SIDESHOW: Alive on the Inside. - Review - video recording review

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), May, 2000 by Robert S. Rothenberg

SIDESHOW: Alive on the Inside SHANACHIE ENTERTAINMENT 105 MINUTES, $19.95

The world of physical anomalies who once populated the midways of circuses and carnivals is all but gone, victim of an era of political correctness and scientific explanation. Still, this loving, nostalgic look at the "freaks of nature" who fascinated millions for more than a century brings them vividly back to life. Perhaps the most unusual aspect of their story is how ordinary their personal lives were, considering their handicaps, and how accepting they were of the cards Mother Nature had dealt them.

Viewers will sit fascinated--especially those too young to remember the shows that exhibited them--as the Human Pincushion, Lobster Boy and Alligator Man, Seal Etta the Seal Girl, Zip the Pinheaded Man, and a panoply of Siamese twins, tattooed men, fat ladies, giants, and bearded women fill the screen. Extensive interviews with the colorful entrepreneurs who produced the shows give their engrossing background, but it is the calmly told first-person stories of Jeanie Tomaini, the "Half-Woman," born with nothing below her waist, and Percilla the "Monkey Girl," covered in hair from head to toe, that give the most insight into the lives of the denizens of the sideshow. Both wed carnival giants and had long, happy marriages, and they look back with fondness and amazing acceptance at their lives on exhibition.

Those with a taste for the bizarre won't be disappointed as, besides the usual sword swallowers and fire eaters, the video exhibits such "geek" acts as performers who hammered nails into their noses, tongues, and other parts of their anatomy; consumed glass and other unpalatable substances; and most memorably in the case of the Great Waldo, who swallowed a live mouse, inhaled smoke from a cigarette, then coughed up the mouse, still alive and apparently none the worse for wear.

So, viewers, step right up for what may be the last look at a disappearing way of life, and see what went on behind the tent flaps that concealed the mysterious wonders of nature from non-paying eyes.

Reviewed by ROBERT S. ROTHENBERG Publisher and Editor-in-Chief