“One lust feeds the other….”
Hoping to revive profits and interest in their films, Hammer hired new writers and directors, brought in a new stable of actors, and amped up the sexual content in their films during the 1970’s. One of the earliest films to show off this “new look” Hammer style was 1972’s Vampire Circus. If you’re only familiar with Hammer’s horror productions from the 1950’s and 60’s, Vampire Circus can be quite a jarring, albeit enjoyable, experience.
The film sets a new tone for Hammer right off the bat (no pun intended). The film opens with the abduction of a young girl by a woman who brings the child to Count Mitterhaus. The count kills the child and then has sex with the woman who has willingly been in an affair with him for some time. Angry about the affair but even more enraged about the kidnapping of the young girl and other children from the village, Professor Albert Muller rounds up other villagers and they storm the count’s castle. They succeed in impaling Count Mitterhaus with a wooden stake but before he dies he curses the village. He tells them that the blood of their children will bring him back. Muller’s adulterous wife, Anna, is then beaten and whipped by the men. She manages to escape in part due to the intervention of her husband, and she is given a mission by the count to find his cousin, Emil, to bring his curse to fruition.
Many years later a plague has fallen over the village. It’s so terrible that the citizens are blockaded in the village by neighboring communities in order to keep the plague out of their own villages and towns. Somehow a traveling circus manages to get through the blockade and they begin performing nightly for the villagers. The “Circus of the Night” is enjoyed by the citizens but there is an underlying sinister air about the circus and its workers. It is headed up by a mysterious gypsy woman and features a shapeshifting man, a silent strongman, a sadistic clown, an erotic dance duo, twin gymnasts, numerous animals, and a hall of mirrors. Little do the villagers know that the circus is actually a front for the count’s cousin, the charismatic vampire named Emil.
Hoping to find a way to cure the plague and inspired by the fact that the circus made it to their village through the blockade, the town’s doctor, Kersh, rushes the blockade with the help of his son, Anton, and manages to get through to the outside world. In the meantime, Muller’s daughter returns to the village to be with her father despite his protests and to reunite with Anton, her boyfriend.
The circus performs for the villagers each night and one by one they eliminate children and adults in the village. As the body count rises, the Count Mitterhaus grows in power. Things come to a head when the circus troupe makes its final moves to capture Dora in order to bring the count back to life. Dr. Kersh returns to the village with a cure and a new desire to battle vampires despite having denied their existence when he first left town. Will the village break the curse? Will the vampires prevail? Watch Vampire Circus in order to find out!
Hammer definitely gambled with this film. With a new cast, a new vampire, and amped up eroticism, many filmgoers didn’t know what to expect. Personally I felt that it was a pretty good movie with just a few flaws. The movie is definitely disjointed and this is apparently due to the fact that first-time director Robert Young took too long with production and couldn’t finish some parts of the film but that doesn’t mean that the film isn’t enjoyable. In fact, the disjointedness of the picture adds to the surrealism of it all.
Horror and science fiction fans will see quite a few familiar faces. The cast includes Adrienne Corri (A Clockwork Orange, Doctor Who), Laurence Payne (Doctor Who), Thorley Walters (numerous Hammer films), Lalla Ward (Doctor Who), Anthony Higgins (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Journey to the Unknown), Robin Sachs (Galaxy Quest, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic), Mary Wimbush (The Odyssey, K-9 and Company), and Darth Vader himself, David Prowse. Other key members of the cast include Elizabeth Seal, John Moulder-Brown, Christina Paul, and Lynne Frederick. Also of note are Milovan and Serena, the erotic dancing duo.
Robin Sachs and Lalla Ward are perhaps my favorite actors in the film. They play the sinister vampire twins called Heinrich and Helga. Sachs looks as if he was born to play Lestat in Interview With The Vampire and Lalla Ward is both seductive and sinister. Not far behind them is Anthony Higgins as the very charismatic Emil. Corri is excellent as the gypsy woman as well.
I’m not a prude and have no issues with the nudity and violence in this film, but I do want to note that the PG rating for this movie is deceptive. It should have received an R rating even back in the 1970’s. Today it wouldn’t even get a PG-13 rating. Why? Because in the first few minutes of the film we have a young girl murdered by a vampire and then that same vampire strips a woman completely nude and has sex with her while the poor child isn’t even cold yet! Later on in the film we are treated to another completely nude woman, Serena the Tiger Lady, as she performs some pretty impressive dance moves with her partner, Milovan. A few minutes later, Emil rips the top off of Christina Paul’s Rosa and has his way with her. Top all of that off with an entire family getting ripped to shreds by a panther, a stake through the heart, a massive cross impaling a woman, a man’s back exploding after a gunshot, animals being shot to death, and plenty of other violence, and you’ve got yourself a pretty hard R rating. Again, I’m not against this type of stuff in films, but I wouldn’t want to watch this with any youngsters around.
Despite the disjointedness of the film, I really did enjoy it. I recommend it and hope that you do check it out. Just prepare yourself to witness a production company making massive changes to appeal to a newer, younger audience and you should be just fine. Thanks for checking out my post!
Ken's Alternate Universe! 