A 1967 Technicolor feature from the UK starring the versatile veteran actress Joan Crawford. Miss Crawford plays Monica Rivers the owner of a traveling circus that is suffering a dwindling attendance. Her business manager Dorando(Michael Grough)is at odds with her and wants his share of the business, he wants out. When a tightrope walker(Thomas Cimarro)falls to his death, suddenly ticket sales start increasing. A handsome Frank Hawkins(Ty Hardin)arrives wanting to prove his talent of high-wire walking without a net. Walker is hired and Dorando is mysteriously murdered. Suspicion is cast on Miss Rivers and things get worse; more deaths occur and business keeps bustling. Monica's daughter Angela(Judy Geeson)at 16 is expelled from school and is forced to join her mother at the circus. Dead bodies keep piling up under the big top and the circus folk along with Detective Supt. Brooks(Robert Hardy)are almost certain the owner is guilty of the murders in favor of building her business.Very colorful with typical circus acts. Not much acting from Crawford. Hardin seems nothing more than a proud peacock. I remember sitting in the theater with eyes clued to the screen wondering who would die next. Miss Crawford does prove to have a nice set of legs. Other players include; Diana Dors, Philip Madoc, Peter Burton and Geoffrey Keen.

Murders are taking place at a circus, and people are suspecting that Joan Crawford's character Monica Rivers (owner of the circus) is going "Berserk!". We see one of the circus performers murdered right at the film starts, but most people think it's just an accident. It's after a second man is viciously killed that everyone realizes there is a killer among them. Monica is suspected right away. People believe she's killing people in order to gain a larger audience.We get some circus acts in the film too, pretty lengthy as well. We see circus animals (elephants, lions) perform, cute puppies do tricks, high- wire acts, the bearded lady, etc. Sometimes during these acts, murders are committed. For example, a woman is cut in half in which should've been a routine act after the killer fiddles with the box she lies in. It was around the middle frame that I figured out who the murderer was. Probably the weakest part of "Berserk!" was the writing around the suspects. There aren't that many, and the one's which the film try to lead us to suspecting don't really have great motives. Even the killer's identity was pretty weak.Overall, "Berserk!" is one of Joan Crawford's weaker films. When put up against 'Baby Jane' and 'Strait Jacket', it doesn't have the same excitement or sparkling performance to it. Crawford's character Monica was sort of bland. I'd still check this out though, it's worth at least one viewing. The murder scenes are pretty gruesome for it's time (1967) and the circus acts are very well done.6/10

The circus tent had been the stage for violence and melodrama ever since the Lon Chaney vehicle THE UNKNOWN (1927); as late as 1966, there had been the average Edgar Wallace yarn starring Christopher Lee CIRCUS OF FEAR – most notoriously, however, was CIRCUS OF HORRORS (1960), whose grisliness matches that of HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM (1959)…with which the film under review shares its producer (Herman Cohen) and male lead (the late Michael Gough). Still, the latter's appearance here is rather brief – being merely a victim of the killer-on-the-loose this time around: his demise (the back of his head is perforated by a large nail hammered through the hole in a block of wood against which he was resting!), however, is almost as outrageous as the spiked binoculars from BLACK MUSEUM! Anyway, the true star here is Joan Crawford (61 years old but still showing off her legs!) – going through her horror (and final) phase: in fact, she would bow out in 1970 with TROG i.e. yet another (and even more preposterous) Cohen/Gough offering! She is the owner of a traveling circus (eventually joined by rebellious daughter Judy Geeson, who would soon flourish within the genre herself) whose star attractions and associates begin to die on her. Their non-accidental nature obviously draws the Police to the tent (represented by Robert Hardy, later of Hammer's DEMONS OF THE MIND [1972])…but Crawford herself is unperturbed, as she relishes the mass of crowds coming in every night in the hope of capturing another sensational 'accident' live! Needless to say, her callousness makes her the No. 1 suspect, especially after her rival for new performer Ty Hardin's attentions, Diana Dors (in one of the last roles where she would retain her last shapely figure), is literally sawed in half! As often happens with this type of fare, a dwarf virtually acts as Chorus throughout the proceedings; still, the identity of the killer was not hard to guess – especially since this particular character's grudge against Crawford (however honest it may have been) is spelt out some time before the actual denouement!

Berserk is not as dreadful as I had anticipated. It's a straightforward and reasonably entertaining whodunit set in a traveling circus in Britain. Overall I wouldn't call the pacing slow, as others have, but it is odd. At the beginning the story moves along briskly, as the plot quickly thickens. Then periodically it breaks for extended circus acts that have no bearing on the story, though it could be argued that since we are half expecting a new murder to occur at any moment, we have no choice but to be attentive. Certainly this wouldn't be much of a film without the centerpiece, Joan Crawford, who delivers a forceful performance as the hardboiled boss of the circus. Over sixty, her hair is dyed pinkish blonde and worn tightly pulled back to emphasize her still attractive facial features (and possibly to lift the face) and in half her scenes she is wearing a mistress-of-ceremonies outfit with bare legs. She could still pull it off. But one notices several instances of "Joan Crawford lighting" that started in the 50s if not earlier: in these instances the upper part of her face is high lit but there is a convenient shadow under the chin to de-emphasize the sagging jawline. (These days the average actress of 60-plus has had surgical facelifts.) The tone of her acting here is very much like the performance she gave around the same period on the CBS soap opera The Secret Storm in which she subbed for her ailing daughter who was a regular cast member of the show: full throttle whether necessary or not – but you got your money's worth or at least felt you were being generously served by the performer.Ty Hardin as a high wire performer who sort of has the hots for Joan (we really can't tell because the script coyly dances around the issue) was on a career downturn at the time this was made and doesn't make much of an impression here. Diana Dors as an abrasive member of Crawford's troupe of performers enlivens every scene she's in. Just when you think she is stealing the film, in steps Crawford to show everyone who's the Star. The production values are cheap but so well presented that they almost look expensive. Shooting actual circus acts lends an air of plausibility to the film as a whole that the script itself lacks, and one can understand the logic of approaching the production from this angle. If you cut out all of the genuinely interesting circus material this would be very thin gruel indeed. The scoring is also peculiar. Usually it's par-for-the-course sinister/suspenseful. But sometimes it veers off into a lush studio orchestra sound of the kind you'd expect to hear as underscoring to a scene of a limo gliding to a stop in front of a Beverly Hills mansion wherein Lana Turner is longing for love. This disconcerting shift occurs right after the dandy opening scene and credits.Crawford seems in her element here as a tough lady with responsibilities and she is the main reason to see the film.