Side Show (1931) Review - Loud, messy, and actually kind of fun

If you have about an hour to kill and you like movies that feel like they were filmed in a damp tent, you should watch this. It is great for people who love Pre-Code energy where everyone is a little bit rude and the plot moves like a freight train. If you want a slow, deep movie about feelings, you are going to hate this one.

It is basically just a lot of people yelling in the mud. And I mean that as a compliment.

The Winnie Lightner Experience

Winnie Lightner is the lead here and she is... intense. She plays Pat, who basically runs the whole show while the owner stays drunk in his trailer.

Winnie doesn't really 'act' in the way we think of it now. She just vibrates and shouts her lines at the top of her lungs. It is kind of exhausting but you can't look away from her.

There is this one scene where she is trying to manage a crowd and she looks like she is about to actually punch the camera. It’s great.

She’s got this weirdly sweet relationship with the circus 'freaks' too. She treats them like family, which is a nice touch for a movie from 1931. Usually, movies from this era treat circus performers like monsters, but here they are just the guys she works with.

The Plot is a Bit of a Mess

So the main conflict is that Pat’s sister, Irene, shows up. Pat has been paying for Irene to go to a fancy school because she wants her to be a 'lady' and stay away from the circus life.

Of course, Irene shows up and immediately wants to join the show. And of course, she falls for Joe, the guy Pat is in love with.

It is a very standard love triangle, but it feels more grounded because everything around them is so dirty. You can almost smell the elephant bedding through the screen.

I noticed that the movie doesn't really care about being pretty. The tents look thin, the costumes look like they’ve been washed in a river, and nobody’s hair stays perfect for more than five minutes.

"You belong in the sun, kid, not under a canvas with a bunch of rubes."

That line is basically the whole movie. Pat trying to push her sister away while the circus keeps pulling everyone back in.

Random Things I Noticed

• Guy Kibbee plays the drunk owner and he is perfect at it. He has this way of looking confused that makes me laugh every time.
• There is a scene with a high-dive act that looks genuinely terrifying for the stunt person involved.
• Charles Butterworth is in this! He has such a weird, dry way of talking that makes the movie feel like a comedy for ten seconds before it goes back to being a drama.
• The train wreck near the end feels very sudden. One minute they are talking about love, the next minute cars are flipping over.

The pacing is high speed. It feels way faster than something like Behind Office Doors which came out around the same time but feels twice as long.

I actually think the movie gets better when it stops trying to be a romance and just focuses on the chaos of moving the circus. There is a sequence where they are setting up the tents in the rain and it feels like a documentary.

Donald Cook, who plays Joe, is fine, I guess. He doesn't have much to do except look handsome and be the prize the two sisters are fighting over. He has a very 1930s mustache that looks like it was drawn on with a ruler.

The ending is very abrupt. Like, the movie just decides it is over and stops. I kind of liked that, though. It didn't need a twenty-minute wedding scene to wrap things up.

If you’ve seen Pack Up Your Troubles or maybe High Speed, you know how these old programmers feel. They aren't trying to change your life. They just want to entertain you for sixty minutes and then get out of the way.

I kept thinking about how much work it must have been to film this on location. There are so many extras and animals just wandering around in the background of shots.

It’s a bit rough around the edges, and some of the jokes don't land at all. But there is a heart to it that you don't always get in these cheap little movies.

Anyway, it’s a solid watch if you like circus stuff or just want to see Winnie Lightner yell at people. It’s better than a lot of the other stuff from that year, like The Valley of Bravery which is just boring.

Check it out if you find it. It’s a loud little slice of history. 🎪