Where do you begin with Blood Circus? Youll be lucky to ever see more than a grainy clip or two of this near-mythical movie, subtitled 'The Commotion Picture'. In the 1980s, Santo Gold (really Baltimore native Santo Victor Rigatuso, aka Robert 'Bob' Harris) was a pop impresario and businessman who genuinely appeared to have a few screws loose. He sold fake gold chains via 10 hour long infomercials that spread all over the USA, recorded terrible pop music about said chains (not just gold Santo Gold!), and apparently filmed a gargantuan science fiction flop called Blood Circus at a local sports arena. Each of the three parts of this enterprise were intended to promote the other: the lyrics to his music pushed the jewellery and the jewellerys infomercials hawked the film. The film would be the biggest of all: a sci-fi flick featuring aliens from the planet Zoran that fought cannibals and wrestlers from both the USA and the USSR, that featured Santo Golds music and that mentioned mail order fake jewellery business wherever possible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiBdplG_0xs Rigatuso sank $2 million of his own money into Blood Circus, intending to get nationwide distribution for the film when that failed, he hired out several movie theatres in the Baltimore area to show it on the big screen. Gift bags called 'scream bags' were on hand to be given to moviegoers, featuring a long poem about Blood Circus on the sides, containing a voucher for a 'diamond ring'. We are not making any of this up. It lasted for one week. Scuttlebutt (like gossip with marketing synergy) says that only three people turned up to the premiere, and that two of them were local movie critics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klKN9T8dulw As you can see, the actual wrestling action is more than passable, and well-produced. It should be, considering the money being spent on it, and considering that actual name wrestlers like Kamala and Ox Baker were hired to perform. Of course, had they actually brought in a wrestling ring rather than a boxing ring, it wouldnt have nearly splintered in half after every other big spot. Rigatuso shipped in 400,000 foot of 35mm film and several trailers worth of expensive equipment, including nine 33mm cameras, several of which filmed from above the ring itself. Rigatuso never made a dime from the film, and until recently it was considered lost. The inveterate self-promoter had eventually been tracked down by the authorities and jailed for mail fraud, having attempted to sell fake credit cards (for people with bad credit, $49.95 a pop) that were actually paper vouchers for Santo Gold products. However, in 2011, Santo Golds website began to hawk Blood Circus to distributors once more, on the back of the online notoriety that the lost film had gained in the intervening time. It claims that there are two Blood Circus movies, and that the first must be watched to make the second movie comprehensible (we imagine that would probably be because the footage originally shot would cover eight feature films), and furthermore, that:
Blood Circus Features a 40 piece orchestra, male break dancers, female dancers, singers, cyclist, and lots and lots of the most bazaar Wrestling that you have ever seen Promise: Blood Circus will blow your mind, ring your ears and hypnotize your consciousness. You will walk or craw away, scratching your head and feeling confused Over 90 minutes of bazaar wacky humor and lunacy with Wrestlers throwing body parts into the audience, See a lady in the audience catch a wrestlers head in her lap and body parts placed everywhere, including in the toilet, trash dumpster's, car trunks, inside soda machines etc. The body parts and heads were actually part of a 90-piece wax museum collection. Wrestlers were being knocked into outer space and landing back into the ring. People were dancing in the aisles as performers were performing on the stage. Coining the phrase "Rock and Wrestling" The audience was throwing their Hot dogs and sodas at the vendors. Both movies are non-stop comedy action, lunacy, insanity, but pure slapstick fun and often incomprehensible unless you have a higher then normal IQ The Producers decided to rate it N&E, "For Nuts and Everybody
Confused? Youre not alone. Whats your favourite wrestling movie? The cheaper and crappier the better! Tell us all about it in the comments
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
