Circus of Horrors is a 1960 British horror film directed by Sidney Hayers. It starred Anton Diffring, Yvonne Monlaur, Erika Remberg, Kenneth Griffith, Jane Hylton, Conrad Phillips, Yvonne Romain and Donald Pleasance.
It was the third in what film critic David Pirie called Anglo-Amalgamated's "Sadian trilogy", focusing on sadism, cruelty and violence (with sexual undertones) rather than, say, the supernatural horror of the Hammer films in the same era. The previous films in the trilogy were Horrors of the Black Museum and Peeping Tom, both in 1959.
Plot
In 1940s England, Dr Rossiter (Diffring) is a plastic surgeon wanted by the police after an operation goes hideously wrong. However, believing himself to have brilliant abilities as a surgeon, he and his assistants (Griffith and Hylton) evade capture and escape to the Continent. There Rossiter changes his name to Schüler, and befriends a circus owner (Pleasance) whose deformed daughter (Carol Challoner, growing up to become Yvonne Monlaur) he operates on.
Schüler manipulates his way into running the circus, taking it over when the owner dies in a freak "accident". A decade later, he is running an internationally successful circus, which he uses as a front for his surgical exploits. He befriends deformed women and transforms them for his "Temple of Beauty". However, when they threaten to leave, they meet with mysterious accidents which raise the suspicions of local police (Phillips among them), who are soon on his trail.
As the police close in, along with the lady who he disfigured in England, Schüler asks his assistants to operate on his face to make him unrecognizable. As they are inexperienced, they botch the job, and the plastic surgeon is left with a hideous face.
Production
The film was shot at Beaconsfield Studios, with location filming on Clapham Common in London and in Old Amersham, Buckinghamshire. Billy Smart's Circus provided the big top and some of its performers appeared as extras.
The score was provided between Franz Reizenstein and Muir Mathieson. Douglas Slocombe was the cinematographer.
The song "Look For A Star" is from this movie. In the US, there were four versions issued at the same time that charted:
- Garry Mills (apparently the original) (Imperial 5674) reached #26
- Garry Miles (Liberty 55261) reached #16
- Deane Hawley (Dore 554) reached #29
- Billy Vaughan (the sole instrumental version) (Dot 16106) reached #19
Taking all four versions together, "Look For A Star" was quite a big hit in 1960. (It's fair to assume that only one version got airplay and sales in each radio market. For example, in the Minnesota market, the Deane Hawley was the version that got played and sold in the stores.)
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