I Saw What You Did (1969)

 

I Saw What You Did (1969)

 

Joan Crawford’s storied career is a tragic tale of a woman of undeniable beauty and talent brought down by her own narcissism and the spite of others which was often provoked by that narcissism.

 

Coasting along as one of Hollywood’s biggest and best-paid Stars, she was publicly declared “Box-Office Poison” (one of eight so labeled) in 1938 by Harry Brandt, President of the Independent Theatre Owners Association of America, who admitted they all had "unquestioned" dramatic abilities, but their high Salaries did not reflect in their Ticket Sales.

 

Brandt clearly wasn’t acting alone, and this was a time not only of declining Ticket Sales (because the Great Depression Raged) but of ferocious battling between Studio Heads, the newly formed Unions, and the Federal Government, over the rights of Labor, so that Public Proclamation must have been the product of some dirty back-room dealings with the frustrated Studio-Heads who saw their hegemony at risk. In Crawford’s case, one also must conclude the attack was more personally motivated than with most, or all, of the others because her ill-temper and grudge-holding was already generating as much public gossip as were her then-two high-profile broken-marriages back in a day when people cared about that type of thing (she two more marriages were in the future and one of those also ended in divorce).

 

Her reputation only got worse after her death 1977, when she was famously exposed an a Mentally Unstable Child Abuser in her adopted daughter’s, Christina’s, Memoir, “Mommy Dearest” (1978) – BUT - there’s a problem here; there’s a good chance Chirstina’s allegations were largely false.

 

Her bad-reputation has distorted Crawford’s chronology in many people’s minds, Crawford’s career didn’t hit-the-skids with that disgraceful open letter. That didn’t even happen in 1943 when she was unceremoniously dumped by her studio (Crawford’s version is she walked because she lost patience with them). She was, in fact, picked up by another studio immediately and her Oscar recognitions (one win plus two nominations) were still in her future, not her past. Crawford continued to secure leading roles in A-list pictures that a goodly percentage of proved profitable, and her films of 1956-7 (right before she took a short motion picture hiatus) did especially well (they included one of her Oscar nominations). By then she was already almost, or over, 50-years-old (Crawford has been accused of lying about her age) so her Super-Stardom was increasing tenuous now twenty-years after it came under public assault.

 

It was circumstances that might have been largely outside her Personal and Professional Conduct that made her in desperate need of a Hollywood comeback in the 1960s. Her fourth-and-final-husband was Alfred Steele, of the Pepsi Cola Company, and he was wealthy, and she took in a fine salary promoting Pepsi products plus being herself wealthy even before that 1956 marriage, but somehow when he died in 1959, she was Near-Penniless. Her sudden need Top-Paying roles was ill-timed because Hollywood’s Studio System had just collapsed and with it her normal avenues of securing work. In this new version of Hollywood, she simply wasn’t in demand.

 

Her career revival (a pretty dramatic one considering her last leading role in a hit movie was only four-years prior) came with 1961 with the Horror film, “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” a surprise hit that benefited greatly from the extra-publicity generated by Crawford’s well-known feud with her co-Star Bette Davis, who also got to enjoy a career revival.

 

As time had been kinder to Crawford’s face than Davis’, her comeback should’ve shone brighter, but of the two notoriously difficult stars and Crawford proved to be the more difficult. She managed to get herself fired off the follow-up film to “What Ever Happened …” titled “Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte” (1965) because she walked of the set and checked herself into the hospital for what many believed was a feigned illness.

 

That embarrassment, and the fact that her return to more “serious” Drama, “The Caretakers” (1964) was a Critical and Financial disaster, led Crawford to finding herself type-cast in increasingly marginal films of the Horror sub-Gerne, Grand Dame Guignol, a Genre that “What Ever Happened …” had created. Meanwhile, her long-time nemesis Davis kept getting better roles in more respectable pictures.

 

The two bright spots in the period stretching from post-1961 till her retirement after 1970’s “Trog” (a Cheesy, much Maligned, and frequently Parodied film) were her two collaborations with Producer/Director William Castle.

