Circus of Horrors

Circus of Horrors
Theatrical poster to Circus of Horrors (1960)
Directed by	Sidney Hayers
Produced by	Leslie Parkyn Julian Wintle executive Nat Cohen Stuart Levy
Written by	George Baxt
Starring	Anton Diffring Erika Remberg Yvonne Monlaur Donald Pleasence Jane Hylton Jack Gwillim
Music by	Franz Reizenstein Muir Mathieson
Cinematography	Douglas Slocombe
Edited by	Reginald Mills
Production company	Lynx Films Limited
Distributed by	Anglo-Amalgamated (UK) American International Pictures (US)
Release date	April 1960 UK
Running time	87 min.
Country	UK

Circus of Horrors is a 1960 British horror film directed by Sidney Hayers. It stars Anton Diffring, Yvonne Monlaur, Erika Remberg, Kenneth Griffith, Jane Hylton, Conrad Phillips, Yvonne Romain and Donald Pleasence.

Film critic David Pirie considered it to be the third entry in Anglo-Amalgamated's "Sadian trilogy" in his book A Heritage of Horror (1971), because the films focus on sadism, cruelty and violence (with sexual undertones) as opposed to the supernatural horror of the Hammer films in the same era. The previous films in the trilogy were Horrors of the Black Museum and Peeping Tom, both in 1959. It was released in the United States by American International Pictures as a double feature with The Angry Red Planet.

In 1940s England, Dr. Rossiter (Anton Diffring) is a plastic surgeon wanted by the police after an operation goes hideously wrong. However, believing himself to have brilliant abilities as a surgeon, he and his assistants (Kenneth Griffith and Jane Hylton) evade capture and escape to the Continent. There Rossiter changes his name to Schüler, and befriends a circus owner (Donald Pleasence) on whose deformed daughter Nicole (played by Carla Challoner as a child, Yvonne Monlaur as an adult) he operates.