Dr. Rossiter will give you something to scream about!  Sidney Hayers’ Big Top terror flick is luridly oversexed, excessively gruesome — and great fun. Mad plastic surgeon Anton Diffring creates his own harem of facially-restored women who also happen to be criminals. Circus acts provide the ‘accidents’ to remove any that become a liability. It’s a garish display of good filmmaking, crazy thrills and questionable taste … and a non-guilty pleasure we’re proud to praise. Now more wickedly delightful in 4K Ultra HD.

Circus of Horrors 4K
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray
KL Studio Classics
1960 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 92 min. / Street Date November 11, 2024 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Anton Diffring, Jane Hylton, Kenneth Griffith, Erika Remberg, Conrad Phillips, Yvonne Monlaur, Donald Pleasence, Colette Wilde, Vanda Hudson, Yvonne Romain, John Merivale, Carla Challoner.
Cinematography: Douglas Slocombe
Film Editor: Reginald Mills
Makeup: Trevor Crole-Rees
Art Direction: Jack Shampan
Original Music: Muir Mathieson, Franz Reizenstein
Written by George Baxt
Produced by Leslie Parkyn, Julian Wintle
Directed by Sidney Hayers

Five years have passed since the release of a very good Blu-ray of this colorful chiller …. and now it’s in 4K Ultra HD. CineSavant compares the two discs, below.

Death-defying acts were always a major part of the appeal of carnivals and circuses, which is one reason why the circus movie genre lends itself so well to horror. Our favorite scary circus movie — our favorite circus movie period — is the stylishly garish exploitation item Circus of Horrors. The English production pushed the Hammer Films philosophy of sex and blood to the extreme of what mainstream movies would accept. Did the ‘wholesome’ circus background put the censors to sleep?  The sadism is right out in the open, in a story fixated on mutilation, murder, sex and death. Behind the high wire performers and dangerous circus beasts is a lunatic tale of mad surgery.

The well-crafted Circus of Horrors places its medical trangressions in the capable hands of actor Anton Diffring, who had recently excelled in  another mad doctor role. In this case, his deranged surgeon is inflamed by hubris and an unbridled sex drive. The show transcends its own exploitative nature by simply being upfront with its curious and (for 1960) ‘sick’ ideas.

It’s Guignol, y’all.

No slow opening for Circus of Horrors — it begins in action and races from one sensation to the next. After botching a plastic surgery experiment on socialite Evelyn Morley Finsbury (Colette Wilde), the arrogant Dr. Rossiter (Anton Diffring) kills a policeman and crashes his car. That necessitates some ad hoc repair work on his own face, peformed by his ever-loyal assistants/lackies Angela (Jane Hylton) and Martin (Kenneth Griffth).

Hiding in France under a new identity as Dr. Bernard Schüler, Rossiter inveigles himself into the good graces of Monsieur Vanet (Donald Pleasence), the owner of a small circus,  →  by repairing the face of Vanet’s daughter Nicole (Carla Challoner). When a performing bear attacks Vanet, Schüler doesn’t intervene. Appropriating the circus, he populates it with beautiful women, ex-prostitutes and criminals whose faces he has restored with his brilliant reconstructive techniques — and who can be blackmailed. When these performers rebel or attempt to shake Schüler’s possessive grip, he arranges for them to meet with ghastly ‘accidents’ in full view of horrified crowds.

The ‘Jinx Circus’ rakes in the cash. Schüler talks about clearing his name, but instead fixates on sexually dominating his ex-patients/circus stars. Horsewoman Magda von Meck (Vanda Hudson) wishes to quite performing and get away from Schüler’s sexual advances. Aerialist Elissa Caro (Erika Remberg) pressures Schüler for top billing. She becomes furious when Schüler’s attention turns to a new potential beauty, the acid-scarred Melina (Yvonne Romain). When the circus tours England Schüler finds himself back where people still remember the notorious name Rossiter. The grown-up Nicole (now Yvonne Monlaur) is unaware of her ‘uncle’s’ villainy and is preparing to join the act as well.

How can something so luridly trashy, be so compelling?

Circus of Horrors’ shocks are held together by plot contrivances with just enough credibility to motivate the mayhem. It’s Grand Guignol all the way, led by a conscienceless fiend convinced that his talent with a scalpel gives him ownership of his patients. His dedicated enablers Angela and Martin are trapped in his web as well. Surgeon-trainee Martin has graduated to committing murders for his mentor. Angela loves Rossiter/Schüler, and suffers each time she discovers him making love to another new ‘discovery.’ Angela and Martin are still despicable villains: they rebel only when personally threatened.

