Le Cirque des vampires

I gave in to my desire to resee Twins of Evil and check out Vampire Circus & Countess Dracula which I had never seen and ordered the "Hammer Vampire Collection" from UK. (If you're considering purchase, the discs are coded Region 2, so you can't play them on a lot of USA-sold DVD players. I watch Region 2 on my computer.) I loved Twins of Evil but the real winner was Vampire Circus, an intelligent and fun treatment of a curse upon a village which had the temerity to call an abrupt halt to the fun of the local feudal lord. It's suspenseful and fast moving. I agree with previous commenters that the villagers are so pompous that they earned their fates. Unlike most other posters, I welcomed the opportunity to see John Moulder-Brown in a (for me) new movie, albeit 32 years old. VC is beautifully photographed and the special effects are terrific. Clearly the folks at Hammer Studios did not need computers to create stunning visual images. If you can view Region 2 discs, go for it! You'll get a great thrill out of VC, probably their best vampire flick after Taste the Blood of Dracula!

Vampire Circus (1972) is currently available on Tubi and Amazon Prime. The storyline follows a traveling circus that arrives in a small town. Shortly after arriving children around the city start disappearing. The local towns people decide to start investigating the circus whether they're responsible or not.... This movie is directed by Robert Young (Hostage) and stars Thorley Walters (Adventure of Sherlock Holmes), Adrienne Corri (A Clockwork Orange), Anthony Higgins (Indiana Jones) and Richard Owens (Sense and Sensibility). The circus set, props and backdrops in this were awesome and they did a good job playing off it to create horror elements. The kills in this are pretty bad, especially when the animals do the killing. The cast is solid and the actors do a great job, especially the clown. There are some great nudity and sex scenes throughout the movie. Overall this is an uneven movie that is an above average addition to the horror genre that is worth watching once for horror enthusiasts. I'd score this a solid 6.5/10.

A small village uprises against Count Mitterhouse, their vampiric lord. He vows a curse upon the town as he is being destroyed.Years later the town is struck by an outbreak of disease.

Among this horror a travelling circus comes to town. As we slowly find out most of the circus performers are vampires.Some of the animals are vampiric humans! They begin to wreak vengeance upon the village slaughtering indiscriminately.

There is a rousing finish to this as vampires and villagers square off to do battle.Who will survive?

I was lucky enough to see an uncut foreign laserdisk of this film.Plot confusion stemming from the cut video is cleared up. The colors are lush.The direction is tight and there really isn't a wasted moment in this classic.The acting is top notch as well.This is even better than Horror Of Dracula in my opinion.

Sadly this is only available on laserdisk in the USA at this time. Hopefully Anchor Bay will release a complete version of this film to the video market.All you can do is wait...

"Vampire Circus" tells the story of a village plagued by the curse of a vampire. As the residents are doing away with the evil Count Mitterhaus (Robert Tayman), he swears that he will "live" again to savage their children. 15 years later, a circus comes to town while a plague of a different sort is ravaging the countryside. It's all connected, of course: most of the performers in this circus are vampires themselves. While the disease spreads, some foolish villagers try to flee, but it's all for nothing. No, these people are going to pay the price.

While it does suffer from a story (by Judson Kinberg) that isn't always terribly coherent or well thought out, "Vampire Circus" is still engaging horror-fantasy from those fine people at Hammer. It does benefit from absolutely intoxicating atmosphere, grandiose music (by David Whitaker), and a merciless body count that includes a number of kids. Its characters are decently defined, whether they are heroes like young Anton (John Moulder-Brown), or completely vile like the Count and his minions (such as Emil (Anthony Higgins) and the malevolent midget clown Michael (Skip Martin)). The special effects are occasionally dodgy, and some of the gore is hilariously tacky, but in general the makeup (by Jill Carpenter) is pretty good, especially on a female performer painted like a tiger.

Once again, Hammer assembles an elegant British cast that plays the material for everything that it's worth. Actors such as Adrienne Corri (as the Gypsy Woman who presides over the circus), Martin, Tayman, and Higgins are clearly relishing their villainous roles. Moulder-Brown is a likeable young hero, and Thorley Walters (as the Burgermeister), Laurence Payne (as Mueller the schoolteacher), Richard Owens (as the brave Dr. Kersh), and Robin Hunter (as Hauser) are all excellent. Lynne Frederick is positively ravishing in the role of Dora. David "Darth Vader" Prowse shows off his incredible physique as the circus' silent strongman.

Showcasing the kind of sex appeal and gore that would mark later entries in Hammers' filmography, "Vampire Circus" isn't a great shocker, but it certainly is fun.

Seven out of 10.

... And you'll find a pretty good story in there

It's interesting to note that just about everyone on this page enjoyed VAMPIRE CIRCUS . I can take or leave horror movies especially ones involving vampires because they're self limiting , ( I mean how scary is a person with false teeth ? ) and for much of this movie we're treated to some substandard production values typical of Hammer studios in the early 1970s , the circus arena is supposed to be in the open air but is obviously filmed on an interior film set , the editing and special effects are really poor , there's a sequence with villagers being thrashed to death with a rug ( Well that's what it looked like to me ) while the cast are very uneven with John Moulder-Brown as Anton being just about the most unlikely hero I've ever seen in a horror movie . Oh and there's plenty of scenes with people with false teeth like those ones you buy at a joke shop

But... ...despite all this VAMPIRE CIRCUS is a very entertaining horror movie . I don't know if it's because I've seen too many smart ass post modernist American horror flicks recently but a story featuring a Central European village being cut off from the outside world because of plague and its inhabitants being killed one by one by a bunch of vengeful vampires appeals to me more than a self referrential story set in 21st century America . In fact many of the killings are paedophillic murders so this gives the movie a disturbingly adult strength in what could easily be dismissed as a silly movie