| Vampire Circus | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Robert Young |
| Produced by | Wilbur Stark |
| Written by | Judson Kinberg |
| Starring | Adrienne Corri Anthony Higgins John Moulder-Brown Lalla Ward Robin Sachs Lynne Frederick |
| Music by | David Whitaker |
| Cinematography | Moray Grant |
| Editing by | Peter Musgrave |
| Distributed by | J. Arthur Rank |
| Release date(s) | 30 April 1972 |
| Running time | 87 min. |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
Vampire Circus is a 1972 British horror film directed by Robert Young for Hammer Film Productions. It stars Adrienne Corri, Thorley Walters and Anthony Higgins (billed as Anthony Corlan). The story concerns a travelling carnival whose vampiric artistes prey on the children of a 19th-century Austrian village. It was filmed at Pinewood Studios.
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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 villagers, 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 artists, 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 on his cousin and all their children must die.
During a visit to the circus, the mayor has a vision of a revived Count Mitterhaus and collapses. Frightened by this event, one villager and his family try to flee the blocked town but are devoured by the circus panther. Müller's daughter Dora discovers of the dismembered bodies of the family, arousing suspicions about the animals of the circus. When the dead bodies of two village boys are found, the mayor and another man begin to shoot the circus animals. After an encounter with Emil, the mayor dies of heart failure, while his daughter runs off with Emil, who bites and kills the girl.
Dora and Anton encounter twin vampires, but the cross Dora is wearing saves her. Later, the vampires enter the school house; Emil, in panther form, kills the students, while the gypsy (now revealed as the twins' mother by Mitterhaus) tears the cross from Dora's neck, enabling the twins to attack her. Dora, however, escapes into the school chapel, where the twin vampires are destroyed. Meanwhile, Anton's father, Dr. Kersch, who has escaped the blockade, returns from the capital with an imperial escort and medicines for the plague. He also brings news of vampire killings in various other villages, all of them toured by the Circus of Night. The men attack the circus and set fire to it.
In the crypt at Castle Mitterhaus, the gypsy woman is killed when she attempts to save Dora from Emil. As she falls down dead, the gypsy's face is transformed, revealing her to be Anna Müller. Anton, Müller, and the soldiers attack the crypt, and Müller pierces Emil with the stake from the Count's chest before he himself dies. The Count rises from his sarcophagus and is destroyed by Anton. As Anton and Dora exit the tomb, the villagers set the ruins alight with torches, ending the curse.
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. The film also heralded the screen debut of Lynne Frederick, who would later marry comic Peter Sellers. David Prowse, who later played Darth Vader in the first Star Wars trilogy, appears in a silent role as the circus strongman.
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