The sleazy goings-on become backstage drama for a gaudy big-top drama with dangerous acts and glorious showgirls. The horror unspools in the brightest of settings, before a delighted audience. Instead of avoiding its own own subject matter, Circus of Horrors embraces the perverse thrill of destroying beautiful, desirable women. Elissa Caro spins fifty feet in the air, dangling from a rope that we know has been sabotaged. The horrible suspense plays out under the movie’s ironically romantic theme song, ‘Look for a Star.’

The film’s emphasis is split between horror and sex. Schüler’s circus has a tableaux vivant ‘parade of beauty’ sideshow, where patrons view women in themed costumes, standing still like statues. It’s a nod to Victorian attractions in which nude women posed in imitations of famous paintings, ‘art’ exhibitions exempt from the usual legal taboos. Alternate unclothed scenes were filmed for a still- elusive ‘Continental’ version of Circus of Horrors. Frame grabs have appeared online, but not the ‘adult’ version itself.

Female flesh is Dr. Schüler’s artistic medium and his playground, and he pursues his surgical art to satisfy his libido. Schüler’s dressing-room advances toward Magda von Meck would seem inappropriate for the kiddie-matinee audiences that saw the film in 1960. Parents didn’t realize what their kids were seeing, when they dropped them off for shows like  Horrors of the Black Museum.

In England Circus was rated “X,” but America’s censors must have been caught napping, as seen by the skimpy costuming for the abundant Vanda Hudson and the horror star Yvonne Romain (The Curse of the Werewolf,  Corridors of Blood,  Captain Clegg,  Devil Doll,  The Last of Sheila).

The most intense of the film’s actresses is Erika Remberg, whose aerialist Elissa Caro makes the mistake of demanding control of her own billing. The second-billed Remberg has a hungry, impatient look. She eventually moved on to adult films, such as Radley Metzger’s The Lickerish Quartet. The IMDB calls out three marriages for Remberg, to director Sidney Hayers and actors  Walter Reyer and  Gustavo Rojo.

←  Remaining virginal throughout the story, Yvonne Monlaur’s Nicole is the only plastic surgery patient not directly targeted by Rossiter’s lust. Under the logic of male sex fantasies, virginity makes her a candidate for survival. Ms. Monlaur was briefly a star in prime Hammer horror —  Terror of the Tongs and  The Brides of Dracula.

Circus of Horrors introduces four out of five actresses through gruesome close-ups of their facial scars. Nicole’s is an innocent war injury, but with the other three performers it’s assumed that Rossiter found them as criminals or prostitutes. The mutilations ‘cured’ by Rossiter are given a J.G. Ballard fetish treatment. Erika Remberg’s alarming makeup makes her terrible scar look like an erotic ornament. One must look back to silent Tod Browning movies to find sadism as direct as this.

By virtue of his life-changing talent, Schüler claims rights over his patients’ sexual lives. He’s a Harvey Weinstein of the Big Top, a megalomaniac in love with his own power. As interpreted by the icy, oily Anton Diffring, Rossiter/Schüler becomes an iconic Continental seducer-bogeyman, more cartoonish than mysterious. With our expectations fulfilled by the brutal killings, we’re more than primed for Rossiter’s comeuppance. It arrives in several satisfying stages, so we get to witness the sadism coming and going, so to speak.

Nobody would ever murder somebody THAT way. Well, Duh.

Briskly paced and smartly directed, Circus of Horrors makes an asset of plot hooey that would slay many another thriller. A notorious public enemy chooses a very public circus in which to hide out. He then finds several mutilated-yet-gorgeous, blackmail-able women, all of whom easily develop ace circus skills. The actions of Rossiter’s murderous sidekicks are simply crazy. Angela’s misplaced love for Schüler makes okay dramatic sense, but Martin’s willingness to commit so many capital crimes is explained only by the defeated, miserable look on his face.

These cops are the craziest cops ever in a horror picture. Given the toxic reputation of Schüler’s circus, the authorities would withhold permits until they were satisfied about things like, oh, the actual identity of the owner and his star performers. Scotland Yard instead sends a Don Juan investigator (Conrad Phillips) to obtain information by seducing a performer. The show sidesteps these weirdnesses simply by not giving us time to think about them.

And those crazy circus animals … Rossiter keeps a man-in-suit simian around for little purpose but to cause havoc in one of the film’s multiple mayhem climaxes. Upon viewing Circus of Horrors, a friend suggested that maybe the murderous Bosco the Bear needed to hide out from the cops too, so Schüler used his surgical skill to transform him into the ape-monster in the cage!

