Is it?
Tis time to feature something from the ol’ Hammer Films catalogue, indeed.
Something vampire related but also not from their beloved Dracula series.
And i believe this is it, a fairly forgotten entry in their catalogue, Vampire Circus from 1972, directed by Robert Young, whom also worked on Hammer House Of Horrors but wasn’t a mainstay director for Hammer like Terence Fisher or John Gilling, mostly focused on working for TV, and is now mostly remembered for directing most of the highly regarded episodes of Robin Of Sherwood.
The title is actually quite self-explanatory, with the plot concerning a travelling circus – parading itself as the “Circus Of Night” – made up of vampires arriving in the plagued early 19th centhury Serbian village of Stetl, where they prey on the local children..
This is part of a curse put in motion fifteen years ago when the villagers of Stetl, following the rumours of Count Mittelhaus being not simply a reclusive nobleman, but a vampire reclusive nobleman behind the disappearance of the children, decide to storm the castle and confront the count, which is staked but with his dying words he casts a curse on the villagers and their children.
It definitely starts out strong, with the villagers having very little of the vampire shit and lighting up the torches, reading to go full mob in the castle and stake the bastard…. and they do, even blow up the castle with explosive barrels for good measure.
Honestly i was expecting the pacing to be awful since it starts off the way these movies usually ended, but thankfully this is not the case, and the movie is surprisingly decent, the acting is solid, despite the cast lacking pretty much all of the big Hammer Film stars, and the “vampire X circus” idea is fun enough to carry the whole thing.
It’s not perfect, as it summers from most issues these minor entries in the Hammer horror output usually did, like some very cheap gore effects (alongside some cheesy one like the bats and some really outdated visual effects), but there’s also fun stuff like a vampire shapeshifting into a panther to massacre some villagers in the woods and thankfully they know not to linger on some really fake looking severed heads and there are some nice aerial shots for some of the circus’ acrobatic acts.
Still, some of the scenes involving the vampires impaling are clunky (especially if they involve fighting, but this is pretty much to be expected), and you can tell where they basically run out of budget, as there’s a dormitory massacre that completely happens off screen, gotta save some money for the finale, which include a vampire crossbow decapitation, so it kinda evens out.
The more annoying aspect is that the vampire rules are all over the place here, some are respected, some not, some i guess technically are even if not properly explained, and the finale’s implication make little to no sense either way, but who cares, there’s no sequel!
There was a comic book adaptation as “Vampire Carnival” for The House Of Hammer Vol 2 (released in February 1978) and it was novelized in 2012, though.
While definitely not a hidden gem nor a minor classic that undeservedly got forgotten, Vampire Circus is a decent entry in Hammer back catalogue, it’s a minor film of theirs, no mistake about it, but it’s entertaining, it doesn’t drag, and despite its shortcomings, you can also do quite worse, even while seeking out the lesser known horror films from their “golden era”.
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