Review: Vampire Circus (1972)

Vampire Circus (1972)

Rated PG

Score: 3 out of 5

One of the last good films made by Hammer Film Productions during the famed British horror studio's latter period, Vampire Circus delivers exactly what it promises: a creepy circus run by vampires. It makes smart use of its premise, it has an engaging and alluring villain, and it has exactly the mix of bloodshed, sex appeal, and period glamour that make Hammer films at their best feel dangerous and classy, at least to me. Is the supporting cast a mixed bag? Are there way too many unfortunate stereotypes of Romani people in how the circus is portrayed? Yes and yes. But when the finished product works as well as it does, I can push all that to the side and enjoy what is still an entertaining vampire flick.

The film takes place in the Eastern European village of Stetl in a vaguely 19th century time period where, fifteen years ago, the locals, led by the schoolmaster Müller, murdered the nobleman Count Mitterhaus after learning that he was a vampire responsible for the disappearance and death of numerous local children. Before he died, he cursed the town, telling them that their children will die to bring him back to life. Meanwhile, his mistress Anna, Müller's wife and a willing servant of the Count, escapes into the night to meet up with the Count's cousin Emil, who runs a circus. Now, a plague is laying waste to Stetl, which has caused the local authorities to block all the roads out of it. Somehow, the traveling Circus of Nights got through the blockade to come to the town; the locals aren't too inquisitive about how they made it through, not when they're eager to just take their minds off of things. The circus has all manner of sights to show them, and what's more, the beautiful woman who serves as its ringmaster looks strikingly familiar.

This isn't really a movie that offers a lot of surprises. Even though she's played by a different (if similar-looking) actress, the movie otherwise makes it obvious that the ringmaster is in fact an older version of Anna even before the big reveal. I didn't really care, not when Adrienne Corri was easily one of the best things about this movie, making Anna the kind of (pardon the pun) vampish presence that it needed to complete its old-fashioned gothic atmosphere. She made me buy the villains as a dangerous force but also as a group of people and vampires who would seduce the townsfolk into ignoring their crimes, enough to more than make up for Anthony Higgins playing Emil, her partner in crime and the main vampire menace for much of the film, far too over-the-top for me to take seriously. The circus itself also made creative use of how the various powers attributed to vampires in folklore and fiction, from animal transformations to superior strength and senses, might be used to put on a flashy production of the sort where those watching might think that what they're seeing is all part of the show. And when push came to shove in the third act, we got treated to the circus' strongman breaking down the doors of people's homes, the dwarf sneaking around as a stealthy predator, and the twin acrobats (played by a young Robin Sachs and Lalla Ward) becoming the most dangerous fighters among the villains. It exploited its premise about as well as you'd expect from a low-budget film from the '70s, which was more than enough to keep me engaged.

Beyond the circus, however, the townsfolk generally weren't the most interesting characters. Only Müller had much depth to him, concerning his relationship with his lost wife Anna that grows increasingly fraught once he realizes who the ringmaster really is. With the rest of the cast, I was waiting for them all to get killed off by the vampires, as none of them left much of an impression otherwise. It was the circus that mostly propped up the movie. I also can't say I was particularly comfortable with the old-timey stereotypes that this film relied on in its depiction of the Roma. Notice how I'm calling Anna the "ringmaster" throughout this review. The film itself never uses that word, but instead uses a rather less polite anti-Romani slur to describe her, and it only gets worse from there, with the villagers using that word to describe the circus as "vermin" who need to be exterminated. This is why I've never been a fan of modern vampire fiction that, in trying to portray its vampires sympathetically, invokes the real-life history of persecution of marginalized groups (True Blood being one of the more famous examples). Given the history of both vampire legends and bigotry, especially that of real-life blood libels, pogroms, and hate crimes, it is a subject that can easily veer into suggesting that certain groups really are preying on people in unholy ways, especially when you bring children into the equation as this film does. Yes, Anna originally came from Stetl and isn't actually Romani, and for that matter, neither is the Count. But it's a subtext that this film, by invoking those parallels with a decidedly villainous portrayal of vampires, lays bare, and it had me feeling queasy at points in ways I'm sure the film didn't intend.

The Bottom Line

It's a movie that's very "of its time" in a lot of ways, and has problems fleshing out its supporting cast. Fortunately, it's buoyed by some great villains and that trademark Hammer horror mix of sex appeal and gothic flair. It's easily one of the better films to come out of their late period.