Customer Reviews

Barn Of The Naked Dead

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This film was also released back in the day as Barn of the Naked Dead, a much, much snazzier title if you ask me. I mean, how do you resist a title like Barn of the Naked Dead? Forget the fact that there is practically no nudity or zombies in the film, the title still rocks. But Shriek Show released it under it's original title, Terror Circus.
Made in the early 70s, it brings to mind films like Last House on the Left, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, etc. Basically movies where women are held captive by wackos. Here it's Andrew Prine in the psycho role of Andre. He's a bit more laid back and subdued than say, David Hess in Last House on the Left. A good loon though. In this film he lures three stranded women to his home in the desert. He chains them in his barn, which houses other chained women. Andre sees the women, not as sex slaves, which you'd normally guess for this kind of movie, but as his own pets, his circus animals. He's a bit like a demented Sigfried and Roy with the captive women as his tigers. He makes them do odd circus type antics, sometimes he wears a top hat and uses a whip(sounds like my honeymoon). Anyone who doesn't cooperate or tries to escape is killed by Andre's live lion(I think it's a lion anyway). One of the captive women bears a striking resemblance to Andre's long lost mother, and this begins his downfall as he frees her and treats her as such. Soon a jailbreak is in order, but there's one more card in the deck, and I'm not gonna give that away. Lets just say that it again has to do with Andre's family, and it's a cool ending.
I liked this movie quite a bit. It's not nearly as brutal as the more controversial films of the time that tried to push the envelope in brutality. There is very little to no nudity, not much graphic violence, and gore is minimal. It goes more for the messed up psychological angle and does succeed on some points rather well.
The film was directed by Alan Rudolph, who went on to make the Moore/Willis flick Mortal Thoughts, Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, and bizarro comedies like Breakfast Of Champions and Trixie.
The Shriek Show disc has an informative featurette with crew(and one cast) members. I would however like to see the Johnny Legend edition of this film that has an interview with Andrew Prine. Not to mention it uses the Barn of the Naked Dead title.
Oh, those wacky 70s.

I went into this film hoping for a touch of horror; after all, Barn of the Naked Dead would seem to imply that there are going to be dead people (apparently naked) involved. Well, a handful of people do die, but we don't get to see any kind of gory details of the kills, and, strangely enough, there is no nudity whatsoever to be found here. Normally, that would not be a problem, but the film title promises us naked dead people and fails to deliver any skin whatsoever - that's just not right. There is a barn in the movie, though - I have to give them credit for coming through with that promise. The movie itself is pretty hard to watch. Almost against my better judgment, I'm rounding up and giving the movie two stars just because they did establish a plot and actually followed through on it. A bit of unnecessary silliness at the end did nothing to raise my opinion of the film, though.

What we have here are three young ladies traveling to Las Vegas in order to perform in a show. One of them knows a great shortcut through the desert - you know nothing good is going to come of that. Well, they end up stranded in the middle of the desert overnight; the next morning, though, help arrives in the form of a nice young man who offers to drive them to a phone, etc. But wouldn't you know it? The nice young man is actually a psycho who thinks himself the ring leader of a very special circus - a circus made up of female human "animals." He has quite a menagerie already, although he doesn't seem to be training them for much of anything. When they get out of line, he takes the whip to them, and when any one of them proves herself unwilling to be trained, he takes it upon himself to discipline her severely.

I have certainly seen worse exploitation films than this one, but that doesn't make Barn of the Naked Dead a good movie. While the acting of Andrew Prine as the insane ring master is actually quite good, a significant number of roles went to actors and actresses of less impressive quality. The print of this film is also very bad. The colors are the polar opposite of vibrant; this film could deteriorate horrendously in the coming years without anyone even being able to notice. I didn't care for the ending, as it introduced an element that robbed the film of the bit of effectiveness it had managed to generate, yet there is a story here that holds together and makes sense - and that keeps it from being a truly bad movie.

This trip to the big top is unlike anything you have ever seen! When three friends run into car trouble on a desolate desert road, they end up at the home of a demented ringmaster who runs his own human circus in the barn out back. His new "pets" must obey his every command, otherwise they will receive the whip (or worse)! TERROR CIRCUS is sleazy Exploitation at its finest, but it is handled in a manner that is unbefitting of the genre. Despite its alternate title BARN OF THE NAKED DEAD, there is surprisingly little nudity to be found, although there are a number of bloody deaths and excruciating scenes of violence with the bull whip. The film benefits most from its clean cinematography and the excellent addition of Andrew Prine in the lead. Andre, the circus head, is tortured by his abandonment as a child, which cripples him mentally and causes him to seek out women that he can keep under his control. Price draws out this madness with a deadly seriousness that elevates his performance to a high level of camp. The contorted circus music also adds to the unsettling effect. A suspicious number of elements in the plot can clearly be scene in Wes Craven's THE HILLS HAVE EYES from 1977, while many other similar themes can be draw between TERROR CIRCUS and TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE of the same year. Alan Rudolph's twisted tale is an Exploitation gem that can finally be revisited in its uncut form on DVD thanks to a beautiful transfer from Code Red.

