A Horrible Time at the Circus Trivia Quiz

Answer:

"Freaks"
Todd Browning's classic "Freaks" (1932) shocked viewers with an inside look at the lives of untypical people appearing in a circus sideshow of freaks. These include conjoined twins, a microcephaliac (person with a tiny head), a person without legs, a dwarf, and a bearded lady. The film was banned in Canada as "too grotesque" but one could easily make the argument that the "normal" characters in the film were the most horrifying people of all.

"Circus of Horrors"
Anton Diffring made a career playing Nazi officers and mad scientists. He was a logical choice to play the mad surgeon in "Circus of Horrors" (1960) who makes scarred and ugly people beautiful and compels them to work in his circus. A British horror film, "Circus of Horrors" rode the success of Anglo-American Pictures' "Horrors of the Black Museum" (1959).

"Gorgo"
"Gorgo" (1962) is a kaiju film made in the United Kingdom rather than Japan. The director Eugène Lourié, who called kaiju "comic-strip monsters," also directed "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" (1953), "The Colossus of New York" (1958), "The Giant Behemoth" (1959), and "Crack in the World" (1965) so he must not have detested horror and science fiction all that much. An enormous amphibious sea monster is captured off Ireland and sold to Dorkin's Circus in London. Apparently neither the captors nor the exhibitors had parental consent, as the creature's much larger mother shows up and angrily destroys large portions of London in her efforts to retrieve her son.

"Carnival of Souls"
In "Carnival of Souls" (1962), Mary Henry is involved in an automobile accident in Kansas. After three hours underwater, she surfaces alive. Mary moves to Salt Lake City where she is pursued by ghouls and a mysterious gaunt Man. She is mysteriously drawn to the pavilion of an abandoned lakeside carnival. In the culminating sequence, the monsters chase her to the lakeshore where her footprints disappear into the Lake. When the submerged car is pulled from the river in Kansas, her corpse is in it.

"Circus of Fear" (W. Germany); "Psycho Circus" (US)
Scary movies with Christopher Lee in them tend to do well. Why, then, cover his well-known face with a black woolly hood? The film explains that his character has a face horribly scarred by a fire. The movie is set in rural southern England at the winter quarters of Barberini's Circus. Part murder mystery/part horror film, "Circus of Fear" aka "Psycho Circus" (1966) is novel in the multiplicity of methods used to attempt to kill victims.

"Vampire Circus"
In the 19th century village of Stetl, the people staked and burned Count Mitterhaus, the local vampire who was reputed to have been kidnapping and exsanguinating their children. In Hammer Films' "Vampire Circus" (1972), the Circus of Night arrives, which company is owned by the deceased vampire's vampiric family. The count had cursed the village, as he was dying, with the death of all of their children, which is precisely what begins to happen when the circus comes to town.

"The Funhouse"
There is nothing novel about the motion picture "The Funhouse" (1981) save for the novelization of it written by Dean Koontz (albeit under the pseudonym Owen West) which was published prior to the film's release due to production delays. The movie is the sort of slasher/body horror/jump scare stuff expected from director Tobe Hooper (1943-2017): "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" (1974), "Poltergeist" (1982), "Lifeforce" (1985), "Invaders from Mars" (1986), "The Mangler" (1995), "Mortuary" (2005). "Funhouse" is completely predictable: Midwestern teenagers, smoking marijuana, traveling carnival, dark-ride funhouse, deranged carnie with a hideous masked face, only one (the "final girl") survives. "People" Magazine called it part of the "gore-and-sadism genre."

"Dark Ride"
The motion picture "Dark Ride" (2006) is your basic dope-smoking promiscuous teenagers take a spring-break road trip, pick up a hitchhiker, decide to spend the night in an all-night horror funhouse where two girls had been butchered a decade before, just as the fellow responsible for the butchery breaks out of the insane asylum by killing two orderlies and returns to the funhouse to continue his fun.

"Something Wicked This Way Comes"
Author Ray Bradbury wrote a short story titled "Black Ferris" in 1948. He adapted it as a screenplay in 1958 but it did not sell. He then turned it into a novel called "Something Wicked This Way Comes" in 1962. In 1971 Bradbury turned the novel into another screenplay. In 1981, Disney acquired the rights from Paramount Pictures and this movie was made in 1983. The cast didn't look like the typical B-movie horror company: Jason Robards, Diane Ladd, Arthur Hill, and Pam Grier. Perhaps the most horrifying characters in the film were the 200 live tarantulas which crawled all over Will and Jim in the dark.

"Killer Klowns from Outer Space"
Some horror and science fiction movies are "so bad that they're good." "Plan 9 from Outer Space" (1957) is the archetype. It can be extremely difficult to decide whether a particular film is a horror movie or a comedy: "The Evil Dead" (1981), "Shaun of the Dead" (2004), "Zombieland" (2009), "The Return of the Living Dead" (1985), "The Fearless Vampire Killers" (1967), "Tremors" (1990), "Bubba Ho-Tep" (2002). "Killer Klowns from Outer Space" (1988) leaves the viewer wondering (1) is it the inept and absurd manner in which this motion picture was made that makes it funny and (2) is it more of a comehor or a horromedy?

"House of 1000 Corpses"
Rob Zombie (b. 1965) wrote, co-scored, and directed "House of 1000 Corpses" (2003). Zombie (Robert Bartleh Cummings) was a founding member of and the frontman for the White Zombie. In addition to a solo career as a singer-songwriter, he produced, wrote, directed and acted in horror films. His credits include "Halloween" (2007), "The Haunted World of El Superbeasto" (2009), and "The Munsters" (2022). "House" involves a group of teenagers on a cross-country road trip who are kidnapped, tortured and killed at Hallowe'en at "The Museum of Monsters & Madmen" (a gas station/horror museum) owned by the homicidal, in-bred, deformed, sadistic, psychopaths of the Firefly Family.