 

Castle was a Workmanlike Craftsman who desired to be an Artist of first caliber. He elevated himself above Mediocrity mostly though conveying his wild enthusiasm for movies, which was much greater than his skills, and was famous for his silly Marketing Gimmicks. By this point, he was sort-of, but not really, leaving the Gimmicks behind. Castle was generally at his best with the silliest material, Campy Horror films like “The House on Haunted Hill” (1959) and “Thirteen Ghosts” (1960) but he really longed emulate the far more sophisticated fare of Director Alfred Hitchcock. Castle’s first collaboration with Crawford was “Straight Jacker” (1964), which obviously aspired to Hitchcock’s “Psycho” (1960), its screenplay was even written by “Psycho” original Novelist Robert Bloch (book published 1959). Though it wasn’t nearly as bold of sophisticated as Castle seemed to think it was, it was enormous fun, Crawford was terrific in the lead, and both made a lot of money.

 

“I Saw What You Did” was the second Castle/Crawford collaboration and she signed up for this film only a month after her humiliation with “Hush, Hush, Sweet …” (more evidence that she was feigning her illness). She got Top Billing for a supporting part, $50,000 for four days work, a cut of the profits, plus the added benefit of working with her secret bo, Actor John Ireland, who she’d cheated on Steele with (that last bit is especially Saucy given the Characters they play in this film).

 

The Screenwriter was William P. McGivern and it was based on Novelist Ursula Curtiss’ “Out of the Dark” (1964). Though the opening scenes of “I Saw What …” promises to be Light-Hearted, it proves a much Darker film than “Straight Jacket.” It’s a Crime Thriller the becomes a Horror as the petty venialities escalate beyond all reason and control and a few central Characters discover for themselves they are far worse people than they ever imagined themselves to be.

 

 

The hook, and the fun, is that it all takes place in a single-night when three girls, two teens, Libby Mannering (Andi Garrett) and Kit Austin (Sara Lane) and one younger, Libby's younger sister Tess (Sharyl Locke), are left unsupervised, and start playing Childish Pranks on the phone. All three girls are quite believable in their giggling spunk and naivety.

 

Castle wrote of Directing the girls, "In the days of the silent film, to get the cast in the mood before a scene, directors used music - a violinist or pianist would select music to match the mood of the given scene. Using the same principle, I played a record each morning before shooting - a little jingle I had written:

Don't laugh little girl,
Better run for your life,
The man you just talked to
Has murdered his wife.

Just to keep the girls in practice, I allowed them to actually make several crank calls a day from numbers picked at random out of the phone book. To experience the actual results, they improvised the calls, getting a sense of reality which they would later translate to the screen."

 

The film’s Darkness is deeper than its Childishness because of a parallel narrative wherein Steve Marak (Ireland’s Character), a pretty conventional, dissatisfied, Middle-aged married man, spends the same evening degenerating into a Serial Killer quite convincingly.

 

In the pre-title sequence, Libby and Kit gossiping and mildly plotting on the phone and the opening music deliberately evoke the era’s TV teen-oriented books, movies, and TV sitcoms like the “Gidget” franchise (first book and movie where 1959, the jump to TV was the same year this film was released). But this is really a deeply Misanthropic narrative, the cute girls’ indifferent acts of cruelty to strangers will trigger violence and the three main adult Characters are all miserable examples of humanity.

 

Watching this sixty-odd years after the fact is especially fun as it is full of era-specific details that likely make it more fun now. The score (at least the cheerful parts) attempted to be trendy but is now nostalgia fodder. The prank the triggers the plot involves flipping through the Yellow Pages (remember those?) and picking a name at random; most to the plot mechanics would crumble in the face of today’s technologies like caller id, call-screening, and internet searches.

 

Even in the earliest, cutest, scenes, the prevalence of cruelty is apparent. In one prank Tess convinces an elderly woman she a scared child stranded in a movie theatre who needs someone to rescue her. Libby calls another stranger, Judith Marak (Joyce Meadows) and implies she’s Judith’s husband Steve’s bimbo girlfriend.

