Vampire Circus
| Vampire Circus | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster
|
|
| Directed by | Robert Young |
| Produced by | Wilbur Stark Michael Carreras |
| Screenplay by | Judson Kinberg |
| Story by | George Baxt Wilbur Stark |
| Starring |
Adrienne Corri Anthony Higgins John Moulder-Brown Lalla Ward Robin Sachs Lynne Frederick |
| Music by | David Whitaker |
| Edited by | Peter Musgrave |
|
Production
company |
|
| Distributed by | Rank Film Distributors Ltd (United Kingdom) 20th Century Fox (United States) |
|
Release date
|
30 April 1972 |
|
Running time
|
87 min. |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
Vampire Circus is a 1972 British horror film, directed by Robert Young. It was written by Judson Kinberg, and produced by Wilbur Stark and Michael Carreras (who was uncredited) for Hammer Film Productions. It stars Adrienne Corri, Thorley Walters and Anthony Higgins (billed as Anthony Corlan). The story concerns a travelling circus whose vampiric artists prey on the children of a 19th-century Serbian village. It was filmed at Pinewood Studios.
One evening near the small Serbian village of Stetl, early in the nineteenth century, schoolmaster Albert Müller witnesses his lovely wife Anna taking a little girl, Jenny Schilt, into the castle of Count Mitterhaus, a reclusive nobleman rumored to be a vampire responsible for the disappearances of other children. The rumors prove true, as Anna, who has become Mitterhaus' willing acolyte and mistress, hands the innocent Jenny over to him to be drained of her blood. Men from the village, led by Müller and including Jenny's father Mr. Schilt and the Burgermeister, invade the castle and attack the Count. After the vampire kills several of them, Müller succeeds in 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 angry villagers then drag Anna outside and force her to run the gauntlet, but when her husband intervenes, she runs back into the castle where the briefly revived Count tells her to find his cousin Emil at "the Circus of Night". After laying out his body in the crypt, she escapes through an underground tunnel as the villagers blow the castle up with gunpowder and set fire to it.
Fifteen years later, Stetl is now being ravaged by a plague and blockaded by the authorities of neighboring towns, with men ready to shoot any villager who tries to leave. The citizens fear that the pestilence may be due to the Count's curse, though the new physician Dr. Kersh scoffs at the notion, dismissing vampires as just a myth. Then a travelling circus calling itself the Circus of Night arrives at the village, led by a dwarf and an alluring gypsy woman who are equivocal about how they got past the blockade. The villagers, appreciative of the distraction from their troubles, do not press the matter. While his courageous son Anton distracts the armed men at the blockade, Dr. Kersh gets past them to appeal for help from the capital. Neither he nor anyone back in the village suspect that one of the circus artists, Emil, is a vampire and Count Mitterhaus's cousin. Emil and the gypsy woman go to the remains of the castle, where in the crypt they find the Count's staked body still preserved, and they reiterate his curse that all who killed him and all their children must die.
...
Wikipedia