Vampire Circus
A circus of vampires preys on a plague-stricken village.
In 1972, Hammer Film Productions released the British horror film Vampire Circus. Directed by Robert Young, it stars Adrienne Corri, Thorley Walters, and Anthony Higgins. The plot involves a traveling circus whose vampire performers target the children of a 19th-century Serbian village. Judson Kinberg wrote the screenplay, with Wilbur Stark and an uncredited Michael Carreras producing.
Quick Facts
- Director
- Robert Young
- Screenplay
- Judson Kinberg
- Story
- George Baxt; Wilbur Stark
- Producer
- Wilbur Stark
- Starring
- Adrienne Corri
- Laurence Payne
- Thorley Walters
- John Moulder-Brown
- Anthony Higgins
- Lynne Frederick
- Cinematography
- Moray Grant
- Editing
- Peter Musgrave
- Music
- David Whitaker
Facts from the source article.
Plot
In the early 1800s, near the Serbian village of Stetl, schoolmaster Albert Müller saw his wife Anna lead a young girl named Jenny Schilt into the castle of Count Mitterhaus. The Count was a reclusive nobleman whispered to be a vampire who had made other children vanish. Those rumors were correct: Anna had become Mitterhaus’s willing follower and lover, and she handed Jenny over so the Count could drink her blood. Müller, along with Jenny’s father Mr. Schilt and the village mayor Peter, led a group of men into the castle to attack the Count. After the vampire killed several of them, Müller drove a wooden stake through his heart. With his final breath, Mitterhaus cursed the villagers, swearing their children would die to restore his life. The furious villagers forced Anna to run a gauntlet, but Müller stepped in. She fled back into the castle, where the briefly revived Count told her to find his cousin Emil at the Circus of Night. She placed his body in the crypt and escaped through a tunnel as the villagers blew up the castle with gunpowder and set it ablaze. Fifteen years later, a plague was devastating Stetl. Neighboring towns had blockaded the village, with armed men ready to shoot anyone who tried to leave. The villagers feared the pestilence might be the Count’s curse, though the new doctor, Anton Kersh, dismissed vampires as mere myth. Then a traveling circus arrived, calling itself the Circus of Night. It was run by a dwarf named Michael and an alluring Romani woman, who were vague about how they had gotten past the blockade. Grateful for a distraction from their troubles, the villagers asked few questions. No one suspected that one of the performers, Emil, was Count Mitterhaus’s cousin and a vampire, nor that the twin acrobats Heinrich and Helga were also vampires. Emil and the Romani woman went to the castle ruins. In the crypt, they found the Count’s staked body still preserved. They reaffirmed his curse: all who had killed him and all their children must die, though the Romani woman asked, “Must they all die?”
Production
George Baxt has said that Hammer paid him £1,000 just for the title and that was his only contribution. Production began on 9 August 1971 at Pinewood Studios. 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 given to editor Peter Musgrave with instructions to make a finished film out of what he had.
Critical reception
On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an 80% approval rating based on reviews from 5 critics.
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