Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

This was all-too-obviously modeled by producer Irwin Allen on Cecil B. De Mille’s prestigious (and surprising) Oscar triumph THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH (1952); consequently, the script is cliché-ridden, contrived and corny – but the end result is still professionally assembled and definitely not unentertaining for undiscriminating film buffs.The stars (Victor Mature, Red Buttons and Rhonda Fleming) are easily overshadowed by the character actors (Gilbert Roland, Peter Lorre and Vincent Price); the latter two’s casting may be construed as a red herring given the presence of a saboteur – a rival’s lackey – amidst the troupe. Incidentally, Lorre has the old James Stewart clown role and Gilbert Roland ably steps into Cornel Wilde’s aerialist shoes; his all-important “crossing the Niagara” stunt is a (back-projection) highlight. Similarly, the initial animosity between Mature and ‘interlopers’ Fleming and Buttons predictably blossoms into, respectively, romance and familiarity (due to Buttons becoming engaged to Kathryn Grant, Mature’s younger would-be trapeze artist sister).Along the way, the circus is hit by potential bank foreclosure, a lion set loose during a press conference, haystacks set ablaze, a fatal train-wreck, a trapeze artist losing his nerve during a performance, etc. The circus is also seen to move with the times – so that beleaguered owner Mature manages to bring his show to the people (rather than the other way around), via the nascent medium of television, when bouts of thunderstorms hit their scheduled stops!

Irwin Allen's take on circus life.Not really the sort of film I review.Footage of out-of-control wild animals upsetting folks in the circus does bring to mind later episodes of Lost In Space, Land Of The Giants and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea when wild animals/monsters would threaten the stars of these shows.Big Circus might not be the greatest show on earth but it is a taste of things to come, in the 1960s, from producer Irwin Allen!

The writer, Charles Bennett, and the aging actor, Peter Lorre, connects this film with the Irwin Allen production of the Jules Verne novel, 'Five Weeks in a Balloon'. The novel itself made offensive reading, and the film version was totally pathetic with its disconnected scenes and jump-cutting. This film fell way behind that of the 1952 Cecil B. DeMille circus film, 'The Greatest Show on Earth'. For a start, Victor Mature can't act. The sum total of his acting career is just to raise his dark eyebrows and peer out at you through his full eyes. Looking at his face is like reading blank verse. He is bland to watch, and Peter Lorre was insipid as always.

One of the great injustices in movie history was the fact that "The Greatest Show on Earth" won a best picture oscar. This eye glazer was too long, too overblown and just too boring.By contrast the little seen "The Big Circus" is everything that a great circus movie should be. Lions on the loose, tents burning and mysterious killers lurking around.It features great performances by character actors such as Peter Lorre, Vincent Price and Gilbert Roland. Victor Mature, the Sylvester Stallone of his day, as circus owner Hank Whirling is wonderfully over the top.Granted the circus movie genre is regrettably slim, but The Big Circus stands out. It has energy and innocence and features a spectacular ending with Gilbert Roland attempting to tightrope walk across Niagara Falls.In the annals of the big top cinema The Big Circus stands as tall as a tent pole.