“Owww… Ouch… Ewwwww… Ohmigod… Gross… No Way… Tell me when it’s over…” Count these are amongst the words that will either go through your mind or slip out of your mouth as you watch “The Jim Rose Circus Show.” (Or if you’re like some of my friends, these might be replaced with slightly more colorful metaphors.) This is like no circus you have ever seen. There are no Dancing Bears twirling in circles or Happy Clowns piling out of tiny cars. It doesn’t even compare to the Cirque de Soleil, with its colorful trapeze artists and jugglers. “The Jim Rose Circus Show” is much, much darker. It is, in essence, a freak show. Though “The Jim Rose Circus Show” had its first taste of fame during the 1992 Lollapalooza Festival, I first heard of it because of an episode of “The X-Files.” In the 2nd Season episode, ‘Humbug’, Rose (along with veteran performer The Enigma) co-starred as inhabitants of a town peopled by ex-circus freaks.

Since then, I’ve been on the lookout for the video of their show, which I have been hard-pressed to find. I’ve even kept an eye out for the tour to come through Dallas so I could catch it live, but unfortunately I’ve missed it each time.

More recently Rose’s circus was featured on an episode of “The Simpsons” and had it’s own reality show on the Travel Channel, where cameras followed the troupe as it toured the country. Needless to say, “The Jim Rose Circus Show” could be considered a phenomenon, albeit a dark, almost secret one.

In 1993, a 35-minute video was released which featured some of the live performances of the Circus. This is the one I had been looking for, but as it has been long out of print I considered it a wash… until now. Thanks to the folks at Moonshine Movies, the video is finally being re-released on DVD. But not just the original namby-pamby (and I use the term lightly) short film; it’s the full-length, never before available, 90-minute version. And as if this wasn’t enough (and considering how repulsive many of the acts are, some people might wish it had been), Moonshine has seen fit to add over an hour of extra features.

When I finally watched the new DVD, every single one of those thought I mentioned above went through my mind. Though admittedly, it ended up not being near as bad as my imagination had painted it, there were certainly some stunts that made me cringe. My wife wasn’t interested in seeing it at all, and every time she would walk in the room it would be at the worst times. When she’d catch the fascinated look on my face, she’d just shake her head, make some comment about my being ‘weird’, and leave the room.

The two performers (?) I was most taken by was The Torture King, for whom pain didn’t seem to be an issue at all. Whether sticking sharp objects through his skin, or walking up a ladder of swords, almost everything he did made me flinch. Then there was the aforementioned Enigma, who is tattooed head to toe with a puzzle design. Here’s a guy who will eat anything, swallows swords, AND play a mean keyboard. Talk about multi-talented. One of the things that kept going through my head as I watched the show was a curiosity about these characters childhoods. What in the world happened to bring them here?

As I mentioned, the DVD has quite a few extras, including a look at some of the rehearsal footage for the show, a TV commercial, and a video montage of the some of the performer’s faces. There are also some bloopers that are quite funny. They range from simple line screw-ups, to Rose’s near suffocation in an odd plastic bag and vacuum stunt. (Which I found especially funny because I recently had a friend of mine try to sell me a Rainbow vacuum cleaner, and pulled the same stunt with me in the bag, wisely leaving my head outside the bag, however.)

“The Jim Rose Circus Show” is not necessarily a DVD I would recommend to everyone, but if you have fascination with the bizarre and unusual (as I do), or perhaps happen to enjoy sticking needles through your cheeks (as I don’t… uh, often…), then this is absolutely for you.

As my senses reeled at the strange acts that were presented in the circus, there was one other thought that kept creeping up, based on my past experience working in special effects for haunted houses, and the theatre world. I wondered how much of this was really real, and how much was ‘Humbug.’

Directed by: Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris
Starring: Jim Rose
Extras: Over an Hour of Bonus Features, Show Rehearsals, and Bloopers
Specifications: Full Screen
Studio: Moonshine Movies
Release Date: 7/22/2003
Region: All Region
MPAA Rating: NR
Website 1, Website 2

We'll give The Jim Rose Circus Show a B.