Indicator Films, out now

When performers and the co-owner of a circus die under mysterious circumstances, ringmistress Monica is the obvious suspect, but could someone else have an axe to grind?

Joan Crawford’s penultimate big screen movie is another ho-hum 1960s British horror movie that found its release in the UK in a double-bill with Torture Garden. There’s a wonderful cast of British character actors (Michael Gough, Diana Dors, Robert Hardy, Judy Geeson, Philip Madoc) but ultimately it’s Crawford’s movie, and unfortunately, just like her movie Strait-Jacket, the denouement is a let down because there’s not enough suspects for us to guess between (and the same relationship to the murderer!)

There’s some nice extra features, including a 1956 NFT interview 1956 (13 mins), a commentary by film historians Lee Gambin and Eloise Ross, pieces on Joan Crawford and the movie itself, and even Tom Baker’s VHS intro to the movie from 1997 as part of the three-movie Beyond Belief! strand.

Verdict: One for Joan Crawford fans or ‘hag horror’ collectors, as a thriller it’s just not thrilling. It’s also a strange time capsule of when circuses were full of animals, and there’s far too much footage of this. 6/10

Nick Joy