Now the screen tells what makes a woman - and what breaks her!


A "bad movie" with a fervent fan following, The Caretakers is set in a bleak mental institution. Joan Crawford plays the hard-bitten head nurse (we first see her taking a karate lesson!) who is dead set against the progressive theories of new doctor Robert Stack. After a few minutes' exposure to the inmates, half the audience has sided with Crawford. The most disturbed individual in the place is Polly Bergen, who never speaks when screaming will do. But thanks to the compassionate treatment of Dr. Stack, it is Bergen who saves the day by preventing fellow inmate Barbara Barrie from burning the institution to the ground. Virtually every scene in The Caretakers is a gem of glorious excess, including the obligatory shock-treatment vignette. The film strives to avoid subtlety, but its fans wouldn't have it any other way.

The Caretakers is a 1963 American drama film starring Joan Crawford, Robert Stack, Polly Bergen and Janis Paige in a story about a mental hospital.[3]
The screenplay was adapted by Henry F. Greenberg from a story by Hall Bartlett and Jerry Paris based on the 1959 novel The Caretakers by Dariel Telfer. The film was produced and directed by Bartlett, co-produced by Paris and distributed by United Artists. The Caretakers is reminiscent of a 20th Century Fox film set in a similar hospital, The Snake Pit (1948).

Variety commented, "Miss Crawford doesn't so much play her handful of scenes as she dresses for them, looking as if she were en route to a Pepsi board meeting", and called the film a "superficial, ineptly-plotted drama"[5] Bosley Crowther of The New York Times noted, "Altogether, this woman's melodrama is shallow, showy, and cheap - a badly commercial exploitation of very sensitive material."[5]
Despite some negative reviews, the film went on to gross over $3 million worldwide, ranking #57 on Variety's list of top grossing films