Freakshow

I am a huge horror buff and found myself looking around my local Blockbuster the other night. After a short while I stumbled on to the DVD entitled "Freak Show". Immediately I was drawn to it because the cover art states "Banned in 43 Countries"! Also, the back cover art reads "one of the most horrific movies of the last few years" or something of that sort. Well let me be the first to tell you --- This is a complete SHAM.

The movie starts off very slow and bored me to sleep in the first 30 minutes. Because I am a huge fan of B-rate horror movies, I managed to down (3) of my favorite energy drinks in hopes of pulling through to the end. I will not ruin this awful movie for you, but I will let you know that I will NOT rent or buy anymore Asylum movies after this rip-off. How can this movie be banned in 43 countries, yet have ZERO amount of gore until the last 10 minutes? Not only was there no gore, the movie lacks anything that resembles something suspenseful or scary! The last 10 minutes of this film is the high point, and that falls very short of the films potential.

If your interested in seeing a low budget version of HBO's series Carnivale, then this is the one. If your a horror fan and want to be completely ripped off by false advertising then go ahead and rent this one. You too will be as irritated as I am. The production value of this film was excellent, but the plot was very boring and there is absolutely nothing scary about this one. This was a complete waste of time. It amazes me how they can write that this film was the most "horrific and disturbing film in years" and "banned in 43 countries" yet give no sources or credits. Total BS!

You won't be getting my money anymore if you continue to mislead the public. Even the low budget horror fans can say enough is enough and shop elsewhere. There are too many other fine films to see, than to be ripped off by flashy cover art and totally false and misleading claims. TWO THUMBS DOWN!

I just don't know what to say about this film, it was so bad on so many levels that at the end of the 90 minutes I feel a mixed emotion of disappointment at time wasted and a curious wonderment as to if I've actually seen what I think I've just seen.

Now, I don't know the movie Freaks however I wasn't expecting the story line to be particularly original but it was worse than that. A clichéd storyline only marginally bolstered by an unusual setting. It may have been carried by some reasonable acting, but if the word had been defined by the standard in this movie then I think actors would still be waiting tables as it bought in a higher salary.

The production values were awful as well, with an dire soundtrack and even more abysmal editing. I assume the sound and costume were supposed to give us a feel for the era of the film as in itself it did little to set the audience expectation. But the soundtrack did little more for me than want to smash the damn gramaphone to splinters (you'll see/hear what I mean).

So what then made this a horror? Well it was those last few minutes. Although the concept, the hook if you will, was quite gruesome and to some extent deserves a little merit. Now the imagination can create a disturbing empathy given the right nudges and it made me feel uncomfortable so job done! Right? But still, even though the idea was great in the end it was the ham fisted execution of the concept that will probably make any self respecting movie go-er recoil in horror the most.

In a side-show circus owned by Lon (Christopher Adamson), the greatest attractions are the deformed people that are bonded with Lon as family. When a group of five outsiders join the circus to work in security, they actually are criminals that intend to steal one week ticket sales. However, the greedy and sexy slut Lucy (Rebekah Kochan) finds that Lon owns a fortune and convinces her partners that she could seduce Lon, get married with him and later kill him to become the heir of his fortune. When the youngest freak is murdered by the gang, the side-show performers seek revenge and join forces to hunt each criminal. Then they capture Lucy and transform her into the next attraction of the show, the Worm Woman.

The violent and graphic "Freakshow" uses the same storyline of Tod Browning's "Freaks" (1932) and is a good remake of the classic, with a modification of the plot and characters. The make-up is excellent and the production is also very careful with the music score. This movie is absolutely underrated in IMDb, maybe because the voters are influenced by the negative propaganda that was written about this film or maybe by the inhuman and extremely graphic conclusion. Anyway, I believe that real fans of harsh slashers will like this horror movie. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Freakshow – O Circo dos Horrores" ("Freakshow – The Horror Circus")

I bought this movie without any high standards set for it. I originally bought it to see the ending that had so much hype surrounding it. To briefly put it, I got what I expected.

