Watch Barn of the Naked Dead For Free

That was an excellent one.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Blistering performances.

Once again Code Red have done an exemplary job in releasing the best-quality version of an old B-movie horror flick and giving it a new lease of life for the 20th century. Having watched TERROR CIRCUS - perhaps best known under its exploitative title BARN OF THE NAKED DEAD - you wonder why they've bothered when the end result is so trashy. Long-running actor Andrew Prine plays the usual psycho guy living out in the desert with a mother fixation. He likes to kidnap young women, chain them up, keep them as slaves in his barn, and occasionally have them perform as part of his own private circus. The film is fairly well put together for what is obviously a movie made entirely on the cheap, but the end result is merely silly and mean-spirited. Nudity and some bloodshed are thrown in to keep the horror fans pleased, but the only time this entertains is at the very end with the zombie twist. In its focus on the humiliation of women it seems to be a precursor to BLOODSUCKING FREAKS.

Weird, Disturbing GarbageOne axiom is true about any given art form: It did not exist before a person made it. One of my primary interests in evaluating art forms in a critical manner is to contemplate the motivation behind the decision to execute the work. I have no idea why anyone would have made a movie like BARN OF THE NAKED DEAD, though after seeing it I can understand why folks want to see it: Great title.Existing these days as scummy old rental tapes [including a preposterous version called NIGHTMARE CIRCUS, that is worse if possible] and the occaisional underground re-record, I managed to snag one of the original rental tapes by Ariel Entertainment, whoever they were, and was able to assess an "uncut" 87 minute print of the film. I was not prepared for what it had to offer.I love low rent "B" grade horror, especially European 1970's stuff, and have just begun delving into some of the American made examples beyond DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT or COUNT YORGA. I was enticed by the name Andrew Prine, a magnetic veteran actor of many a B exploitation movie romp -- his role in SIMON KING OF THE WITCHES might be one of the great overlooked performances of the 1970's. His role in BARN OF THE NAKED DEAD is one that I hope he eventually got over, because films like this can wreck a career especially when an actor throws himself into the role, something that he was not apparently able to resist. I wonder if he got to view his daily rushes, or even if there were any daily rushes -- My thought is that the entire film was shot in about a week & a half, and exposed/edited only afterwards when nobody could stop the cinematic car wreck that unfolds onscreen.THE PLOT: Man has lived in near isolation on former Army nuclear testing grounds in Nevada [interesting premise], family having long since deserted or otherwise been rendered ioperable. Prine compensates his lack of company by sitting up in a duck tower with a rifle and putting a bullet through unsuspecting car engines.These cars are all driven by skanky looking 70's B supporting actresses, whom he cons into coming back to his farm. There they are taken prisoner and chained inside of a large barn. The majority of the film consists of footage of the girls chained up to these little posts and cowering with fear, trembling with cold, and discussing their situation. Between conversations Prine lurches in [sometimes dressed as a big top circus M.C.] and drags one of them off to be abused -- verbally, psychologically, physically, and in the movies sole moment of true interest [though the outcome was cut], by a snake. Ahem. He also talks to himself and plays with a toy windup bigtop. He is not a person but a mannerism -- weird behavior for a movie plot with legs attached. I doubt if he was allowed a single 2nd take.At the end of the film a not too secret horrifying secret is revealed, and everyone dies except the two girls that went crazy during their ordeal, which I guess is to make you think, "Gee ...". The End. How they all die I will leave to be a discovery for those stupid enough to seek it out: Don't let my description of a thirty second clip of Snake Sleaze tempt you: BARN OF THE NAKED DEAD just plain sucks.The "cinemetography", on all levels of considerations, sucks. The script sucks, apparently an attempt to adapt the Ed Gein story to a contemporary "issue", though just what that issue would be remains undefined ... Be angry at the Army for atmospheric atom testing, maybe. Don't take the long scenic route when you can fly, perhaps. Watch out for maniacs that have been exposed to nuclear fallout? Nahh -- too easy. Maybe it will come to me at some point, but like I said this film seems to have been made without any real intent, unless that intention is to disturb.And rest assured, BARN OF THE NAKED DEAD is disturbing. Folks may have some bondage romp in mind but BE WARNED: this film lacks even the slightest touch of erotic charm. There is sleaze, but it is not arousing sleaze, unless wondering how the girls go to the bathroom when chained up gives you a rise -- that was the only thing that the film made me wonder about. Then again I guess they didn't need to, since all of the barn scenes could have been shot in one afternoon, so maybe nobody had to go before they were finished.Avoid this film. Avoid it like you would a burning car at a gas pump.Avoid it like you would avoid an open cesspit. Avoid it like you would avoid someone with a bad case of bubonic plague. Don't be suckered in by a kinky box cover or descriptions of unspeakable horrors. They are unspeakable, allright -- so awful that I can't manage one more word.

This movie. Wow. This movie."Worst Movie of All Time" is a pretty tough thing to decide. Do you give it to the greatest of all "worst" movies? ("Plan 9 From Outer Space") Do you give it to the most poorly put-together movie ever? ("Red Zone Cuba") Or do you control for budget differences and give it to the artistically worst movie ever? ("Batman and Robin")At the end of the day, I think you have to give it to the most unwatchable movie ever, for what are movies if not...um...things for watching? Anyway, this is it.I remember a barn and some girls. I remember a tool with a whip saying "raise them, lower them." I remember an outhouse with a jacked-up wookie living in it, and maybe something about a cougar, but I might be making that up. The rest of the movie is basically unintelligible because the dialogue was recorded by a microphone buried 30 miles into the earth's crust. Even if you could hear it, there are no words that could soothe this awful pain as it emanates from the bleak landscape of Midwestern scrub-brush. Here's a fun game: have a competition with your friends to see how long you can go without looking at the clock. The longest we got was about five minutes, and that was only through concentrated willpower. Okay, I lied, it's not a fun game at all, but it's a way to help get through the movie. Other possible solutions: heroin, suicide, blindness or a lobotomy. I normally love bad movies and recommend them to my friends, but this is an exception. I am not kidding here. To you bad-movie amateurs out there, take it from someone who has been to film hell and back more than once: this is not "so bad it's funny," it's just bad. In fact, it's the worst. DO NOT SEE THIS.

Barn of the Nekkid Dead - or Nightmare Circus - is a film about a demented young man named Andre who captures women and keeps them chained in the barn. He believes that he is the ringleader of a circus and that they are the trained animals in his act. Andre is a psychopath, but it's not all his fault - his mother left him when he was very young and his father has turned into a murderous radioactive mutant. Andre crushes rebellion among his animals by feeding would-be rebels to his pet mountain lion or to his father.The obvious moral of the story would be that men treat women horribly, be it is more likely that the pretense of the moral is an excuse to show attractive young women chained and whipped. The best part of this movie is the ending. Help is on the way in the background from the beginning but by the time it arrives at the barn, Andre's father has killed almost everyone. It's refreshing to watch a film without a morally happy ending.