 

As it happens, that very night, Judith and Steve’s marriage had spectacularly imploded. Judith was leaving Steve another man and Steve had just slashed her clothes to ribbons. Enraged Judith picks up Steve’s knife when she confronts him while he’s naked in the shower, an obvious nod to “Psycho”:

 

Judith: “You ape. You belong in a cage. And you want to know why I'm leaving you? You're not jealous. You're not that normal. You're insane.”

 

The difference is that its fully-clothed Judith, not naked Steve, who winds up dead.

 

Steve appears to have never done anything like this before and his blind rage shocks him. He does a terrible job cleaning up the Crime Scene. Throughout the film he will make more-and-more desperate mistakes

 

That’s when Crawford’s Character, Amy Nelson, is introduced. She’s a lonely, wealthy, widow, and a busy-body who’s aware of Steve’s marriage was on the rocks. She feels completely confident walking into his home without ringing the doorbell and talking to him casually when he’s dressed only in a bathrobe, so yeah, she’s Steve’s mistress, but she’s also delusional; that delusion is subtle at first, later more pronounced and an essential Plot-Point.

 

Steve explains that Judith has run off “for good.”

 

Amy: “I’m here. Don't let this hurt you. She's not worth it. You married a childish, empty-headed little tramp. But now we can make something wonderful together. We have made it. You know that.”

 

Amy sees right through Steve’s stumbling lies but Judith’s obvious fate doesn’t bother her much. She her obsession with him is buttressed by her being a conniver, a plotter, and far too over-confident for her own good.

 

Amy: “C'mon on. Sit down. I'm gonna take care of you whether you like it or not. C'mon on. Take your shoes off. I'm giving the orders now. I know what you need but first I'm gonna give you a nice, stiff drink. I'm gonna have one too! … I'll show you what it means to be taken care of.”

 

Steve is increasingly uncomfortable, and this dialogue, really Amy’s monologue, is interrupted by the phone ringing.

Most of the plot mechanics are tied to the girl’s immaturity, which is underlined in all their scenes. It’s important to believe they are incapable of realistically considering what is happening on the other end, never mind imagining shocking events actually unfolding. Because the girls found their last call to the Merick house so promising, they called it back.

 

Libby: “Is this Steve? Steve Merick?”

Steve: “Yes, who is this?”

Libby: “I saw what you did. I know who you are.”

 

Steve tries to keep Libby, who is calling herself “Suzette” on the line while an increasingly enraged Amy paces behind him. He tells Libby/Suzette that he wants to meet with her.

 

Libby hangs up, now Fantasizing about him Steve.

 

Kit: “Didn't he sound exciting?”
Libby: “Yeah, and sexy.”
Kit: “Well, why’ja hang up then?”
Libby: “Oh, I can't meet him Kit. You know that. What's the use?”

 

The girls giggle and talk themselves into even more irresponsible behavior while the tension tightens in Steve’s home.

 

Amy: “Who is Suzette?”
Steve: “Get off my back. Give me room to breathe. You don't own me yet.”

 

Libby escalates the game, calling again and then seeking Steve out in person (from the Yellow Pages, she has Steve’s address while he knows nothing at all about her). There’s a nice detail thrown in, Libby needs Kit to join her on the drive because Kit has a Learners Permit and Libby doesn’t, and Tess tags along because it would be – ahem – irresponsible to leave her alone in the house.

 

Libby, pretending to be Suzette, arrives at Steve’s and he spots her and begins to stalk her while brandishing a knife.

 

But Amy, drunk and jealous, confronts Libby first, assuming Libby is Steve’s mistress. That confrontation is among the best scenes in the film, Crawford is ferocious and Actress Garette admitted she was scared of Crawford as Character Amy pulled her hair and berated her. It has been reported Garette was scared in part because Crawford was just as drunk as her Character.

 

Amy has just saved Libby’s life, though neither will ever know that.

 

Amy regains her Poise, but not her Rationality, and confronts the increasingly desperate Steve. Amy chooses to Blackmail Steve, not for money, in fact she tempts him with her money, but for his Romantic Submission. At this moment, the non-Murderess is a more contemptable than the actual Murderer. This is a difficult scene, but blessed by the kind Venomous dialogue that made “What Ever Happened …” such a joy; it would’ve been ridiculous unless you wholly believed Amy’s Self-Delusions.

