VAMPIRE CIRCUS (1972)
Hammer’s circus horror brimming with shape-shifting vampires, surreal imagery, feverish eroticism and gore.
Hammer’s late period of the 1970s was a fertile one. The venerable old guard of producer Anthony Hinds, directors Freddie Francis and Terence Fisher had made way for younger directing bloods, seasoned writers from television, and independent producers who brought with them new ideas. These included the Fantale producing team of Michael Style and Harry Fine, who reflected the European eroticism of Jean Rollin with The ‘Karnstein Trilogy’ of The Vampire Lovers (1970), Twins of Evil (1971) and Lust for a Vampire (1971); the prolific writer and producer Brian Clemens, who brought a stylish wit and sense of adventure to his work with the studio in Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971) and Captain Kronos — Vampire Hunter (1974); and directors like Peter Sasdy who injected a Freudian sub- text into Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970), Countess Dracula (1971) and Hands of the Ripper (1971).
It was a very productive period in which Hammer boldly tried to reinvent itself, producing a series of striking films that, with competition from other studios and hampered by low budgets and poor distribution, just didn’t find a big enough audience at the time. Significantly, that audience and market had also undergone a dramatic change and the Gothic was superseded by the American new wave of horror, including Rosemary’s Baby (1968), Night of the Living Dead (1968), The Exorcist (1974) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). Hammer had to adapt or die but, alas, the British film industry was withering and the support from major Hollywood studios was already being withdrawn.
“pretty extreme gore… as well as quite a lot of sex”
Vampire Circus (1972) is charged with eroticism and gore, more so than some of Hammer’s similar output of the time. It refreshes Hammer’s take on vampire mythology by fusing it with the sub-genre of the circus or carnival thriller, following in the tradition of Freaks (1932) and Circus of Horrors (1960). The original treatment for Vampire Circus came from producer Wilbur Stark (father of Koo) and American writer George Baxt. Baxt, coincidentally, was also the screenwriter for Circus of Horrors (the concluding film of Anglo-Amalgamated’s notorious ‘Sadeian trilogy’ that also included 1959's Horrors of the Black Museum and Michael Powell’s psychological horror Peeping Tom in 1960). He also had previous form with Hammer, having made some uncredited contributions to Hammer’s The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958) and written John Gilling’s Shadow of the Cat (1960).
After returning to New York, Brooklyn-born Baxt had become a successful novelist when Stark, a former television producer who moved into independently producing feature films and was working in London, collaborated with him on a story pitch titled The Vampire Circus. Having known exec Michael Carreras for a number of years, Stark “needed the money” when he pitched it to Hammer. Carreras saw some potential in the treatment and purchased The Vampire Circus in March 1971. (1) Baxt’s 24-page development of the treatment then expanded this tale about the Circus of Nights and the village of Schtettel, its children cursed by the dying words of vampire Count Mitterhaus (a Baron in the original treatment) 15 years previously. This treatment featured elements of “pretty extreme gore… as well as quite a lot of sex.” (2).
While Michael welcomed overtures from independent producers, his father James Carreras was apparently very unhappy with The Vampire Circus treatment, firing off a memo to Michael in May 1971, deeming it “very, very bloody” and unlikely to please the more censorious US market that had taken the scissors to a number of scenes featuring nudity and gore in Hammer’s recent productions. (3) James was eventually proved right. The finished film ended up rated R for American audiences, even after three minutes of material had been chopped out. However, Michael was determined to continue and, resolutely keen on the idea, commissioned American screenwriter Judson Kinberg, a decorated former war hero who had next to no experience of horror films, to write the script.
Kinberg’s script would also eventually incorporate vestiges of an original story about twin vampires that Stark and writer John Peacock had previously worked on. Peacock had come into Hammer’s orbit when it wanted him to adapt his play Children of the Wolf, a psychological horror about two 21-year-old twins who had been given up for adoption shortly after birth, which had recently enjoyed a West End run. The film version was due to be directed by Seth Holt but the project never came to fruition after Holt’s untimely death in February 1971. The play’s West End run also brought actor and its ‘Best Newcomer’ nominee Shane Briant to the Hammer family. He starred in Peacock’s script for Straight On Till Morning (1972) and, under contract, was a prominent player in Demons of the Mind (1972) and Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell (1974). Peacock also completed the first draft of To The Devil — A Daughter (1976), and took over as story editor on Hammer’s TV anthology series Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense in 1984.
