Before Twilight made monster romance insufferable, before Underworld turned lycanthropy into a leather fetish, La Loba—a.k.a. The She-Wolf—asked the age-old question: What if your therapist was also a werewolf and you both just decided to maul your problems away together? Mexican horror never looked so fuzzy, feral, and strangely romantic.
Berserk! is a horror-thriller only in the sense that it’s horrifying to think Joan Crawford read this script and said, “Yes, this is exactly how I want to spend my twilight years: in a leotard, screaming next to a clown.” Directed by Jim O’Connolly and written by Herman Cohen and Aben Kandel (presumably on the back of a funnel cake wrapper), this 1967 British sideshow slasher attempts to juggle murder, melodrama, and mother-daughter trauma under the same tent—and drops every single ball.
Step Right Up and Watch a Hollywood Legend Lower Her Standards!
Joan Crawford stars as Monica Rivers, the glamorous, stone-hearted ringmistress of a struggling British traveling circus who treats murder like a PR opportunity and motherhood like an afterthought. Her business partner Albert is suspiciously strung up in the first act (literally), and rather than grieve, Monica basically dusts off her riding crop and yells, “On with the show!”
Enter Frank Hawkins, a muscular tightrope walker whose job is to strut across the wire and across Monica’s libido. Frank’s performance involves balancing over bayonets—because this is a horror movie and symbolism. Monica hires him faster than you can say “workers’ comp claim” and starts playing sexual Monopoly with him: bedroom deal, get-out-of-murder-suspect-free card, and a share of the circus if he shuts up.
Under the Big Top: Stabbings, Sobbing, and Mommy Issues
Bodies begin to drop faster than the tent flaps in a hurricane. A woman gets sawed in half for real (which is both impressive and technically a return to form for the magician), Frank becomes a human kebab mid-performance, and Monica’s long-lost daughter Angela randomly shows up like a homicidal Mary Poppins with abandonment trauma and homicidal tendencies. Turns out Angela is the killer, driven to madness because her mommy dearest chose acrobats over affection.
The final reveal feels like it was pulled from the bottom of a popcorn bucket. Angela confesses her whole Scooby-Doo plot about eliminating anyone who stole her mother’s time. She even tries to kill Joan herself before pulling a full Looney Tunes pratfall into a live wire during a thunderstorm. The real tragedy? Not the death toll—but how wet and dramatic Joan Crawford had to get to end the scene.
The Real Horror: A Circus That Thinks It’s Shakespeare
This movie isn’t just camp—it’s deep-fried camp, soaked in gin and dusted with powdered anxiety. Crawford acts like she’s still in Mildred Pierce, but surrounded by bearded ladies, bayonets, and a homicidal daughter who kills people for not respecting “family time.” Everyone else looks like they were paid in meat pies and free elephant rides. Diana Dors pops up as Matilda, a leopard-print disaster who tries to seduce the tightrope walker and ends up a victim of the film’s rapidly decreasing budget.
Even Ty Hardin, playing hunk-on-a-rope Frank Hawkins, acts with all the dramatic depth of a gym mat. He exists purely to be ogled and impaled, and if that’s not a metaphor for postwar masculinity, nothing is.
Production Value? More Like “Production…Valiant Attempt”
The circus setting should be ripe for eerie atmosphere or at least creepy clowns with a grudge. Instead, we get three tents, one fog machine, and enough stock footage of lions to qualify this as a documentary. The murders themselves are shot with all the suspense of a missing bingo ball. And the final electrocuting chase in the rain? Imagine trying to film a Shakespearean tragedy in a parking lot using Christmas lights and a car battery.
Add in William Castle–level gimmicks (minus the budget or imagination), and you’ve got a film that feels like it should come with a warning label: May cause uncontrollable laughter in serious horror fans.
Final Act: And Now, for Her Next Trick, Joan Crawford Will Vanish from Good Movies
Berserk! may be a murder mystery, but the biggest mystery is how Crawford, even in her “broom-handle-glamour” phase, looked at this script and didn’t torch it on sight. Maybe she thought she was making Gypsy meets Psycho. Instead, we get Cirque du Slay with a final act worthy of Scooby-Doo and the Mommy Issues.
A circus-themed thriller starring Joan Crawford should have been a high-camp gothic romp. Instead, Berserk! plays like a daytime soap that wandered into a tent and got hit on the head with a sledgehammer. It’s got betrayal, murder, and bearded ladies, but somehow still manages to be a snoozefest with sequins.
Rating: 1 out of 5 flaming circus hoops. Watch it only if you want to see Joan Crawford react to electrocution with the same energy she once used to win an Oscar.
