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from Jim's Real Detroit Column VAMPIRE CIRCUS |
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Francis Ford Copolla made opulently costumed Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992). Neil Jordan turned his sensuous camera on Brad Pitt in Interview with the Vampire (1994). And Joel Schumacher’s The Lost Boys (1987) crossed MTV-style music videos with the bloodsucking fare. But until direct-to-video releasing hit its stride, nobody cranked out  vampire flicks like England’s Hammer Films did in the ’60s and ’70s. Of course everyone remembers the Hammer horrors that teamed Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing as the fanged one and his arch-nemesis Von Helsing. Their first get together, 1958's Horror of Dracula, is not only one of the finest retellings of the original Stoker Dracula; it is also the second in the trio of late ’50s Hammer horror films--the other two being 1957's The Curse of Frankenstein and 1959's The Mummy--that formed the basis for a rebirth of the horror movie by adding technicolor gore and more than a little cleavage to a struggling genre.Most of Hammer’s films featured a look and style far better than their budgets should have allowed, thanks to the talents of such directors and cinematographers as Terence Fisher, Freddie Francis, and Jack Asher. To the delight of their fans, as the years went by, Hammer continued to add more and more sex and violence until reaching the ’70s when it seemed their main product was blood-soaked lesbian vampire films (not necessarily a bad thing). The film that outbled and maybe outbed them all was 1972's Vampire Circus. Vampire Circus opens with a sequence that could almost stand on its own. The wicked Count Mitterhouse has finally sucked on one girl too many and the townspeople of Stettel decide to put an end to the evil one’s fun. In force, they invade the Count’s abode, find him in mid soft-core flagrante delicto, get out the stakes, and at least temporarily put a stop to his bloodlust. The count goes out uttering the curse, “Your children will die to give me back my life.” Years later, the town is cut off from the world, quarantined because of the plague. Somehow, the Circus of  Nights makes it through the roadblocks and sets up shop. The townspeople are delighted to have a diversion from their depressing plight. In case you haven’t guessed, the circus performers are vampires and relatives of Count Mitterhouse bent on resurrecting him. The vampires are all shape shifters and their leader Emil is able to change himself in to a black panther—enabling him to shred rather than bite his victims (seems like it would be lot of work to suck blood out of all those pieces).Vampire Circus stands out from other Hammer horror films mainly because of its darker handling of the gore and violence and because of its near soft-core sex (rather common in contemporary horror films). It also features none of the star players that we’ve come to expect in a Hammer horror film, although several fine British character actors are included. But it is still beautifully filmed (though at times sloppily edited) and has an orchestral score that is both rousing and haunting. Vampire Circus is one of the best Hammer vampire films despite the fact that it was initially a flop. It has since achieved cult status. Its notoriety is not at all harmed by the fact that it has never been released on VHS home video here in the U.S. It was released on an extremely limited, and much sought after, laserdisc by Image Entertainment.
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