Kinberg did, however, have an impressive track record from working on several films in Hollywood, as producer John Houseman’s apprentice on Julius Caesar (1953), Executive Suite (1954) and Lust for Life (1956). Moving to England, he was producer and screenwriter on Columbia’s British output, including Reach for Glory (1962) and a brace of adventure pictures Siege of the Saxons (1963) and East of Sudan (1964) before producing two John Fowles adaptations, The Collector (1965) and The Magus (1968). Kinberg “loved the idea that if you were doing a circus horror picture, you were free of all the restraints in terms of what you could and could not do. I mean that in terms of cinematic effect… you were dealing with pure cinema.” (4)
“an ambience of sickness, fear and death”
Michael Carreras’ script associate was former Serbian actress Nadja Regin (with an uncredited Hammer appearance, two Bond films and numerous British television credits to her name, she and her sister later successfully went into publishing together), who had ditched her acting career to become a script reader at Rank and Hammer. On 16 June 1971, she considered an early draft of Kinberg’s script and supported Michael’s assertion, to an extent, in her comprehensive script notes. However, she found the opening scene of a young girl, Jenny, being seduced by Count Mitterhaus disturbing and much of the script repetitive, unbalanced and populated with under-developed characters. She made lengthy suggestions, mainly unheeded by Carreras, as to how to develop the characters and build more suspense into the scenes, and also questioned why, in a Serbian village, all the occupants had German names. (5)
It appears that at least two versions — referred to in memos as ‘red script’ and ‘blue script’ — were doing the rounds in July 1971. On 25 July, Regin made further observations of the revised script and, while she felt that “Vampire Circus introduces an element of beauty, colour, magic and excitement into an ambience of sickness, fear and death”, she believed more emphasis on the film’s fairy tale elements should be sought to offset her increasing concerns about the story’s “pathological obsession with children victims”. She found the still problematic opening sequence, with its combination of murder and sex as Mitterhaus makes love with his acolyte Anna after she provides a young girl for him to kill and feed on, “strongly reminiscent of the Moors murders.”(6) These observations anticipated the fine line the film took with its themes of corrupted innocence, explicit eroticism and horror, the kind of material that Michael’s father was concerned about. In one version of the shooting script, Constantine Nasr reported that Kinberg, apparently mindful of what the censors would allow Hammer to include in the film, added quite specific stage directions regarding camera placement for the scene between Mitterhaus and Anna. (7)
Finally, several memos went back and forth between father and son at the end of July 1971. Responding to the ‘red script’ of Vampire Circus and remaining mindful about ongoing tussles with the BBFC over violence, gore and nudity, James Carreras made it clear that if the script was shot as it stood then “50% will end up on the cutting room floor” and, as a result, would incur further unnecessary expense. He wistfully asked Michael, “what’s happened to the great vampire/Dracula subjects we used to make without all this unnecessary gore and sick-making material?” Keen to take the company in new directions, Michael responded to his father, “what we are trying to do with Vampire Circus is to present something different, but within the safe formula. Not an easy task, but worth trying.” He also reminded his father that Hammer’s policy towards censorship had been declared as “full-blooded” and films would have the “cover where obvious situations of conflict existed for the UK.” Addressing concerns from the Rank Organisation, about the release of Countess Dracula (1970) and Hands of the Ripper (1971), Michael indicated that Rank had been “disappointed in the lack of horror” in both films and he was going ahead with Vampire Circus “because [my emphasis] it read ‘very bloody’.” (8)
Getting Vampire Circus into production and completing it was another matter altogether. Michael Carreras had seen a short award-winning documentary film The Goldfish Bowl on a trip to South Africa and asked to meet its director Robert Young with a view to offering him the job of directing an adaptation of newsreader Gordon Honeycombe’s 1969 novel, spooky coastal romance Neither the Sea Nor the Sand. Young had a background in theatre and, after working in South Africa on commercials and documentaries, he continued along similar lines in the UK. When Hammer lost the rights and rival studio Tigon took on the adaptation and filmed it in 1972, Carreras instead offered Young Vampire Circus as his first feature to direct. Young had no awareness of both the horror film genre and Hammer’s particular take on it and got to know Stark over many suppers to discuss Kinberg’s script. He did not take the opportunity to familiarise himself with their product and on Vampire Circus “approached it with much more freshness, maybe, than a lot of the other directors.” (9)
The schedule was very short, lasting only six weeks at Pinewood and the nearby Black Park between 9 August and 21 September 1971 and consequently Young needed to shoot very quickly to cover a fairly substantial script. At Stark’s insistence, he established a daily schedule of material to get in the can and pre-planned all his shooting. Stark and Carreras were, he felt, “old school producers. They looked after the director and saw that he did his job and that he received no interference from anyone else.” (10) His crew were gathered from the various personnel working for Hammer at both Elstree and Pinewood, including assistant director Derek Whitehurst, production designer Scott MacGregor and cinematographer Moray Grant. MacGregor recycled sets and the village back lot from Twins of Evil and Countess Dracula and also created the frontage for Mitterhaus’ castle (referred to by the crew as ‘Mac’s Folly’) within the Pinewood estate of Black Park, a location very familiar to British film audiences, having appeared in several Hammer and Bond pictures.