Amy: “I met your little business deal Steve. Suzette.”
Steve: “What did she tell you?”
Amy: “She lied of course. Another childish empty headed little tramp. Your taste is sickening. She even lied about her name.”

Steve: “You want to crack a whip? Get a dog.”

Amy: “It's a simple choice Steve. Life with me or no life at all.”

 

Crawford nails the scene. There’s great tension as we wait for Amy to suffer the predictable fate wrought by her own amoral machinations and short-sightedness. She also looks great, she provided her own wardrobe and jewelry and her elegance spoke of her Delusions; the film’s Costumer (uncredited, but probably Larry Germain) dressed everyone else as their Characters, Middle-Class and Suburban and not even Libby and Tess’ parents (Lief Ericson and Patricia Breslin) attending a formal dinner party (so unaware of all the craziness) looked as polished as Amy who just happening to pop in from next door at all the wrong moments.

 

The story is improbable and coincidence-driven, but as it is driven more by all the Characters’ bad judgement than the coincidences, it’s doesn’t our Suspension of Disbelief, but instead each incident becomes a Strand of a Noose -tied around the Character’s necks. The only Responsibility and Morality shown by anyone is Libby’s parents and they are barely in the film at all. They become concerned that no one is picking up the phone (that’s while Libby, Tess, and Kit were at Steve’s) so they ask the Police to roll by and check on them. Unfortunately, the State Trooper (John Crawford, apparently not related to Joan) arrives after the girls have returned and before Steve shows up to kill them, so all seems fine and the Trooper departs.

 

When Steve arrives at Libby’s house, he already has two Corpses under his belt, so a wholly contemptable human, but also the Character who’s been explored in the most depth, obligating a shred of sympathy from the Audience. His confrontation with Libby and Tess (Kit’s dad had already picked her up) is nicely taunt. The girls have no idea he’s Dangerous, they’re only scared of their parents finding out. He sees no threat there. He relaxes.  He need not hurt them. He can walk away. His Nightmare is over.

 

But walking to his car, he hears the phone ring. There’s one more ill-timed phone call and Steve realizes everyone one must die.

 

This film’s most original element is its wild tonal shifts from mild, Sitcom-style comedy (the girls’ scenes) and the debts of the most Visceral Rage, Panic, and Contempt (Stere’s scenes). I appreciated of the score, Composed by frequent Castle collaborator Van Alexander, embraced this off-balance, swinging from Bubblegum Pop (there was even a title song, “I Saw What You Did” recorded by the girl-group The Telltales, but wisely it was left out of the film) to referencing Hitchcock’s collaborator Composer Bernard Herrmann, but I must admit the music was what most Critics complained about most bitterly.

 

I have to agree with that Critical majority on a different complaint, the film’s seemingly economical 82-minutes (four- minutes shorter than the all-time-great Telephone Paranoia play-then-film “Sorry, Wrong Number” (1943 & 1945)) was still a little long for the nifty premise. The great Hitchcock did stories like this for his TV series, “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” (first aired 1955) in a mere 26-minutes. On the other hand, the padding was mostly due to a pre-production decision to expand on Character Amy’s small part, without that, Crawford would’ve never been approached or cast, denying us the film’s strongest performance.

 

On the Horror end, it had four exceptionally staged and/or Acted scenes: Steve killing Judith, Amy vs Libby, Amy setting herself up to be killed, and Steve invading Libby’s home.

 

The film had more Visceral Pleasures in both the Violence and the Emotion than any previous Castle, but one couldn’t say this newly-matured-Castle was, well, fully mature. That’s not necessarily bad, the film thrives on contrasts and the scenes of Childishness had the be convincingly Childish for the scenes of Horror to fully work.

 

Castle also hadn’t given up on his silly marketing gimmicks either, but this one isn’t much known for them because they didn’t much work. Advertisements "William Castle warns you: This is a motion picture about UXORICIDE!" He was presumably betting that the audience wouldn’t know that meant Wife-Murder. Maybe they’d think it was a Rubber-Suited Monster.

