Blu-ray Film Review

Circus of Horrors (1960) • Blu-ray [StudioCanal, Vintage Classics]

In 1947 England, a plastic surgeon flees to France when one of his patients has ghastly problems with her surgery.

Not a great film, but I have a soft spot for Circus of Horrors because it prefigures so many great horrors and thrillers that followed. It’s definitely a British horror of note and deserving of digital preservation, scanned in 4K from the original camera negative, as the latest Blu-ray release on Studio Canal’s ‘Vintage Classics’ label. Although some elements that shocked on its release are now laughable, it may induce unease in today’s climate of political correctness, albeit for different reasons than 60 years ago. If you can get past that, though, it remains brashly entertaining.

A plastic surgeon, on the run after a botched operation, assumes a new identity and acquires a failing circus, which he uses as cover to continue his crazy medical work in secret. Harvesting patients from the desperate classes of criminals and prostitutes, he turns women who’ve been disfigured by bomb blasts or…