Young was primarily responsible for casting the film but a curious audition also took place for the bats used in the film. Rather than stick to Hammer’s traditional use of visual effects to depict the film’s bats, Young wanted to use real bats and he recalls, “a man came to my apartment with, I think, five bats. I wanted to see how they reacted to an environment that was strange to them.” These untrained animals eventually endeared themselves to the cast and “within two or three days, people wanted to hold them, they wanted to be with them.” As will become clear, the alpha male of the bats was affectionately and appropriately known as ‘Balls’. (11)
“it’s revolting bollocks were red hot and almost vibrating with lust…”
David Essex was originally tested for the role of Emil, the shape shifting ringmaster of the titular circus, but although Young saw star potential in him, later borne out with a successful stage, screen and recording career, he “was about as much a vampire as I am a heavyweight guy.” The role went to Anthony Corlan — aka Anthony Higgins during his 1980s heyday working on, among others, Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Peter Greenaway’s superb The Draughtman’s Contract (1982), Young Sherlock Holmes (1985), and Franc Roddam’s The Bride (1985). He had completed several previous Hammer outings, turning up in an episode of its television anthology Journey Into The Unknown (1968) and then playing the romantic lead Paul Paxton in Taste The Blood Of Dracula (1969), before donning the fangs for Vampire Circus. He felt that Young “didn’t really understand actors” and he was rather terrified of the animals, under the supervision of Mary Chipperfield, that populated the Circus of Nights. “I also had to work with the bats, which really freaked me out.” (12)
Young also cast another striking actor, John Moulder-Brown, as the film’s romantic young lead Anton, on the strength of his appearance in Jerzy Skolimowski’s Deep End (1970). There was no audition but he recalls the film was the first time he had to ride a horse and, customarily, like most young actors do, he lied to Young that he could ride. He was familiar with Hammer’s films and thought “they were sensational seeing them on the big screen” when he was a teenager and he was thrilled when he was offered the part in Vampire Circus. Struck by the contrast between the naturalistic acting style he had adopted in Deep End and the “heightened reality” required for Hammer, he struggled with his performance. (13)
He took comfort from sharing the bill with veterans Thorley Walters and Laurence Payne, seasoned actors who knew how to achieve the level of performance required. Walters was a well-known character actor who had appeared in several Hammers, notably Dracula Prince of Darkness (1966) and Frankenstein Created Woman (1967) and Payne was a hasty replacement for Anton Rogers who was taken ill with stomach problems. Robert Tayman, primarily a stage and television actor, took the role of the largely silent Count Mitterhaus (his few lines were dubbed by David de Keyser). He was screen tested by Hammer, “I had to play a character that was not Count Mitterhaus… a strange kind of person who was going to be the circus ringmaster” and eventually landed the Mitterhaus role where he worked with Young to develop “a compelling, almost animal-like quality” to the character. (14)
Adrienne Corri, familiar to Hammer fans from Moon Zero Two (1969), shepherded the younger members of the cast: Lalla Ward, Robin Sachs, Domini Blythe and Lynn Frederick. Blythe’s West End debut was in Kenneth Tynan’s erotic revue Oh! Calcutta! in 1970 and Frederick had made an impact in Franklin Schaffner’s Nicholas and Alexandra (1971). Both had modestly successful careers. Blythe moved to Canada and primarily performed in theatre while Frederick’s was prematurely ended by the scandal that attended her husband Peter Sellers’ will, in which she was named sole beneficiary.
