Vampire Circus is a 1972 horror film in which a plague quarantined village becomes the target of shape-shifting entities. Soon, young children begin to disappear, and the locals suspect the circus troupe might be hiding a horrifying secret.
The movie was directed by Robert Young from a screenplay by Judson Kinberg. It was produced by Wildburg Stark and Michael Carreras (who was uncredited) for Hammer Film Productions.
The movie stars Adrienne Corri (Madhouse), Thorley Walters (The Earth Dies Screaming; The Psychopath; Trog) Lynne Frederick (Schizo) and Anthony Higgins (billed as Anthony Corlan).
Plot:
Schoolmaster Albert Müller witnesses his wife Anna taking a little girl to the castle of vampire Count Mitterhaus, where the child is killed.
The villagers, led by Müller and the mayor, invade the castle and attack the Count, driving a wooden stake through his heart. With his dying breath, Mitterhaus curses the village, vowing that their children will die to give him back his life.
The villagers force Anna to run the gauntlet, after which she runs back to the castle, where the briefly-revived Count tells her to find his cousin Emil. Meanwhile, the villagers set the castle on fire.
Fifteen years later, the village is ravaged by the plague and blockaded by the authorities. The citizens fear that the pestilence may be due to the Count’s curse. A travelling circus, led by a dwarf and a gypsy woman, arrives in the village and the villagers appreciate the distraction from their troubles.
One of the artistes, Emil, is actually a vampire and Count Mitterhaus’s cousin. Emil and the gypsy woman go to the castle, where they find the Count’s staked body and reiterate the curse, that all who attacked his cousin and all their children must die…
“An elegant and visually absorbing revenge tragedy – only two of the principal characters survive its gory unfolding – the film succeeds admirably on all levels; its pell-mell prologue is almost lengthy enough to function as a feature in itself.” Marcus Hearn, Alan Barnes, The Hammer Story book
Buy: Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com | Amazon.ca
Synapse Films Blu-ray + DVD combo features:
Featurette: The Bloodiest Show on Earth: Making Vampire Circus – An all-new documentary featuring interviews with writer/director Joe Dante, Hammer documentarian Ted Newsom, Video Watchdog editor/author Tim Lucas, author/film historian Philip Nutman, and actor David Prowse (32:39 in HD)
Featurette: Gallery of Grotesqueries: A Brief History of Circus Horrors – A retrospective on circus/carnival themed horror productions (15:07 in HD)
Featurette: Visiting the House of Hammer: Britain’s Legendary Horror Magazine – A retrospective on the popular British horror/comic publication featuring author Philip Nutman (9:48 in HD)
Vampire Circus: Interactive Comic Book- Featuring artwork by Brian Bolland (3:15 in HD)
Poster and Stills Gallery (1:58 in HD)
Original theatrical trailer (2:321 in HD)
Isolated Effects and Music score
DVD with same content/extras – in SD
Buy novelisation: Amazon.co.uk
Production:
Production began on August 9, 1971. First-time director Robert Young was unfamiliar with Hammer’s tight production schedules, and at one point used up some 500 feet of film stock while trying to get a tiger to sink its teeth into a fake human arm stuffed with pork (it finally bit after beef was substituted). When filming stretched from the scheduled six weeks into seven, the production was shut down and the footage was given to editor Peter Musgrave with instructions to make a finished film out of what he had.
Filming locations:
Black Park, Buckinghamshire, England
Fun facts:
Three of the cast – Laurence Payne, Adrienne Corri and Lalla Ward – would be reunited in the 1980 season of the British sci-fi/fantasy series Doctor Who in the serial The Leisure Hive.
Trailer 1080p HD:
Free to watch on YouTube [1080p]:
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