One the most vicious, bloody, and downbeat of the Hammer horrors, 1972's Vampire Circus is these days held in relatively high regard by fans, but despite its attempts to differ from the Hammer norm in many respects, it displays the scars of its relatively troubled production quite plainly and is by no means the mini-masterpiece it is often hailed as.Telling the story of a plague-ridden Central European village visited by the Ray Bradbury-influenced Circus of Nights, a vengeance-fuelled carnival troupe of child-murdering, animalistic, and randier-than-normal blood-drinkers, it is both intriguingly offbeat and at the same time very typical of the standard early-1970s' Hammer output in terms of its setting, locations, and visual style. By 1972, the usual mock-Transylvanian hinterland of castles, inns, cleavage and a ridiculous number of men named 'Hans' as seen in the vast majority of their period horror flicks was practically a parody of itself; though several of the company's later movies attempted to shake things up with some extra violence, nudity, and a much less 'conservative' storyline than had previously been the case, they were still limited by the rigid conventions of their brand of period Gothic, and as such Hammer struggled to move with the times as quickly and easily as they should have, which Vampire Circus illustrates all too well.Everything about the movie, in fact, is a game of two halves. Some of the action is intense and satisfyingly full-on (such as the villagers' initial encounter with Robert Tayman's ludicrous-looking Count Mitterhaus, who resembles not a decadent aristocrat from the previous century but rather a rakish Chelsea pimp), whilst other scenes are baggy and poorly-edited (particularly true of the climax). Internal logic is unclear, as for a village as terrified of the supernatural as this vampire-haunted hamlet professes to be, they have an awful lot of tolerance (at first anyway) for the Circus of Nights, whose performers are visibly capable of genuinely impossible feats like turning into animals before the audience's eyes, but to which this set of dolts just laugh and clap; also, what amounts to a live sex show between a man with a whip and a naked woman painted like a tiger is greeted with quiet acceptance by the assembled throng of parents and children (!), which makes their subsequent pious wittering and gripping of crucifixes when people start turning up dead (a tedious horror cliché at the best of times) appear somewhat out-of-character.The performances are a mixture of the good, the bad, and the OTT. Adrienne Corri and Laurence Payne are both relatively strong, as is Anthony 'Higgins' Corlan as the nastiest of the vampiric gypos, whilst good old Dave Prowse and little Skip Martin from The Masque of the Red Death (1964) at least bring something different to the party. However, juvenile lead John Moulder-Brown (Deep End) is very wooden, the various young females are interchangeable, and Thorley Walters, a favourite at Hammer who blighted many a horror film with his deliberately buffoonish 'comic' turns, is only marginally less annoying than usual.You can see where the money ran out, too (Hammer boss Michael Carreras pulled the plug on director Robert Young after a six-week shooting schedule left several scenes unfinished); most notably, a supposedly horrific massacre of a dormitory full of students is referred to in quite matter-of-fact terms, but nothing of it is seen. Despite some wholly unrealistic but still disturbing gore imagery and the fragmented nature of the piece giving it a suitably nightmarish effect, it feels as though Vampire Circus isn't all it could have been; mind you, everything is relative – it looks like Let the Right One In (2008) when compared to rubbish like its original US release co-feature, Peter Sasdy's witless Ingrid Pitt vehicle Countess Dracula.

Well now. I'd heard a lot about "Vampire Circus" since it's disappearance back in the early 70s. Now, the blu-ray of this oddity has surfaced and we can all see what the cultists are raving about. Strictly a drive-in movie, which should have been double-billed with something like "Return of the Dwarf Clown Vampire Circus Performers of Evil" or something like that. FREE donuts at dawn for everyone brave enough to stay all nite!!! That's where this flick should be seen. "Circus" isn't all that terrible, but it was filmed and released around the time that Hammer was descending into bankruptcy and a lot of bare breasts were uncovered to pay the bills. The new DVD is nice, clear, and reveals all those things we like about Hammer vampires. Good color,enormous fangs, indifferent pacing, stock dimwitted characters, and those annoying twisted columns from Dracula's castle back in 1958. Hammer really got their money's worth out of that particular set, as it appears over and over in all their vampire films."Circus" opens nicely, with the locals aghast over the peccadilloes of resident castle-dweller Count Mitterhouse. He's a bloodsucker, sex fiend, and a pedophile! His excesses have outraged the locals, who put his reign of terror to rest. Purists here will notice that when the Count is staked from behind in bloody fashion, later shots of him rolling around on his bed show that his shirt is intact and well, pretty clean for a guy leaking blood all over. He succumbs to the stake, but curses the town. Fifteen years pass and a "disease" has come to claim the town. Pity that they never got around to clearing the mess they made by exploding the Count's castle, isn't it? They might have discovered his body lounging around in a snazzy coffin. So, a village with plague is cut off from the rest of the world, but a threadbare circus rolls into town unimpeded. The dimwitted villagers are entranced and end up as the victims of the circus performers, who are all.....vampires!! No one saw that coming, let me tell you. Stock townies are cut down as the undead try to revive Count Mitterhouse. Will they prevail or just slink away to another Hammer flick, like "Twins of Evil" or something that depends on boobs instead of scares to keep audiences awake?This is strictly for Hammer fans, although it's a jazzy take on the vampire mythos. The sets are claustrophobic, as you might imagine. All Hammer films end up feeling like high school plays with a tiny budget. Why do all the stricken townies attend the circus every night? Who cleaned up the litter boxes for the were-panther and the were-tiger? Evidently all the townies are fairly stupid despite warnings from the veterans of Mission Mitterhouse. Absolutely no one seems to connect the past ghoulish goings-on back to Count Mitterhouse and his faithful concubine who was allowed to run away fifteen years earlier. The climax of this tale of terror is a yawner. Everyone tries to best the bloodsuckers, but everyone has forgotten the lore. The dumb townies get knocked down and bitten like falling dominoes. It all takes place in what seems like slow motion.A strange take on the vampire mythos from your friends at Hammer, who tried the sex-and-horror thing long before mainstream studios realized that nudity trumped scares. The rest of us in our cars at soggy Midwestern drive-ins just snoozed and waited for those free donuts at dawn. "Vampire Circus" isn't that bad, but it's not that good either.

Poorly paced and edited horror film lacks any genuine terror or suspense though it's suitably atmospheric and downbeat with erotic overtones, including some nudity which may have been cut from the PG version. There's not too much originality on display, and the film doesn't live up to the expectations set in the rather lengthy pre-title sequence. The direction and most of the performances are seldom more than barely adequate, and the vampire fangs which might do for a Halloween costume are distractingly fake and cheap looking. The characters are not compelling though John Moulder Brown of The House that Screamed and Deep End and Lynn Frederick display youthful charm as the ostensible hero and his fair lady. However, all of the the characters take so long to figure out the obvious that they test both patience and credulity. With so many variations on the vampire legend around it's hard to recommend Vampire Circus; it's occasionally diverting, but ultimately weak and not worthwhile.

This is part of Hammer Films later output, when they finally figured out they could put nudity in their movies instead of just implied sexuality What you have is sort of a confused mess of a story where a bunch of villagers kill off their Vampire Count, who swears revenge before they blow up his castle. His human mistress goes off to find his cousin, and for some reason, she gave birth to two vampire twins who are fully grown 15 years later. (One of them played by Doctor Who's Lalla Ward.) So apparently, these villagers don't think anything is strange about a circus showing up and people mysteriously disappearing or dying in their midst.So some nudity, some gore, some nice Hammer stylistic visuals, but lacking the gravitas that Cushing and Christopher Lee usually brought to these things.