GOING BERSERK

World-renowned movie critic The Flaming Bore has recently seen a classic horror flick, classic as in old, not good. Berserk stars the late, not-so-great Joan Crawford as circus owner/ring mistress Monica Rivers, who has about as much three-ring energy as a fence post. The only time her voice seems to elevate is when she’s griping out her poor employees. “We’re running a circus! Not a charm school!”

I decided to watch this 1967 flick because the movie trailer on TCM was so cool and campy. “Can your heart stand to be shocked?” Check Yes or No. “Do you faint at the sight of blood?” Check Yes or No, and so-on. I just HAD to see this movie. To tell you the truth, though, the only thing shocking about Berserk is how awful it is. My kind of flick. Bring it on!

The general plot is that a tight rope performer, Gaspar the Great, and the circus business manager, Dorando, have been killed. Gas was hung when the rope snapped during a show and hung him, and Dorando had a metal peg hammered into the back of his head. Ouch. The usual suspects are the cold-hearted, bitch-slapping Joan, of course, and Gaspar’s replacement, Frank, played by a husky, hunky tightrope walker Ty Hardin, who puts the moves on Joan even though she’s about thirty years older and wears her hair in a beehive bun.

Unfortunately, most of the movie consists of circus acts like “Miss Carol Ann and her Intelligent Poodles.” Ho-hum. Where’s all the berserko murders? Up until the grand finale, there’s just been the two aforementioned ones plus a little saw-to-the-gut episode when Lazlo the Illusionist hits a snafu while performing a magic act with his ever-cheating hussy of a wife. I wanted my heart to be shocked, for gosh sakes!! Big Bore had his jumper cables on stand-by, ready to zap me back to life when the fear got too much for me.

The movie comes to its merciful conclusion when Joan/Monica’s misunderstood teenaged daughter Angela shows up from prep school and tosses a knife into Frank’s back as he’s tightrope walking, blindfold, over a bed of spikes. She then explains, in her best berserk, wild-eyed acting, that the circus has ruined her life…long story…and as she flees in a thunderstorm, ka-pow, she steps on a live electrical wire. The end.

On The Flaming Bore Movie Review Scale, I give Berserk two flames out of five, which means if you have 96 crazy minutes of your life that you don’t mind wasting, then I highly recommend this movie.