Libeled Lady (1936), Night Is My Future (1947), Fox and His Friends (1975), Moonrise (1948), State Fair (1945), Road to Rio (1947), Hello, Frisco, Hello (1943), Jitterbugs (1943) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Carnival Barker movies.
Storyline: Warren Haggerty is the chief editor of the New York Evening Star. He keeps on delaying his marriage with Gladys because of problems his newspapers must face. When a 5 million dollar lawsuit is filed by Connie Allenbury for falsely printing she is a marriage-breaker, he plans a marriage in words only between Gladys and the Don Juan Bill Chandler. The goal is to catch Connie alone with a married man.—Yepok
Plot Keywords: automobile accident, camera, carnival barker, champagne, cigarette smoking, city hall, clock ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: The ambitious Stanton "Stan" Carlisle works in a sideshow as carny and assistant of the mentalist Zeena Krumbein, who is married with the alcoholic Pete. The couple had developed a secret code to pretend to read minds and was successful in the show business before Pete starts drinking. Stan stays with them expecting to learn their code and leave the carnival to be a successful mentalist. Stan also flirts with the gorgeous Molly that lives in the carnival with the strong Bruno. Zeena and The Savage, an alcoholic man that eats live chickens that the audiences believe that is a savage, are the greatest attractions of the sideshow. When Stan gives booze to Pete and he dies, Stan finds that Pete had drunk methyl alcohol and not his booze, but he feels guilty for the death of him. Zeena teaches the code to him and Molly helps Stan to learn them. After an incident, Stan is forced to marry Molly and he decides to move to Chicago with her to become a sensation in a night club. One day, he meets the psychologist Lilith Ritter and he finds that she tapes the sessions with her clients from the high-society. The trickster Stan envisions a scheme to raise a high amount of money swindling rich people. But his ambition brings him back to the life in the sideshow.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Plot Keywords: blackmail, con artist, mind reading, tarot card, psychologist, carnival, alcoholic ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Working class and middle-upper class worlds come together in this interesting look at class conflict within the gay world from the German director Reiner Werner Fassbinder. Fassbinder plays Fox, he is working class, a former circus performer who wins the lottery of DM 500,000. His life starts to look up and doesn't have to struggle financially. Fox can now have the life and things that he has always wanted. He begins a new relationship with Eugen, creates a business partnership, and his life is looking bright. While he wants to climb up the social ladder, it isn't without turmoil, and being torn between his old working class roots, and the shiny new facade of middle class consciousness.—Nathan Niessen
Plot Keywords: munich germany, class differences, brother sister relationship, businessman, loan, money, quarrel ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Danny Hawkins, who lives in a psychological shadow because his father died by a hangman's noose, accidentally kills a man in a fight over a girl, Gilly Johnson, and is afraid to notify the police. He wins the love of the girl but when she tries to influence him to admit his guilt, he runs away.—Les Adams <longhorn1939@suddenlink.net>
Plot Keywords: racial stereotype, grandmother grandson relationship, taunting, surrender, song, sheriff, schoolgirl ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Farm family Frake, with discontented daughter Margy, head for the Iowa State Fair. On the first day, both Margy and brother Wayne meet attractive new flames; so does father's prize hog, Blue Boy. As the fair proceeds, so do the romances; must lovers separate when the fair closes?—Rod Crawford <puffinus@u.washington.edu>
Plot Keywords: pianist, breakfast, gondola, carousel, merry go round, falling in love, dancing ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Scat Sweeney, and Hot Lips Barton, two out of work musicians, stow away on board a Rio bound ship, after accidentally setting fire to the big top of a circus. They then get mixed up with a potential suicide Lucia, who first thanks them, then unexpectedly turns them over to the ship's captain. When they find out that she has been hypnotized, to go through a marriage of convenience, when the ship reaches Rio, the boys turn up at the ceremony, in order to stop the wedding, and to help catch the crooks.—mike.wilson6@btinternet.com
Plot Keywords: stowaway, clarinet, lifeboat, niagara falls, carnival barker, bicycle, duel ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: San Francisco's Barbary Coast is the hub of light and gaiety for a bustling young metropolis, while at Sharkey's Colosseum , Trudy Evans (Alice Faye), Johnnie Cornell (John Payne), Dan Daley (Jack Oakie) and Beulah (June Havoc) offer divertissement. Trying out a new number the group pulls the paying customers away from the bar, and they are promptly fired. True-blue Trudy begs Dan and Beulah to stick with Johnnie who is full of ideas, some of which, later cause Trudy much distress. When fast-talking Sam Weaver (Laird Cregar) happens upon Johnnie with another tale of a sure bonanza gold strike. Johnnie grubstakes him to the group's last $10. Coming upon an anti-drinking missionary group, Johnnie makes them a proposition which will benefit them all. He stages a series of street carnivals in front of the saloons which attracts the crowds, especially when Beulah performs cooch-dance, to the ruination of