-Carl Manes
I Like Horror Movies

Terror Circus dvd AKA as barn of the naked dead
I have been into this movie for years. I bought it on vhs years ago and was really bumed out. Then in 2005 i bought a bootleg on DVD with japenesse subtiles It looked alot beter, still I could have only dreamed that the negatives still existed. Now i have the terror circus dvd and wow! this thing looks great. The movie is way more creepy seeing it in hi-def. If you still have a bootleg throw those out and get this one now! Its really a movie only for a certain crowd, but if your fan this is the copy to get. Also this is the most complete version out there, the other ones are missing certain parts, including a scene of the women bathing, while andre watches. very entertaing stuff for 1970s drive in trash.

Note my original negative review was for the bootleg release by Legend House as it was an unlicensed release that appears to come from a VHS duped and thus it looks awful so don't waste your money on it. However do buy the official version by Code Red under the TERROR CIRCUS title this one gets 5 stars. Not sure why this negative review was attached to Code Red's product page which hadn't come out when I wrote this review.

What a treat to finally be able to see this. It is jam packed with extras with a great on screen interview with Andrew Prine. There are also interviews with Fred Olen Ray among others. Not really much nudity as the title implies, put plenty of moody atmosphere in the barn itself and a few twists and turns throughout. Nice print considering it has been out of circulation for over thirty five years.

Ok, I don't care who is putting out what version, all this talk of the film, and the intriguing title, made me want to rent this, and I wasted a rental on this. I can't judge the quality, for the film is NOT 16x9 enhanced, which should be the norm nowadays, nor is it progressively scanned, so the picture played weird on my player. And to top it off NO NAKED DEAD! Just a moron who chains girls up and lives with his monster dad. Very amateur night, so what is the big deal? No naked deads here. Did I miss something?

This disc is not only from a VHS tape, with lots of ghosting and image problems and improperly letterboxed from a fullscreen tape, it is also a bootleg!!! The legit version is coming soon from Code Red from the original negative, so if you buy this terrible illegal release, you are not a true horror fan! Ignore "Johnny Legend" and the Andrew Prine interview, you'll get better value if you wait!

While by no means perfect, this is the best way to see this incredibly obscure grindhouse horror pic. The mastering is not the greatest, but it looks far superior to a VHS and is obviously not from a videotape. Andrew Prine as usual delivers in the demented protagonist department. If you ever saw his deranged performance in either CENTERFOLD GIRLS or SIMON KING OF THE WITCHES, you'll know what awaits you here. Okay, so the girls are never totally naked -- or at least naked when they're dead, but who cares if the title literally represents the content of the movie? Since when has that ever been a criteria for a drive-in/grindhouse type movie being entertaining? Prine excels as an insane young man living in the desert who has a whole boatload of female hitchhikers chained up in his barn to do his ringmaster bidding. And did I mention that he lives a little too close to an old atomic test site? His poor old dad stumbled a bit too far from home one day, got exposed to an overdose of radition and is now a horrible-looking mutant. Great trash. By the way, this is not a bootleg. About five years ago I was toying with the idea of starting up my own DVD video company releasing public domain horror/exploitation films. And I did some research on 20 or 30 titles -- this was one. Along with films like THE SADIST, THE BLANCHEVILLE MONSTER, THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS, et.al. this is definitely no longer under copyright. In fact this one seems as if it may never ever have been copyrighted at all. I was actually going to give this only three stars, but added another star in my rating for just the extras -- there's a great Prine interview moderated by old man of the mountain Johnny Legend and another interview-packed feature called "Gorebeat" that's like a video magazine with some pretty funny interviews Johnny Legend did with people like John Landis, Fred Olen Ray, Brian Yuzna and Ray Dennis Steckler. Plenty of value for your hard-earned sheckels!

I released this DVD and would like to respond to these uninformed, malicious posters. This DVD is NOT mastered from a VHS tape, and it is NOT a bootleg. The quality is good, and it is an absolutely "legit" release, and is in no way illegal as this poster has erroneously charged. These comments are made from a group of rather vicious individuals based on unsubstantiated and biased information. The DVD speaks for itself.