Ward, a month out of drama school, and now best known for her stint as Romana in Doctor Who, went to Robert Young’s house to audition for the part of Helga and ended up watching the July 1971 Wimbledon Men’s Final with him and the producer. She was excited to have the part but her enthusiasm was dampened by “several lengthy and not entirely pleasant trips to the dentist to have my vampire teeth made!” She and Robin Sachs (as Helga’s brother Heinrich) played circus acrobats who could transform into bats and were “both slightly jittery” about having to make the acrobatics look convincing. However, nothing too strenuous or athletic was required. Taken under Corri’s wing, they were also offered much advice about the profession they had just joined. (15)
As the circus strongman, Dave Prowse made the second of three appearances for Hammer. He had met Corri when they were both working on A Clockwork Orange (1971) so was happy to see a familiar face. He considered Vampire Circus “one of the best, if not the best, of the Hammer movies” he was involved with and “a great credit to Robert Young.” He recalled Young going over budget and running out of time on the six-week schedule, with the film closed down before he could complete any further days of shooting.
The strongman’s death by shotgun was overseen by Hammer’s resident visual effects legend, Les Bowie. Sadly, it’s violence is tempered by the fact that Bowie’s effects, with charges running through a rubber back plate, layered with condoms full of fake blood, applied to Prowse’s back, were all too apparent in the shot used in the film. An indication perhaps that there was no time to remount and reshoot the scene. Prowse also recalled ‘Balls’, the well-endowed fruit bat, who was employed to crawl across one female victim’s cleavage. She reportedly declaimed to cast and crew: “it’s revolting bollocks were red hot and almost vibrating with lust — and did you see the size of its willy?” Exiting the set after such a full blooded performance, she indignantly wondered, “I don’t see how you can expect anyone to believe those creatures can fly while carrying that load.” (16) ‘Balls’ was also quite happy to land, after Young’s cue, on actor Robert Tayman, staked in his coffin, for one brief shot.
“the mayhem had reached such proportions that I was reduced to laughter.”
After the newly appointed BBFC secretary Stephen Murphy viewed a rough cut of Vampire Circus on 22 August at Pinewood, he provided Hammer with his initial, prescient comments: “being Hammer, the plot defies description. I have not seen so many dead bodies around in years.” He asked for elements of the opening pre-titles sequence, depicting the scourging of Anna during the villagers’ attack on Mitterhaus’ castle, “to be reduced to a minimum”, and “the use of a whip for pseudo strangulation”, during a dance performance later in the film, “to be removed entirely.” He also asked for trims to the burning to death of Hauser (Robin Hunter), the clubbing to death of the strongman (Prowse), and Mitterhaus’ decapitation by crossbow during the concluding bloodbath where, “frankly, by this time the mayhem had reached such proportions that I was reduced to laughter.” (17)
Hammer, as usual, negotiated its way through these demands. A cutting copy seen by the BBFC in November required several other edits too. Eventually, various moments of sex, violence and gore were either heavily reduced or deleted to the BBFC’s satisfaction and, by January 1972, it was willing to pass the film as an X certificate. It came off far worse when the Motion Picture Association of America removed three minutes to completely tone down the nudity and gore, awarding a PG for its stateside appearance on a double bill with Countess Dracula. The film opened in the UK on 20 April and went on general release from 30 April.
The reviews were mixed, with Monthly Film Bulletin’s David Pirie declaring “that Hammer continue to refurbish their themes with remarkable ingenuity” and, while he praised Young’s ability to “establish a delicate fairy tale atmosphere” and “a sense of dreamy isolation as the circus performers gradually take over the imaginative life of the community”, he found this was “only fleetingly sustained” and when the film “succumbs to formula, the various cross-brandishing climaxes seem unfortunately limp in the context of the earlier part of the film”. (18) However, David Bartholomew in Cinefantastique was fulsome in his praise, calling the film “that rarity of genre films, even for Hammer, it has a firm conception of what it is, where it is going, and how to get there. And it arrives, with us in tow, in fine spirited condition.” For him it was fresh and diverting, despite some of its naivety. (19)
This suggests the problems Young had with the curtailed schedule. The incomplete footage was handed over to editor Peter Musgrave to salvage and therefore it’s not surprising that the film’s narrative and character relationships are somewhat incoherent. It is a film full of startling visuals and attractive themes but one that also, despite a languid pace throughout the majority of the story, then rushes rather unsatisfactorily to its conclusion. Young injects a Fellini-esque sensibility to the circus proceedings, that makes passing nods to the fairy tale imagery of Cocteau and the naive visual trickery of Méliès. It underlines concerns with, as Jonathan Rigby acknowledges, “the ‘return of the repressed’ theme par excellence” as a generational curse is visited upon villagers and their offspring, isolated and cut off by a plague. (20)
A long 12-minute prologue, some years before the events of the main story, describes the bloody reign of Count Mitterhaus (Tayman). The film’s theme of corruption of the innocent is established here in a still unsettling sequence where schoolmaster Müller (Payne) observes his wife Anna (Domini Blythe) grooming a young girl in the forest. The vampire Mitterhaus seduces and kills the child and, in an edgy sequence, Young depicts Anna, post-murder, in the throes of sexual ecstasy with him. As script reader Rejin observed, it associates the child’s murder with paedophilia (heightened by the intercutting of Müller rounding up his neighbours on the pre-text that Mitterhaus has already murdered many of their children), and it touches upon necrophilia too as Anna, clearly pent up by the death of the girl, then makes love to Mitterhaus (underlined with his “one lust feeds the other” line) in an obligatory nude scene. It’s disturbing and the mood is extended by the romantic scoring from composer David Whitaker as Anna and Mitterhaus cavort in a series of slow motion dissolves.
