Made back in an era when films were lurid rather than really grim and gross (the sort of stuff to which Grindhouse will be homaging), Circus of Horrors is pulpiest of the small handful of mayhem in the circus movies. The weirdest is Ring of Fear, in which author Mickey Spillaine, playing himself, investigated murders at the real life Clyde Beatty’s circus. The campiest, meanwhile, is the psycho-killer driven Berserk!, a typically insane entry from the later-period Joan Crawford. Sadly, this isn’t out on DVD yet, but with Trog coming out soon, who knows?
Circus of Horrors has your standard issue mad medico whose super-advanced experiments gone awry can’t be allowed to halt his work. As played by the cosmopolitan but snidely superior Anton Diffring, his Germanic accent employed to full effect, the film’s Dr. Rossiter reminds one mostly of the venal, equally persistent Herb Evers from The Brain that Wouldn’t Die.
This film isn’t quite as baroque as that classic, but it gives it the old college try. When a patient in old Blighty gets, well, impatient, she removes the bandages on her facial reconstruction—that’s right, Rossiter is a Mad Plastic Surgeon—and ends up with gloopy wax face.
Since the operation wasn’t Sanctioned by those Fools at the Medical Board, Rossiter is forced to flee to the Continent, pausing only to run over a bobby and pick up his reluctant henchpeople, siblings Angela and Martin. Angela is the one in love with Rossiter, and constantly scorned, so you know she’ll turn on him before the curtain comes down.
In France, the face-changed (i.e., make-up job removed) Rossiter has redubbed himself Dr. Schuler, before coming across Nicole, the disfigured young daughter of a poverty-stricken circus owner. (Apparently this starts back right after the war, since Nicole was disfigured by a bomb blast.) The latter is played by a young Donald Pleasance, whose low listing in the credits doesn’t bode well for his extended presence.
Sure enough, Shuler fixes Nicole’s face, but allows Pleasance to die at the paws of the circus’ rather puny dancing bear. Fortuitously, he had just coincidentally moments before gotten Pleasance to sign the papers that made him a partner, and now the owner, of the circus.
Most of the action takes place ten years following this. Shuler’s MO is pretty hilarious. He recruits scarred criminals and psychopaths, fixes them up with new faces, and mans the circus with them. Apparently there is no skill, including trapeze work and lion taming, that isn’t a matter of a bit of practice. Shuler also keeps a dossier on everyone to ensure their continued compliance.
He is also, however, an epic skirt-chaser and (naturally) control freak. So whenever one of his lovers decides to leave the show, he has them killed in a tragic circus ‘accident.’ Because of this, the show is widely called the Jinx Circus, which might explain why it draws the huge crowds it does. Although Shuler keeps getting away with this long string of highly publicized deaths, it does bring constant police attention to the Circus, which you’d think he’d want to avoid.
Moreover, none of his other lovers and prospective victims ever seems particularly concerned at the obvious foul play that has befallen their sisters whenever one of them decides to leave. Instead, they just do the same thing and meet the same fate.
Most of the women are killed during their acts. One example threatens Shuler, finds a deadly snake in her trailer, somehow survives, warns Shuler that she’s going to the cops RIGHT AFTER HER DANGEROUS AEROLIST ACT, and meets a predictable (except to her, apparently) fate. And remember, this was after about a dozen previous murders.
The midsection of the film can be a bit pokey. One reason you set a movie at a circus is so that you can eat up running time showing circus acts. This flick is no different. However, things really pick up for the last fifteen or twenty minutes, when the film goes nuts with a flood of killings, betrayals, disfigurements, animal attacks and so on.
They really pulled out the stops, that’s for sure, and there’s everything but someone getting their head stoved in with a kitchen sink.
Light on sleaze (by today’s standards, anyway) but heavy on the cheese. Umm, tasty.
