Circus of Horrors (1960)

A cult classic with Anton Diffring, outrageous Donald Pleasance, and a weirdly sexy Kenneth Griffith. Oh, and a gaggle of scantily clad babes.It's surprisingly lurid for 1959/60 -- and yet in a sanguine manner only a '60s films could achieve.Diffring plays an excruciatingly unethical plastic surgeon on the run throughout Europe, hiding behind his traveling carnival of death as a front.Oh, and that song! The movie is everything Joan Crawford's later BERSERK should have been. In fact, I tend to combine both movies in my head into one magnificently rococo, downmarket picture. Which totally works for me.

I first saw this movie when it was released in 1960. I was 16 at the time and have always remembered the film. At the time I thought the movie was the most interesting one I ever saw. It had pretty sexy girls, horror and one of the best movie songs I had ever heard. I am watching now as I write this review. It still has all those things and it has held up all these years. The acting was very good for this type of movie as well as a good script. The movie is in color which also was very impressive. I can say for a movie that is thought as a horror film it has plenty to offer. The Circus of Horrors title may be a little misleading to some, it is much more that the title suggests.

ANTON DIFFRING is a plastic surgeon under cover at a circus because he has left one of his patients disfigured. The first part of the story deals with how he acquires the circus through a strange set of circumstances involving a young girl and her father (DONALD PLEASANCE).When the circus becomes a success, after he has successfully cured a number of pretty women by removing their scars and puts them to work performing in his "Circus of Beauty," he treats them with cool indifference if they reject his advances and when he tires of them he gets his female assistant and her brother to dispense with them in various ways before the circus audience.That's the gist of the plot which uses the circus atmosphere to great effect and makes brilliant use of its handsome Technicolor production values.Anton Diffring is the man you love to hate. There's a Vincent Price quality about his over-the-top acting, but his magnetic screen personality carries the film into the realm of believability no matter how foolish the plot becomes.Although there are many beautiful women in the cast, it's Diffring you will remember in the central role as the surgeon with blood on his hands. His screen career consisted of mostly European films with occasional smaller parts in American films. Too bad he didn't find more leads to play in Hollywood.Intriguing story holds up pretty well although there are obvious weaknesses in the script.

Anton Diffring is the reason why you would like to watch this average horror movie.Plus a bevy of beautiful women.Diffring was a character actor and he succeeds in portraying a circus manager as well as a scientist even with his aristocratic looks.The story is implausible from start to finish ,but in this kind of flick,does it really matter?As soon as they are in France ,the threesome runs into a disfigured young girl (there are plenty of them there,as anybody past infancy knows) .The surgeon (plastic surgery) suggest father Donald Pleasance he give her a beautiful face in return for an occupation in his circus.Dr Schuler (=Schoolboy)soon owns the circus where he takes on disfigured shady persons he "cures" and puts on the bill of the show.It's not difficult:the first time the surgeon has taken a walk through the dark city ,he finds a disfigured whore (there are plenty of them in France ,as everybody knows).What is downright disturbing is that we never see the thespian operate. The circus background is smartly used: snakes,bears,lions,acrobats ,moving targets,and clowns who are very useful when an "accident" happens.A lovely song ,very very early sixties/late fifties ("look for a star" ) adds to the acrobatics scenes.Like this?try these...."Berserk" (O'Connolly ,1967)"Les Yeux Sans Visage" (Georges Franju,1960)