 

In as early trailer, Castle appeared (he often appeared in his own trailers) and advised the audience that a section of the theater would be installed with seat belts for audience members "who might be scared out of their seats." That apparently was too dumb even for Castle, so he abandoned it.

 

Instead, he placed sculptures of giant telephones outside several theaters, and I’ll admit there were attractive.

 

The most ambitious gimmick got him into some trouble as Castle confessed to "Tying up with telephone companies around the country … seemed good showmanship at the time. But the gimmick backfired and the wrath of the phone company descended upon me full blast. A phone number placed in the newspapers around the country asked people to call for a special message. Upon dialing, a girl's voice answered and whispered sexily, ‘I saw what you did and I know who you are,’ and then made a date to meet the potential customer at whatever local theatre was showing the picture. The whole gimmick would have worked beautifully, except the teen-agers of America took the ‘phone game’ seriously...

 

“It seemed that almost every teen-ager in the country was on the phone, making crank calls by the thousands, jamming the phone lines. In retaliation, the telephone company would not allow us to advertise any further phone numbers and also took away the huge plastic phones in front of the theatres. They even threatened to disconnect my home telephone, and when I called to apologize, they hung up on me."

 

Contemporary reviews were a mixture of praise and hostility, typical of a Castle. Its reputation improved enough in time to justify a remake in 1988, only a few years before changing technology would’ve required it to be made as a period piece. It is reputed to be dreadfully dull, which the original certainly was not.

 

More likely than not, Author Curtiss’ original novel was inspired by the 1950 Real-World and Unsolved Murder of 13-year-old Babysitter Janett Christman that became the foundation of the Urban Legend of “The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs.” That forgotten case has inspired a lot of Horror films, but most of the Filmmakers were likely unaware of the True Crime, they were borrowing from earlier fictional representations in cinema. That seems to suggest that “I Saw What …” was an enormously influential film, the threatened Babysitter and/or Telephone Paranoia became the backbone of the Slasher Sub-Genre, reflected in Director Terence H. Winkless’ “Foster’s Release” (1971), Bob Clark's “Black Christmas” (1974), John Carpenter's “Halloween” (1978), Fred Walton's “When a Stranger Calls” (1979), Wes Craven's “Scream” (1996), and many, many, more. Critic Richard Harland Smith observed that the Light-Hearted pre-credit sequence in “I Saw What …”, a telephone conversation between Libby and Kit was composed strikingly similarly to the far more Sinister pre-credit sequence in “Halloween.”

As I said, Crawford’s career was in irreversible decline. Apparently, so was Ireland’s (had an Oscar nominee, had many classic movies under his belt, was once a heart-throb and was still handsome). After this he did a great deal more work than Crawford, it was almost all in product far inferior to this (for example “Satan’s Cheerleaders” (1977)) though even in the worst films his skills weren’t as obviously diminished as we saw in other faded male Horror-leads like Bella Lugosi or Lon Chaney Jr.

 

In 1987 he was desperate and famously took out a ad in the trades, "I'm an actor... let me act." That, surprisingly, sparked his career revival, he got a steady flow of much-better TV work that lasted until his death in 1992.

 

As for the girls, as appealing as they all were, their acting careers were short. Not one of them has an IMDB credit later than 1977.

 

Crawford’s adopted daughter Christina was an actress and had wanted to play either Libby or Kit, but was turned down because at 25-years she was too old for the role. Those who accuse Christina of dishonesty regarding Joan, including witnesses in the household and some of the Victims of the alleged abuse, one of Christina’s husbands, one of Joan’s husbands, the House-Keeper, and two of Joan’s other children, generally attributed Christina’s Feud against Joan to Christina’s belief that Joan sabotaged her Acting career; in truth, Christina just wasn’t very talented.

 

Another motive was that Christina and another sibling had been disinherited shortly before Joan’s death. This sparked an ugly Law Suit during which those two, themselves, were accused of Abuse by the siblings defending Joan’s reputation and their larger cut of the estate. One brother’s Court Filings read that the two disinherited siblings "took deliberate advantage of decedent's seclusion and weakened and distorted mental and physical condition to insinuate themselves."

 

Trailer:

I Saw What You Did - Joan Crawford (1965) - Official Trailer (HD) - YouTube