Circus is so busy, it drops a couple of interesting story points. A tell-tale scarab ring could have been better established, to cue Lady Morley-Finsbury’s traumatic memories. And Elissa Caro seems to have an admirer in an unnamed, un-credited circus clown, whose makeup resembles that of Emmett Kelly.  ↖  The clown is given several close-ups, but we don’t realize that he’s the crying-on-the-inside type until the director gives him a moment of special mourning. Was an extra bit of Elissa-Clown sidebar content lost in the rush to give the film a breakneck pace?

It’s long been noted that ‘Bernard Schüler’s’ initials allowed the use of Billy Smart’s circus without repainting the ‘BS’ logos seen everywhere. Great color lensing by Douglas Slocombe (The Fearless Vampire Killers) mixes the backstage action with circus acts both staged and real. Every shot is simply beautiful.

Sidney Hayers isn’t celebrated as a maker of fine horror, despite having directed the superior  Night of the Eagle ( Burn, Witch, Burn!). Hayers had previously cut the acclaimed  Tiger Bay and  A Night to Remember. The excellent cutting here sells the illusion that Yvonne Romain is attacked by a cageful of lions, and maximizes the brutality of the knife-throwing incident. The impact of a body falling from a great height is also perfectly edited — Georges Franju may have seen this show before filming his  Judex.

Her function is to be slaughtered, plain and simple.

The film’s most striking scene is a gory set piece loaded with voyeuristic bloodlust. Affixed to a canted turntable and wearing only a skimpy costume of flowers, Magda von Meck is a spinning target of flesh for a knife artiste. When Rossiter fidgets on the sidelines, Angela realizes that her brother Martin is below futzing with the turntable mechanism, to throw off the knife-thrower’s timing. We know exactly what’s coming: Magda’s overexposed vulnerability is the essence of women in exploitative horror. The violent finish is a shock, even though we’d have felt cheated had she escaped. Don’t fool yourself — movie-watching is a guilty business.

The KL Studio Classics 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray of Circus of Horrors is an unexpected treat. The existing Blu-ray release came from an excellent 4K remaster, which Kino acknowledges is the same source for this 4K disc. It’s an purchase for completists and collectors who have, or hope to have, high-end home theater equipment that can take advantage of the superior 4K encoding. Cameraman Douglas Slocombe’s dazzling hues pop in every scene. It’s a candy-colored horror movie.

The film’s music is a big plus. The generic circus theme behind the main titles seems to be laughing at us, and the very 1960 pop song  ‘Look for a Star’  provides a perverse counterpoint to the horror. Its lyrics chirp about love, idealism and security when we’re anticipating yet another gruesome killing. It was a radio hit, with English and American versions that sound almost identical.

Comparing the BD and the UHD, we can see differences that may or may not be important to collectors. The source is the same, so the content is identical. The 4K’s better color definition only comes out when one looks closely … the colors don’t seem quite so saturated, but they feel more accurate. The added resolution finds natural grain and renders ‘atmosphere’ better, as with the early morning look when the fugitive surgeon meets young Nicole Vanet.

None of these differences are obvious, or enough to say, Gee, we all need to switch up. Of course the film is recommended, but owners on a budget that already possess the Blu-ray will probably not miss much.

Why isn’t anyone interested in drowning Circus of Horrors in extras?  It would seem a natural for the league of commentators eager to reinterpret transgressive horror through the filter of modern gender studies. (We all want to learn more about our sick psychology.) The earlier disc had no extras, so we should be grateful that Kino has commissioned a full audio commentary. David Del Valle does this one solo, wandering between topics but covering a lot of informational territory. Most of his facts and observations are illuminating.

Del Valle offers one very welcome bit of info. He interviewed actor Anton Diffring, who told him that he based his performance of Dr. Rossiter on the screen persona of the German actor Conrad Veidt. We immediately think, ‘of course’ — Veidt often crossed the line between outright menace and leading-man appeal. It’s something that Anton Diffring would surely have liked to do as well. Rossiter / Schüler is a dastardly SOB, but he’s also very good looking, a shoo-in as a haughty ladies’ man.

Is this maddest of mad surgeons Anton Diffring’s best film role?  In big pictures he was most often cast as an aristocratic German officer. Diffring’s Sinister Dr. Schüler is so irredeemably, deliciously BAD, he’s almost sympathetic. Can’t a twisted maniac pursue his life’s dream in peace?

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Circus of Horrors 4K
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
Audio commentary by David Del Valle
Trailer and TV spot.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: October 30, 2024
(7219circ)

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