Vampire Circus

Out of the entire Hammer canon "Vampire Circus" has got to be one of the strangest things they ever did! It is an offbeat, highly surreal number with oodles of blood and gore thrown in. A Transylvanian village is sealed off from the outside world due to an outbreak of the plague. Anyone who tries to get in or out is shot dead by the police. Nevertheless a travelling circus somehow breaks through the lines, and boy, are all it's bloodless-looking performers a wee bit strange! There is a gypsy male who seems to be able to turn himself into a panther, and a pair of very creepy acrobatic twins, who seem impervious to pain and can transform themselves into birds. All of it is presided over by Adrienne Corri, who makes a suitably vampy Ring-Mistress. Added to all this the village itself is living under a curse imposed on them by an aristocrat they killed several years before for being a vampire, all of which is related in the violent and blood-splattered opening sequence to the film. A Creepy Hammer horror with bite!