS represents what would have happened to THE SNAKE PIT if it hadn't been based on a semi-autobiographical novel and photographed with the accent on realism instead of Hollywood glamor. Every bad cliché imaginable is present in THE CARETAKERS' script, and there are vague reminders that stand out as the plot situations seem taken from the outline of the Anatole Litvak movie.

Here it's ROBERT STACK as the decent doctor (instead of Leo Genn) struggling to get his mental hospital on the right track instead of sticking to the old methods. His adversary is a rigid nurse (JOAN CRAWFORD) who wants nothing to do with his new ideas. She's given moral support by the equally hard nurse (CONSTANCE FORD instead of Helen Craig in 'The Snake Pit'), who is hell on wheels as the opposition for Stack.

POLLY BERGEN is the unstable housewife (instead of Olivia de Havilland), glamorized with every hair in place--as are most of the other inmates--and fluttering her false eyelashes as she recounts the troubled past that brought her to the hospital. It's hard to tell whether she's disturbed enough to be placed in the ward she's in because most of the time she makes more sense than the others.

All of the women have wardrobes straight from a studio dressmaker and give no indication that they're in anything but a dressed down rest home for the weary. JANIS PAIGE hangs onto her glamor as a real nutcase who has occasional phony outbursts of distress where her mascara runs.

BARBARA BARRIE is the film's token version of Betsy Blair (the mute girl from 'The Snake Pit'), unable to let people get close to her and providing the heroine (Polly Bergen) with a chance to break through to her silence and redeem herself in the eyes of doctor Stack who knows Bergen is getting well when Barrie is willing to put aside a flaming torch and embrace her.

None of the outlined plot devices have any basis in reality. It's all a very shrill showcase for actresses who want us to believe in their melodramatic situation but are continually hampered by a cliché-ridden script and banal direction from Hall Bartlett.

Trivia note: Herbert Marshall looks quite ill and had to film all his scenes in the afternoon when he was feeling up to the demands of acting.

Summing up: Robert Stack is not well served by his doctor role here but would have better films in his future.

If you're looking for a serious exploration of mental illness this IS NOT the movie for you, but if you're looking for a hoot and a half you've found the answer!!

Overacting abounds! Polly Bergen starts things off going berserk over the opening credits in a highly cinematic fashion and continues to do so at intervals throughout the film always managing to keep her volcano of teased hair in immaculate order. There are many fine actresses in the cast and they all get little moments but most don't get much of a chance to shine. Joan Crawford & Constance Ford are tough as nails, Stack a wall of granite, Diane McBain and Susan Oliver both keep it centered in non showy roles as caring nurses but everybody else gets to be movie "nuts" with little if any restraint.

Wait for the scene where Robert Stack wants to talk to Joan Crawford " man to man"! Camp of a high order.

Out to see "West Side Story" in a movie theater, hysterically pretty Polly Bergen (as Lorna Melford) begins chewing the cinema's scenery and is taken to a mental institution. There, she encounters stiff but sympathetic doctor Robert Stack (as Donovan MacLeod), who traces Ms. Bergen's problem to the loss of her son, in a car accident. Dr. Stack clashes with tough-as-nails head nurse Joan Crawford (as Lucretia Terry), who prefers to rule the roost with an iron fist. "The Caretakers" is so bad it's occasionally funny.

The film was nominated for "Golden Globes" in the dramatic motion picture, director (Hall Bartlett) and dramatic actress (Bergen) categories. For showing the newly popular Ms. Crawford in a flattering light, "Oscar" gave Lucien Ballard his only "Best Cinematography" nomination. Basically, Mr. Ballard photographed Crawford so that she could walk around the set and hit a mark which enabled two shadowy black lines to frame her face. This technique would soon be employed to cover Crawford's neck.

*** The Caretakers (8/21/63) Hall Bartlett ~ Polly Bergen, Robert Stack, Joan Crawford, Janis Paige

Yes - I've read other critiques posted here. A large consensus focus on THE CARETAKERS being a poor-man's THE SNAKE PIT. Others focus on Joan Crawford being, well - Joan Crawford.

Yes, you can go on about both of those, but I'd like to take a different tact.

First, let me say this film is NOT a 'Grand-Guignol' picture of the era, a 'la WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE, or HUSH, HUSH SWEET CHARLOTTE, which several people commenting have alluded it might be, give the fact that Joan Crawford is in it, and this WAS made at that time.

I'd like to start off by saying THE CARETAKERS is an entertaining film, with some fine performances by many familiar faces, amongst them are Robert Vaughn (THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.), Van Willaims (GREEN HORNET), Janis Page, Barbara Barrie, Ellen Corby (THE WALTONS, and my personal favourite - Susan Oliver (THE CAGE - STAR TREK: TOS) and more.

While THE CARETAKERS does come across as a 'message' film, and given the time does seem somewhat campy, some of the treatment ideas proposed for the patients were - at the time - considered radical. Polly Bergen whose character Lorna introduces us to the film (having a breakdown at a packed movie theatre)must've really spent a good amount of time doing research. When Polly's character gets E.C.T., (electroconvulsive therapy - or, as it was better known then SHOCK THERAPY) she twists, pulls. Susan Oliver as the young nurse in training is very uneasy during this, and so was I.

Yes - some of the film does draw comparisons to better known films, but, I think that the film tries to give what was at the time - an 'honest' portrayal of a psychiatric hospital, and the (modern) changes that were taking place at that time - their effect on the doctors and nurses who both administered these treatments, and the effect these treatments had on a group of patients.

If the cast was less professional, it could've easily veered into farce, but given the talent, THE CARETAKERS is an engrossing, if a bit 'soapish' film.

Crawford's, control-obsessed, pre--Cuckoo "Nurse Ratched" had good reason to try to protect her nurses. No one out there on the floor in the pre-muscle, pre-"psych-tech" era took more of a physical (and mental) beating than the RNs. While most people (about 4:1 female) with borderline personality disorder are not (often) violent, those who get hospitalized more often are.

What this romp didn't get into Way Back Then (before Alice Miller, Andrew Vachss, Diana Russell, Judith Lewis Herman and others started raising consciousness about the main cause of it) is that BPD is a sort of diluted form of multiple personality disorder where sufferers are sometimes relatively functional, sometimes horrible depressed and/or anxious, and sometimes raging maniacs.

Why? Because they were almost always severely abused as children... often sexually, and often by fathers, older brothers, grandfathers, uncles, and/or a single mother's boyfriends. And they were threatened within an inch of their lives if they told anyone about it by the perp and/or the perp's accomplices, often including mother and other family members. Put another way, they were Raised In Hell. And when temporarily "dis-inhibited," They... Are.... ANGRY about that.

Suffice it to say that "The Caretakers" =is= over-dramatic and histrionic to the point of being in-credible by current standards. But in many ways, the script was barking up some of the right trees. TG most post-traumatic-stress-disorder-stricken borderlines are no longer dealt with in anything remotely like what is seen here, but... back then... they =were=.