It begins promisingly, it ends strongly, but the middle is plodding, padded with impressive but ludicrously overlong circus numbers, and even a useless song-and-dance number. Joan Crawford has a more fitting role here than in her next film ("Trog") - and those famous legs of hers are still killer! The jaw-dropping Diana Dors provides some eye-candy for the men in the audience; Ty Hardin does the same for the women in a long shirtless scene. ** out of 4.

First, let me start this review off by saying that I may have enjoyed this movie way too much. I enjoyed see Joan Crawford, with her green gloves that went all the way to the elbow, use all her dramatic skills to try to produce some interest into this slow mystery. And I will say that Ms Crawford did not disappoint and could have even got Academy votes had she been in a movie that had some degree of entertainment. And now I will progress to the movie.Other than the mystery there is little that produces any worthy interest in the production. It involves a touring circus where someone is killing off the performers in a rather nasty way. There are many suspects that may look like the killer, including Ms Crawford as the owner of the circus, but it will be right at the end where we will learn the identity of the true murderer. And when the end of the movie approaches and we now know who is doing the killing, the person running from the scene will meet an unusual situation just steps from the big top.I watched this film for one reason, to see Joan Crawford perform. And early in this picture it was apparent that even with Ms Crawford in the lead cast, there was no helping this movie. Watch the movie to see Ms Crawford acting ability, to see her in love with a guy twice her younger, to see her in her green dress and to see her at age 62 in leotards. For if you are watching for any other reason you will feel defeated for being taken so easily.

The movie opens with a great high-wire act accident, or was it murder?Oscar winner (Mildred Pierce) Joan Crawford runs a circus. After losing her high-wire man, in walks Frank Hawkins, played by Ty Hardin, who distinguished himself, not in movies, as this film was one of his best, but as a white supremacist in Arizona long before the current group of teabaggers came on the scene. Hawkins fits in well with the new attitude of outrageous stunts.The movie was so so. Nothing really exciting. For a movie in color, there was a noticeable lack of blood. There certainly wasn't anything titillating.

I feel sorry for Joan Crawford when I see her in a movie like this. Whether she was playing a great part or something awful, she threw herself into the role completely. When the part was great we got something superb like Mildred Pierce... when the part was dumb we got something like this. It's so pathetic watching her play this ridiculous role so seriously. I do have to wonder whether it was her idea to have her decidedly older character throw around so many sexual innuendos as she did...I'll give this movie a 4 only because the scenes where Joan Crawford and Ty Hardin are expressing 'attraction' are so amazingly bizarre to watch. First though, I want to know how the directory on my DISH TV gives this thing 3 stars out of 4 - and gives Dear Heart with Glenn Ford and Geraldine Paige the same score???!!!! Dear Heart is a brilliant adult romantic comedy/drama for intelligent people, and this stinker is a low-buck clunker made to let Joan show us she can still come on to younger men. Anyhow - this movie is a howl. Joan manages to slip in some dirty humor, like when someone mentions that she said she was asleep when a murder happened. "I said I was in BED!" she replies. We get it. Frankly I don't even want to THINK about that scene. I don't, I don't, I don't.Why did she (like some other older women) do her hair up in a style that made the top of her head look like a sewing basket? The hair all stretched tight and then bundled into bun shapes on top. Joan had a decent figure yet for a 62 year old, why did she feel the need to style her hair like that? It looks awful and emphasizes her age, not her figure. I think she should have dyed it dark and done it in a more conservative style.Seeing Ty Hardin insist "I'm crazy about you!" to a Joan Crawford nearly double his age must have been a huge ego boost for her, but ewww! Her face was as hard and angular as an anvil by this point - correction, an anvil with a sewing basket on top.To think that this great actress had starred in the brilliant "Mildred Pierce" not that many years earlier, and now she was reduced to being a cradle-robbing head of a circus, it's just hard to fathom. This movie is not good in any way other than the macabre fascination of watching an old broad play on equal footing with a guy far, far too young to ever be interested in someone like her! I really believe that either this was written for or sought after by Crawford to let her show us that she was still hot to trot. Hey, she was a great actress with lots of super roles, but this was just 'berserk'.