the juke-and-gin mills. Each proprietor offers $500, if Johnnie will keep away from their bars, but to Sharkey (Ward Bond) the price is $1000. With the money from his high-handed extortion Johnnie opens The Grizzly Bear and it becomes an overnight sensation with Trudy as the star of an elaborately-mounted show which even brings in the carriage trade from Nob Hill, including the haughty Bernice Crodt (Lynn Bari) and her pre-entourage days entourage. Johnnie is fascinated by her poise and social position. The Grizzly prospers and Johnnie soon opens three more saloons which makes him an early-day impresario , and Trudy the Toast of the Coast. Beulah is rather toasty herself. Ned (John Archer), a Trudy admirer, brings Cochran (Aubrey Mather), an English theatrical producer, slumming in the colonies, to see the show and offers a starring role in his next London production. Deeply in love with Johnnie, Trudy refuses, but cad Johnnie, eager for society prestige abruptly marries femme-fatale Bernice so he can climb up Nob Hill. Broken-hearted Trudy sails for England where as the star of "The Girl from Piccadilly" she is the darling of the London theatre crowds. Johnnie and Bernice go on a European honeymoon, during which time he sees Trudy's show. That's is Johnnie last highlight for a while. Back in gay old Frisco, Johnnie's fortunes decline rapidly when he becomes a sponsor of Grand Opera, long a pet project for money-drain Bernice. One by one he closes Barbary Coast saloons including the Grizzly Bear. Dan and Beulah go back to Sharkeys and Johnnie is a barker for a cooch-show on the carnival midway. Trudy returns and is distressed more than somewhat to find the familiar night spots shuttered and silent and Bernice had given Johnnie his walking papers when he ran out of money. So True-Blue Trudy quietly finances Sam, who in turn convinces Johnnie that he has at last struck a gold bonanza. With "his share" of the old grubstake Johnnie reopens the Grizzly but refuses to hire Trudy for his show since he now has a large case of remorse. Will they get together again?—Les Adams <longhorn1939@suddenlink.net>
Plot Keywords: song, reconciliation, comeback, frustration, treachery, trickery, depression ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: The two-man Laurel and Hardy Zoot Suit Band find themselves fronting a scam for "gasolene pills" in wartime oil-short America. They are however soon on the side of the angels helping recover $10,000 for an attractive young lady whose family have themselves been swindled.—Jeremy Perkins {J-26}
Plot Keywords: actor shares first name with character, singer, grindhouse film, anger, gang member, gang leader, swindler ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A lion escapes Nick Coster's carnival and is captured by grocery clerk Matt Varney whom Nick brings into the show and eventually makes chief lion tamer. When Nick finds out Matt has fallen for his convent-bred sister Mary he makes him go into the cage with the insane lion Caesar.—Ed Stephan <stephan@cc.wwu.edu>
Plot Keywords: fainting woman, chicago illinois, newspaper headline, german american, alcoholic, young love, farm ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: In 19th Century Paris, the maniacal Dr. Mirakle abducts young women and injects them with ape blood in an attempt to prove ape-human kinship. He constantly meets failure as the abducted women die. Medical student Pierre Dupin discovers what Mirakle is doing too late to prevent the abduction of his girlfriend Camille. Now he desperately tries to enlist the help of the police to get her back.—Gary Jackson <garyjack5@cogeco.ca>
Plot Keywords: falling from height, heresy, candle, loneliness, cage, translation, german ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Chronicles the early life of gay nineties-era songwriter Paul Dresser as he outgrows his job as carnival entertainer and moves up into New York society, writing one hit song after another. Despite his egotistical behavior, he manages to woo and win Sally Elliott, one of the more popular songstresses of the day.—Doug Sederberg <vornoff@sonic.net>
Plot Keywords: character name in title, deception, damsel in distress, despair, episodic, determination, saga ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: The film depicts the courtship of Princess Elisabeth of Bavaria (1837-1898), nicknamed "Sisi", by her cousin Franz Joseph I of Austria (1830-1916, reigned 1848-1916). The complication is that Franz Joseph was originally engaged to Elisabeth's older sister Duchess Helene in Bavaria (1834-1890), nicknamed "Néné". The film depicts events from 1852 to 1854.—Dimos I
Plot Keywords: vindication, puppet show, treachery, carnival barker, innkeeper, bartender, travel ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Tucson, Arizona, circa 1910: Emily Hefferan wants a divorce. In flashback, she recalls twenty years of marriage to Jim Hefferan, who sinks every cent of each new windfall in harebrained investments. Emily only keeps a roof over the family by taking in boarders...more and more of them. But Jim's latest deal goes just a little too far.—Rod Crawford <puffinus@u.washington.edu>
Plot Keywords: singing, singer, song, 1890s, nurse, pregnant wife, young love ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A southern country doctor is called on by a visiting circus man to cure his sick elephant. After the doctor heals the grateful beast, the elephant becomes so attached to him that it starts to follow him everywhere.—Daniel Bubbeo <dbubbeo@cmp.com>
Plot Keywords: elephant, u.s. constitution, small town, slapstick comedy, mother son relationship, father daughter relationship, singer ...
Movie Details Click Here!