At Müller’s behest, the equally obligatory torch-bearing, angry mob storms the castle to interrupt this corrupted perversion. There is a daft moment where Müller discovers the little girl’s body, screams “she’s been killed by a vampire” and about half a dozen extras simultaneously make the sign of the cross but, that said, there’s a fast paced conflict, with a high camp, glam rock Mitterhaus gorily fending off various attacks until Müller stakes him through the heart. He curses the villagers as he dies, a curse that the film then explores as it is revisited on the children of Schtettel.
Prior to this, Anna becomes the symbol upon which the villagers must then inflict their anger. As delivered by the patriarchs of the village, she endures a lashing from multiple belt buckles where, as Jonathan Rigby suggests, “she is beaten not because she’s an accessory to child murder but merely because she’s young, beautiful and sexually active.” (21) After Anna escapes, the castle is dynamited but not before the dying Mitterhaus instructs Anna to contact his cousin Emil and the Circus of Nights. A powerful opening, perhaps containing some of the strongest material in a Hammer film to that date.
The story then shifts a generation as the aforementioned circus arrives at Schtettel, now cut off from the surrounding villages by plague. Young is in his element as the circus, led by a gutsy gypsy woman (Adrienne Corri) and populated by various artistes and animals, sets up camp, its baroque visuals accompanied by Whitaker’s off-kilter barrel organ music cues. Young revels in the story’s use of the circus and its occupants to fulfil Mitterhaus’ curse as each night, the mayor/Bürgermeister (a suitably eccentric and dotty Thorley Walters), Müller and their ‘innocent’ children are corrupted by shape-changing vampires/animals and, trapped by their own guilt and repression, seduced by the sexually ambivalent performers. Gradually, the children of the village elders are murdered one by one by the shapeshifting Emil (Corlan), and his entourage, using their blood to revive the dormant Count.
Müller’s daughter Dora (Lynne Frederick ) briefly falls under the spell of Emil, who can change into a panther, despite her affection for the film’s nominal young hero, Anton (a rather ineffectual Moulder-Brown it has to be said) while the other performers — the clown dwarf Michael (Skip Martin), acrobats Helga and Heinrich (Ward and Sachs), exotic dancers (Milovan and Serena) and the strongman (Prowse) all do their bit to entrance and beguile the rest of the village.
There are some remarkable touches here. Aerial artists are seen to instantly transform into bats with simple but effective editing. Emil, as a panther leaping through the air, seduces the mayor’s daughter Rosa (Christina Paul). The exotic dancer, painted with tiger stripes, goes into orgasmic shudders as her partner literally whips her into a frenzy and then man-handles her. Young intercuts from her orgasm to show one of the caged tigers similarly thrashing in ecstasy, emphasising the link between the film’s animal and human forms, filling them with feverish threat and sensuality. And bizarrely, Michael the clown tears off his own painted face to reveal the same painted face beneath.
Meanwhile, maggot infested bodies pile up on the outskirts of the village, a stark warning to any who try to tear themselves away from this entertainment to raise the alarm. The sexual undertones are mixed liberally with a dark fairy tale motif and explore primal fears and desires through the vampire seductions, blood spattered forests and plague-ridden villagers. The disintegration of the family and the anxieties of the generation gap explored here are common themes in much of the Hammer oeuvre and it is not surprising that many commentators view the films as adult fairy tales. Its films were the Grimm stories of the post-war, laced with repression, eroticism and violence.
