Rumour has it that filming was shut down on Vampire Circus with several important sequences still to be shot. The director had gone over schedule and Hammer simply assembled the film from what footage had already been taken. And to be frank, it shows.
The film is full of illogical ideas. A plague which turns out to be rabies carried by bats can be cured by "Medicine" from the capital, although the film never shows bats attacking people, and the villages occasionally are to be seen with bubonic-style pustules over their faces. A small plot point but the film is full of such silliness.
The main story concerns the revenge of Count Mitterhouse upon said village - he's a vampire staked 15 years earlier in a prologue which allows for nudity, gore, and sadism (the vampire's willing female accomplice is whipped and birched.)
Enter the circus, mysteriously dodging road blocks set up by the surrounding villages to keep the plague contained, which turns out to be full of vampires who use their powers to put on a circus act! These scenes are nicely staged but quickly become repetitive as the villages seem to go there every single night, despite mysterious deaths galore and the plague spreading panic.
I could point out many other inconsistencies in the plot but I'm trying to keep it short. Unaccountably this film has gained a decent reputation over the years, but in all honesty it's not very good, and not a patch on earlier Hammers such as Dracula, Plague of The Zombies and Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed.
Historical note: this was the last of Hammer's period vampire movies to be shot.
The film is full of illogical ideas. A plague which turns out to be rabies carried by bats can be cured by "Medicine" from the capital, although the film never shows bats attacking people, and the villages occasionally are to be seen with bubonic-style pustules over their faces. A small plot point but the film is full of such silliness.
The main story concerns the revenge of Count Mitterhouse upon said village - he's a vampire staked 15 years earlier in a prologue which allows for nudity, gore, and sadism (the vampire's willing female accomplice is whipped and birched.)
Enter the circus, mysteriously dodging road blocks set up by the surrounding villages to keep the plague contained, which turns out to be full of vampires who use their powers to put on a circus act! These scenes are nicely staged but quickly become repetitive as the villages seem to go there every single night, despite mysterious deaths galore and the plague spreading panic.
I could point out many other inconsistencies in the plot but I'm trying to keep it short. Unaccountably this film has gained a decent reputation over the years, but in all honesty it's not very good, and not a patch on earlier Hammers such as Dracula, Plague of The Zombies and Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed.
Historical note: this was the last of Hammer's period vampire movies to be shot.