It's 8 years since the Circus of Horrors reared its ugly head at the Glastonbury festival...

With the twisted gothic frightener heading into Swindon we decided to check it out.

Since rearing its ugly head at the 95' Glastonbury Festival, this twisted gothic frightener has been traumatising audiences all over the world. And it has been popping up on prime time TV more often than David Dickinson.

Now on its way to Swindon, guess who got the short straw to go and check it out.

With images of human pin cushions dangling heavy objects from body piercings and with vague recollections of freaks hammering nails through their appendages, on the V Graham Norton show, I head into Oxford braced for full frontal horror.

Dr Haze and Girl in a Bottle

At the Oxford Playhouse I join my fellow freak show peekers who, by the way, are an interesting mix of goths, rockers, students and randoms. The ones decked out in full Rocky Horror are hard to tell apart from the creepy Billy Bob and zombie ushers who ram us into our seats.

As the curtain goes up,
on a smoke filled scene of
1900s London, I brace myself for an onslaught of totally shocking, frightening and unashamedly evil depravity.

But as it turns out I can keep my eyes open. The Circus of Horrors, it seems, is decidedly more Hammer House than Slaughter House and keels over well short of it's own hype.

The show, without giving too much away, is your basic shock rock musical with a coarsely stitched together tale (think Frankenstein stitches here) of a chaste Victorian girlie turning to the dark side.

Dragging us through the grim fairytale is the crazed leather clad Dokter Haze and his well endowed, vamp goth side-kick, Satanica, who ham it up whilst belting out dire mock-Def Leopard anthems.

Wasp Boy

To be fair though the show's intentions are good it's just that the 'gory, gory, Alice in Horrorland story' just isn't. The hellish tale is just that. Hellish. Not only does it fail to bolt the whole shebang together it actually ends up just getting in the way.

But thankfully even Dr Haze can't upstage the real gems of this show: the dazzling array of jaw dropping, circus acts and Jackass style stunts.

Being up close and personal with such in your face physical theatre is a treat.

There's Wasp Boy, aka Sebastian Vittorini, who is reputed to have achieved his 16" waist by cramming his stomach into his chest by using tighter and tighter belts. Despite his Wasp like physique he still manages to swallow 5 metre-long swords simultaneously, twist them inside his stomach for good measure before hoiking them out all dripping in saliva.

Downing a red fluorescent light bulb leaves him glowing like a Halloween lantern.

Then there's the aptly named Gary Stretch whose strange skin condition allows him to pull the skin on his neck up and over his face.

Wasp Boy

And the list goes on.

My favourite though is the comically macabre Vaultini who charges himself up with over 300,000 vaults of electricity, via an electrode in his butt, and sends lightening bolts shooting out of his fingertips.

As the cavalcade of chaos explodes into a flaming and pyrotechnic fueled finale it has to be said that this show is not a numb bummer.

But what is it?

Well it's not a show for the extreme thrill seeker, the music lover or the under 18. But ponderous plot and dodgy rock aside the genuinely impressive and talented acts are what make this show worth checking out.

My advice: go and indulge your naff side and have a bloody good time.