People are voting emotionally.

best movie i've ever seen.

Beautiful, moving film.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Some of Hammer's most interesting films were made during their perceived decline and 'Vampire Circus' is one of the defining examples of this. It's also probably the company's bloodiest feature.It also features their longest ever prologue. Set in the Austrian village of Stetl, director Robert Young dresses the sets and location with convincing detail. The curious practice at the time of dubbing voices is rampant here, with seemingly every actor re-dubbed (not always successfully), mostly by the original actor. There was, notoriously, not enough time in the schedule for Young to complete all his scenes – perhaps it was more economical to re-dub everything than re-take certain scenes.That the film is quite disjointed in places works to the general weirdness prevalent in this macabre fairy-tale. It doesn't quite flow as films usually do – especially in one scene. There are some students boarding in rooms upstairs to where the beautiful Dora is staying. They are only mentioned in passing and we never see them. We see the vampires converging at the house, witness some impressively subtle human-to-animal transformations but see nothing more. The attack on these unseen students occurs off-camera. The sound-effects Dora reacts to make the scenes border on parody. But that is the only obvious casualty of the impossibly tight schedule.I wonder if Young had been allowed to film those last scenes, could the results really have been any better? 'Vampire Circus' is a sumptuous, occasionally ethereal weird bloodbath. The cast are faultless (only the dubbing threatens to spoil things), with the evil circus people emerging as more interesting than our heroes. Emil is played brilliantly by Anthony Higgins/Corlan – smiling and stroking the face of Albert (Laurence Payne) as they throttle each other; Lalla Ward and Robin Sachs as the two dancers, are twins both seductive and deadly (dare I suggest Rollin-esque?) and fresh-faced, young and sweet Lynne Frederick makes the most of innocent Dora; Robert Tayman is Count Mitterhaus and does very well considering he is definitely dubbed by a different actor and has to wrestle with some very outsized fangs. James Whittaker's rich, layered score is among the most haunting Hammer ever featured. Sumptuous and atmospheric, this confident film belies the company's fortunes at the time of release.

Poorly paced and edited horror film lacks any genuine terror or suspense though it's suitably atmospheric and downbeat with erotic overtones, including some nudity which may have been cut from the PG version. There's not too much originality on display, and the film doesn't live up to the expectations set in the rather lengthy pre-title sequence. The direction and most of the performances are seldom more than barely adequate, and the vampire fangs which might do for a Halloween costume are distractingly fake and cheap looking. The characters are not compelling though John Moulder Brown of The House that Screamed and Deep End and Lynn Frederick display youthful charm as the ostensible hero and his fair lady. However, all of the the characters take so long to figure out the obvious that they test both patience and credulity. With so many variations on the vampire legend around it's hard to recommend Vampire Circus; it's occasionally diverting, but ultimately weak and not worthwhile.

This is part of Hammer Films later output, when they finally figured out they could put nudity in their movies instead of just implied sexuality What you have is sort of a confused mess of a story where a bunch of villagers kill off their Vampire Count, who swears revenge before they blow up his castle. His human mistress goes off to find his cousin, and for some reason, she gave birth to two vampire twins who are fully grown 15 years later. (One of them played by Doctor Who's Lalla Ward.) So apparently, these villagers don't think anything is strange about a circus showing up and people mysteriously disappearing or dying in their midst.So some nudity, some gore, some nice Hammer stylistic visuals, but lacking the gravitas that Cushing and Christopher Lee usually brought to these things.

A village in Nineteenth Century Europe is at first relieved when a circus breaks through the quarantine to take the locals' minds off the plague... but only at first.The concept here is pretty clever. We have people who fear the plague, but let a circus in to entertain (which seems unwise, but you can understand the desire for fun). And then, the circus provides a completely different kind of plague.The story might have been more fun if we (the audience) did not know that the circus was trouble right from the beginning, and had to wait for the mystery to be solved. Instead, we have to wait to find out how it can be stopped -- if it can be stopped at all. They pretty much gave the circus away right in the title.