The story was... well.. nonexistent. The story was, I believe, about an outsider who worked for the circus as the ticket sales-lady. The owner had fallen in love with her, and she wished to marry him. Assumably, she only agreed to marry him for his wealth, which is what caused the rest of the movie to fall into the pieces it did.

After a good, hour, hour and 10 minutes, of absolutely nothing happening besides low- grade sex scenes, and persistent cussing, the "banned in 43 countries" violence began, which I can honestly say didn't satisfy my blood lust, but it did leave me saying "Eh, good way to end it."

The sex scenes were very frequent, but they were very boring and plain. Honestly, the R. Kelly video where he pees on the young girl, is a lot more interesting than the sex scenes in this film. I could have made better sex scenes with just myself.

The violence began decently cartoonish, and evolved into an Eli Roth styled partition.

As for film qualities, the acting was fair. Wasn't too impressive, but I have definitely seen worse (*cough* Trolls 2 *cough*). The film production was honestly, very well done. The filming styles and camera angles were nothing new or too fancy, but they definitely set the mood of the film. The soundtrack was very suitable, kind of an old-school styled sound which fit the film grain and the feel of the film.

Honestly, I would only recommend this film to 12-year-old boys who are desperate for nude scenes. If you are a fan of horror, or B-Horror, or Independent films, please, stay away. It will not please any of your senses, because anything "positive" from this film has already been done.

I gave it a 2/10, and that's me being generous, and for the ending.

Well once again a DVD box at the rental store drew me into a wasted night.Who could resist a movie that claims to have been banned in 37 countries?So ,even though by now I should know better,I rent this thing and take it home.

So we have a traveling circus and one of the attractions is the freaks or strange people as I think the sign on the tent said.Also traveling with the circus is the support group of guards and mechanics etc.Anyway a few of these support guys and a girl decide to rob the circus during it's travels.The group decides that the girl should cozy up to the owner and trick him into marrying her where the group of plotters will have access to his fortune.Apparently the owner of this fleabag circus has big money somewhere although looking at him you'd never figure. The owner is a repulsive mess,bad teeth,greasy hair and big yellow boils all over his body.

The boil covered owner of the circus feels more at home with the freaks of the show than he does with normal people.He considers them his family.His family protects him as one of their own when they feel he is in trouble.Therein lies the main plot I guess you'd say.

This movie really sucked bad.It was just too much for me to believe that the beautiful young women would have sex with the oozing nasty owner for all the money in the world.She was so hot she could have found a much cleaner and less repulsive sugar daddy.The sets were lousy shots of tents and the Ferris wheel was shown over and over.There never seemed to be any people at the circus and all the workers just sat around slurping beer from bottles that somehow came with no labels on them.And the sound track was the most irritating soundtrack of any movie I've ever seen....one after another of bad fakey attempts to recreate old scratchy songs like they sounded on records made in the 20's and 30's.On and on these miserable songs went until I was nearly mad.

And the acting was bad.Terribly bad.And I'm not even sure this movie had a script as many of the actors seemed to fumble for their words.Or maybe the budget was so tight that re shots weren't allowed?The freaks themselves weren't really all that freaky except for the one that looked like a miniature version of the Toxic Avenger.Special effects were minimal,little bit of gore near the end but for the most part this movie was just people doing mostly talking.A couple of women showed their breasts but they were small and uninspiring.I think I gave it a 3 mostly because of the breasts because really this movie was probably a 1 or 2 at best.

It's very apparent that this movie was nothing more than a sad weak blatant rip-off of Tod Browning's "Freaks".This mess is totally forgettable and I probably wouldn't have even finished watching it had it not been a cold rainy day with nothing else going on for me to do.

The only way this crapola was banned in 37 countries was for being so bad.Skip this crud fest and watch Browning's original.