Sid and Marty Krofft are, of course, best known as the producers behind such television camp material as H.R. Pufnstuf, The Bay City Rollers Show, The Brady Bunch Variety Hour and Electra Woman and Dyna Girl. So their names behind the 1981 made-for-TV flick Side Show stands out as kind of a bizarre footnote in their filmography. It’s doubtful that anyone at the time was quite sure what to make of this character drama, set at a travelling circus with a cast of both name stars and real human oddities and featuring such non-Krofftian topics as underage sex, suicide, alcoholism and circus exploitation. Hell, twenty years later and it’s still hard to classify.16-year-old Nick Pallas (“Adam at 15” star Lance Kerwin) arrives at a traveling carnival in order to become the side show’s new puppeteer. He’s shown around by kindly older barker Harry (Red Buttons), who introduces him to the rest of the staff. Among his sideshow cohorts are the 7’10 Josephine (actually the 7’7 ¾” Sandra Elaine Allen), Rhonda the snake charmer, Paula Picasso the tattooed lady, gay sword swallower Excalibur (Nick: “I couldn’t do what you do” Excalibur: “You might be surprised…”), the midget couple Tom and Thelma Tiny (played by Jerry Marren and Patty Maloney, who were both in Under the Rainbow the same year) and the antisocial Man With No Face.
The carnival is run by the sinister, limping Mr. Sholl (Albert Paulsen), who makes sure that the strict pecking order of the carnival is kept to. At the top are the big top performers, followed by the side show folks, and then the lowly roustabouts, which includes Byron, an ex-geek alcoholic who Sholl keeps on staff as a form of vengeance as he holds Byron responsible for the death of his brother and girlfriend. None of the three groups are allowed in intermingle.
Nick, however, being young and innocent, doesn’t know the rules and tries to go comfortably between the groups. He becomes friends with tiger tamer Zaranov (Anthony Franciosa) and acrobat Graciela (Connie Stevens, whose “Russian” accent comes and goes and whose act seems to consist entirely of falling). Graciela, who has a black-clad silent midget assistant, ends up seducing the lad in a scene that tries to come off as sexy but instead looks terribly creepy; Kerwin looks so uncomfortable you’d think he was shooting kiddie porn.
Sub-plots abound and Nick tries to help everyone. He gets the Tinies reunited with their long-lost son (and granddaughter), cheers up Josephine and generally amuses all with has puppet show and mediocre impersonation of Jimmy Durante. Things get darker, however, when one side show member commits suicide and Nick quickly realizes that you can’t make ‘em all happy.
Oh, yeah. There is, as the cover box, seems to suggest, some murder involved. Instead of turning into a full-blown mystery or horror movie, however, the turn of events seems to come mostly as an afterthought well over halfway into the picture. The first half is an oddly likable but relatively bland dramatic exercise in making “freaks” seem like normal, decent people, and when the “plot” kicks in it just kind of gets in the way. The ending, too, seems abrupt and way too tidy and just brings up a hell of a lot more questions than it answers.
Side Show reaches for the heights of Freaks in its examination of circus culture, but it never really comes up with enough of a memorable statement to be more than watchable. Still, it has its’ moments, and the “freaks” are each given a fair share of multi-dimensional character and I wouldn’t really call this “exploitation.”
Transworld Entertainment performed the ultimate bit of ballyhoo with their video marketing — there’s more blood visible on the cover for Side Show than in all 98 minutes of the film. The box description and tag line (“The curtain goes down! The crowd goes home! The nightmare begins…”) make it look more like The Funhouse or Bloodsucking Freaks than the made-for-TV drama that it actually is. P.T. Barnum would be proud.