This achieves its most intense expression in the ‘Mirror of Life’ scenes where, after initially peering into the hall of mirrors, the aged mayor is confronted by a vision of Mitterhaus strangling and then biting him, his curse heard whispering over the soundtrack. Later, the hall of mirrors becomes a scene of sexual predation as the two acrobats Helga and Heinrich (Ward and the rather beautiful, androgynous Robin Sachs) appear before Gustav and Jon, the sons of village elder Hauser. They pull both boys through the mirrors, seducing and then murdering them. Again, it’s a disturbing blend of paedophilia and vampirism. This is repeated when the two circus entertainers attempt to seduce and kill Anton and Dora.
However, these evocative sections of the film are not sustained and, as many critics agreed, Young relies on the formulaic to conclude the film. The film culminates in a series of battles that begin in a beautifully ornate chapel where Helga is impaled by a giant crucifix and Heinrich, by dint of being her twin, suffers with her in sympathy. Adrienne Corri crawling across the floor, rasping “…my chiiiilllllldrennn! My chiiiilllllldrennn!” at the sight of her dead progeny, is both hilarious as camp value and rather poignant. What that poor woman must have been through. Her final reward is to be sacrificed by Emil who also provides another moment of hilarity when Müller stakes him through the heart and Anthony Corlan displays a range of facial expressions that suggest he’s been goosed from behind.
The body count piles up and eventually Müller and his remaining village elders realise that Corri’s gypsy woman is in fact the long forgotten Anna and that Mitterhaus is slaughtering their kin in order to rejuvenate himself. The film’s ineffective but violent climax is essentially a repetition of the opening prologue of torch bearing villagers. They track Mitterhaus to his lair and, before he can fully take his revenge, his head is taken clean off by a crossbow. It’s rather hurried, despite the gory pile of bodies heaped up before the end titles roll, and clearly bereft of the original visual and symbolic touches that Young brings to the earlier sections of the film. Still, the film has a feverish, edgy quality to it even if some of the performances are lacking. Its potent visuals and ideas make it very much a standalone film in the Hammer canon.
Sources
(1) Wayne Kinsey, Hammer Films — The Elstree Studio Years (Tomahawk, 2007).
(2) Bruce G Hallenbeck, ‘The Making of Vampire Circus’, Little Shoppe of Horrors #30 (May 2013).
(3) Marcus Hearn, The Hammer Vault, (Titan Books, 2011).
(4) Ted Newsom, interview with Judson Kinberg, Little Shoppe of Horrors #30 (May 2013).
(5) Kinsey, Hammer Films — The Elstree Studio Years.
(6) Marcus Hearn & Alan Barnes, The Hammer Story (Titan Books, 1997)
(7) Constantine Nasr, ‘Director Robert Young’ interview, Little Shoppe of Horrors #30 (May 2013).
(8) Hearn, The Hammer Vault.
(9) Nasr, ‘Director Robert Young’ interview, Little Shoppe of Horrors #30.
(10) Robert Young, introduction to the novel of Vampire Circus (Mark Morris, Arrow Books, 2012).
(11) Young, introduction to the novel of Vampire Circus.
(12) David Taylor, Anthony Higgins and John Moulder-Brown interviews, Little Shoppe of Horrors #30 (May 2013).
(13) Taylor, Anthony Higgins and John Moulder-Brown interviews, Little Shoppe of Horrors #30.
(14) Nasr, Robert Tayman interview, Little Shoppe of Horrors #30 (May 2013).
(15) Nasr, Lalla Ward interview, Little Shoppe of Horrors #30 (May 2013).
(16) David Prowse, Straight From The Force’s Mouth: The Autobiography of Dave Prowse, (Andrews, 2011).
(17) Kinsey, Hammer Films — The Elstree Studio Years.
(18) David Pirie, Monthly Film Bulletin, (Vol 39, No 461, June 1972).
(19) David Bartholomew, ‘Vampire Circus’ review, Cinefantastique, (Vol 2, No 4, Summer 1973).
(20) Jonathan Rigby, English Gothic — Classic Horror Cinema 1897–2015, (Signum, 2015)
(21) Rigby, English Gothic.
Originally published at www.cathoderaytube.co.uk. Completely revised and rewritten from a 2011 review. Screen captures taken from the Region A Synapse Blu-ray as licensed from ITV Studios. All written material by Frank Collins (the author) is © 2024 and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Please seek permission from the author if you would like to quote or re-use any of the author’s own written material.
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