"Final Destination 3"
The premise of all six of the motion pictures in the "Final Destination" trilogy is that someone in a small group has a premonition of impending death by disaster, warns the group thereby cheating Death, who creatively kills off the survivors using novel means. In "Final Destination 3" (2006), the disaster is a catastrophic derailment of an amusement park roller coaster. The means whereby Death evens the score include immolation by tanning bed (solarium), a truck's engine fan slicing someone's skull, head crushing by athletic weights, a carpenter's nail gun discharging through someone's head, impalement by a flying flagpole, and crushing by a falling cherry picker (elevated man lift).

"Zombieland"
There are only so many ways to make a human-remnant-fighting-a-zombie-horde movie. There are some entertaining twists in "Zombieland" (2009). One is that a mutated mad cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) prion turns people into zombies. Another is that, when the survivors turn on all the lights and music at Pacific Playland amusement park in Los Angeles, which they thought to be a zombie-free zone, it attracts all the zombies in the vicinity. This motion picture stars Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin, and Bill Murray.

"The Last Circus"
The graphic and grotesque motion picture "The Last Circus" (2010) won three awards at 67th Venice International Film Festival: Best Director, Best European Fantastic Film, and Best Screenplay. Rotten Tomatoes described the French and Spanish production as an "insane blend of hard violence, sex, black humor, and social satire." It is set in 1937 at the time of the Spanish Civil War. People die by being hacked with a machete, shot, trampled by a horse, and falling from a great height.

"It: Chapter Two"
The "It" adaptation of Stephen King's 1986 novel was intended to comprise two motion pictures. The first was "It" (2017); the second was "It: Chapter Two" (2019). The latter film is set 27 years after the first; the members of the Losers Club have all aged appropriately. The premise is straightforward: Pennywise returns to Derry, Maine, and the dispersed members of the Losers Club return and unite to defeat the monster.

"Willy's Wonderland"
Nicolas Cage both produced and starred in "Willy's Wonderland" (2021). He is hired as a janitor to clean up an abandoned family entertainment centre in Hayesville, Nevada. The place was shuttered due to murders committed on the premises. There are eight animatronic mascots in Wonderland, each an incarnation of a homicidal cannibalistic gang: Willy Weasel, Arty Alligator, Cammy Chameleon, Ozzie Ostrich, Tito Turtle, Knighty Knight, Gus Gorilla, and Siren Sara. Spoiler: the Janitor defeats the animatronics, saves the day (but not the building which burns to the ground), gets the girl and drives off into the sunset.

"Sideshow"
Not at all a horror film, "Sideshow" (1950) is a mystery movie in which handsome hunky Treasury agent Steve Arthur, played by Don McGuire goes undercover in an amusement park carnival to catch jewel thieves smuggling their gems into the United States. Spoiler: jewels are hidden in the eyes of figures in the carnival's wax museum.

"The Invisible Circus"
When a young woman goes to Europe to investigate her older sister's suicide, she ends up falling in love with the dead girl's boyfriend. "The Invisible Circus" (2001) is in no wise a horror movie. Cameron Diaz and Blythe Danner star in this motion picture which premiered at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. There is no circus involved.

"Big Top Pee-wee"
"Big Top Pee-wee" is a 1988 sequel to "Pee-wee's Big Adventure" (1985). Paul Reubens returns to his role as Pee-wee Herman. Although the motion picture is set in a circus, it is not a horror film (unless Mr. Reubens' acting is taken into account).

"The Circus Casablanca"
Two performing artists travel around Denmark in the summer in the 1980s. They own a small circus, the economic inviability of which drives them to confidence schemes. "The Circus Casablanca" (1981) is not a horror movie. Rather, it is both a sad and a warm story of hard times, disappointment, and the loss of one's dreams.

"Carnival Magic"
Al Adamson directed "Carnival Magic" (1983), his next-to-last motion picture. Markov the Magnificent, a competent magician and mind reader whose career is in slow decline, obtains and creates a partner act with Alexander the Great, a monkey who can speak. The envious lion tamer kidnaps the animal to sell it to a medical doctor for (terminal) experimentation. The film was marketed as a family entertainment and not at all as a horror movie.

"At the Circus"
Groucho, Chico and Harpo Marx play opposite Eve Arden and Gibraltar the Gorilla in "At the Circus" (1939). Probably the best-remembered scene and song from the film is Groucho's rendition of "Lydia the Tattooed Lady". This motion picture is all comedy and no horror.

"Under the Big Top"
Perhaps best known as Ma Kettle in ten "Ma and Pa Kettle" movies, Marjorie Main plays Sara Post, the owner of a circus in economic decline, in "Under the Big Top" (1938). Her niece Penny becomes an aerialist whose trapeze act saves the circus, which is not horrible at all. And there is romance!

"Texas Carnival"
Esther Williams, Red Skelton, Howard Keel, and Keenan Wynn combine in the romantic comedy "Texas Carnival" (1951). Unlike the "aquamusicals" in which Williams appeared in the 40s and 50s, in this movie she and her business partner, played by Red Skelton, operate a "dunk tank" in a Texas carnival.

"Battle Circus"
In some ways reminiscent of the setting of the movie "M*A*S*H" (1970), Humphrey Bogart plays a surgeon in Mobile Army Surgical Hospital 8666 during the Korean War in "Battle Circus" (1953). Somehow in the ghastliness of war, love blooms between Bogart and a recently arrived nurse played by June Allyson. War is horrible but this is not a horror movie.