This is one weird circus, what with Joan Crawford as your sexy grandma emcee. Hard to believe that is far from the weirdest element of 1967’s Berserk.
That is an appropriate title, as somebody is killing off the performers in her travelling circus in a number of bizarre ways. The first person to die is their trapeze artist, when the cable splits in mid-performance. What is astonishingly weird is the performer doesn’t just fall, but the cable somehow wraps around their neck and strangles them to death. Needless to say, this picture won’t be overly concerned with the laws of physics.
Crawford takes this in stride. She’s even doing the books that night. It may sound cold, but I agree with her that the free publicity resulting from this unfortunate development can only be good for attendance. She even has right-hand-man Michael Gough send photos of the deceased to all the papers.
Gough is upset by how she apparently believes she doesn’t need anybody else. He shouldn’t have bothered asking her if she thinks she can do without him, as she replies, “Not yet.” Myself, I suspect she will need somebody to help as, aside from her inheriting the operation from her husband, I was confused as to why she was running a circus in the UK.
Unsolicited help arrives in the form of Ty Hardin. I imagine there isn’t a huge job market for such performers. It is possible he killed the previous trapeze artist. At least, he is very nonchalant about that death, saying to Crawford, “I caught his act last night. Caught him hanging around.” He also has a history which is left vague but obviously contains incidents he wants to stay buried. As a prospective agent tells him: “You wouldn’t want the authorities to know what happened in Canada. Could make getting that labor permit difficult.” Given the apparent difficulties of a foreign national working in the UK, I once again wondered why Crawford is operating a circus there.
I suspect the production is based in the UK because some of the technical resources used are veterans of Hammer Studios. Go figure, this film looks and feels like much of their mid-60’s output.
That would include the gore for which the studio is remembered. I’m sure the film would only get a PG-13 today, but it has such shocks as Gough resting against a tent pole, only for somebody on the other side of that driving a spike through the back of his head. That it goes clear through his head scans as another blatant violation of physics. And I don’t think I’m spoiling anything here, because the original trailer shows him with the point of that spike sticking out of his forehead. Also, how did the killer know Gough would lean up against that particular post, and that his head would conveniently line up with a hole through which they could drive the spike?
Anywho, Hardin is a hit with his new act. There’s a murderer killing circus performers, yet he ups the ante of his already dangerous act by wearing a blindfold and replacing the net on the floor with a great many upturned knives. I suspect we’re seeing the origin story of the guy who will turn into Jigsaw in the Saw series decades later.
He also seems intent on bedding Crawford, who is receptive yet responds coolly. Fellow performer Diana Dors aggressively pursues him and he clearly isn’t interested. I’m indifferent to Dors, and have seen her in several films, but the idea she was the UK’s answer to Marilyn Monroe reveals a shared delusion on a national scale.
Scotland Yard inspector Robert Hardy stays on the circus grounds as he pursues the investigation. Hardy suspects everybody. As for myself, I felt there was a curious lack of suspects, as none of the fellow performers bar Hardin seem to have the motive nor the general inclination to kill their peers.
Among my favorites of the performers is George Claydon, a dwarf who would go on to be one of the Oompa Loompa in the original Willy Wonka. It’s the kind of role a dwarf would normally get in a film like this, but he’s good it, making self-effacing jokes (“I told him I’d give him money, but I’m a bit short”) and wryly observing key events where others are oblivious to his presence. One thing I could never figure out, however, is why he is always dressed in a manner that had me mistaking him for a lumberjack.
I also like Golda Casimir, as the bearded lady, if only because she has this great line: “How could I get away with murder? I’m the easiest in the circus to identify!” As Billy Smart’s Circus was involved in the production, Casimir might have been the real deal, but I wasn’t sure.
It was wise to use a real circus, so we can see the real performances instead of everything being extreme close-ups on actors obviously faking their stunts. Still, one act we see waaay too much is a bit involving trained poodles. There are no fatalities in that scene, but how fascinating it would have been if there were. At least nobody was going at them with whips (however funny that might have been to me), unlike the lion taming act. Even as a kid, I was always rooting for the lions.
One element of the film which seriously grated on me is it is clearly the same audience watching every performance, even as the circus travels from one town to another. That is one dedicated audience, following the troupe around the country and even taking the same seats they had before and wearing the same clothes. I just realized a new phrase, which may be the saddest pairing of words conceivable and that is “circus groupies”.
The production will eventually move to London, where Crawford has generously given everybody a night off to attend a catered party. Still, she has four of the performers do a weird musical number, so I guess they still have to sing for their supper. As if this musical number wasn’t jarring enough, there is also no effort to try to make the actors performing to the camera and the reaction shots of the crowd appear to be in the same space. Bad editing makes it seem that audience is watching something else entirely, given their reactions are never appropriate to what we are seeing of the performance they are supposedly watching.
The best aspect of Berserk, as is true of anything film of kind in which Crawford appears, is how she never fails to give it her all. To her credit, she never delivered a less-than-enthusiastic performance, even when she was stuck doing material like this for what would be her penultimate film. Her very last film would be even worse, curiously reteaming her with Gough in the notoriously bad Trog.
Dir: Jim O’Connolly
Starring John Crawford, Ty Hardin, Diana Dors
Watched on Mill Creek blu-ray