Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: Hammer time

Directed by Robert Young, with a screenplay by Judson Kinberg and a story by George Baxt and Wilbur  Stark, Vampire Circus is pretty great. Young hadn’t made a movie with the studio so he was surprised that when he tried to get an extra week of filming, they just took the movie to be edited.

What they got it one of the most adult and interesting films the studio would ever make.,

Somewhere in Serbia, schoolmaster Albert Müller (Laurence Payne) watches his wife Anna (Domini Blythe) take a little girl into the castle of Count Mitterhaus (Robert Tayman). She’s become his mistress, helping him to get children and drain them of their blood.

That night, Müller, the girl’s father (John Bown) and a lot of the men of the town attack the castle with nearly all of them dying. Müller puts a stake through the vampire’s heart but not before he curses the village, claiming that all of their children will die to bring him back to life. Anna runs through the village and takes the Count to his crypt just as the castle is blown up. She seeks Emil (Anthony Higgins) and his Circus of the Night.

Years later, the entire town has been quarantined due to a plague. They believe that they are living under the curse of Count Mitterhaus. The Circus of Night shows up, somehow able to get past the blockade of soldiers outside the town. The gypsy woman that leads the group (Adrienne Corri) and Michael the dwarf (Skip Martin) get the tents up and the townspeople excited while Emil and twin acrobats Heinrich (Robin Sachs) and Helga (Lala Ward) find the Count’s body and state his curse.

Dr. Kersh (Richard Owens) goes for help while his son Anton (John Moulder-Brown) distracts the soldiers. The circus also begins, taking in the daughter of one of the villagers who stopped the Count — Rosa (Christina Paul) — while Emil turns into a black panther and kills several others. Anton’s sister Dora (Lynne Frederick) finds several bodies but by now, it’s too late to stop the death from destroying their little town.

The gypsy woman? Well, that’s the mother of Anton and Dora and she wants to use the blood of her children to bring the Count back. Can they save anyone?

Vampire Circus is so great. It’s filled with so many wild sights, it has a full circus with a pre-Darth Vader David Prowse as the strongman, fully painted female dancers and sets that were also used on Twins of Evil.

The end teases that there could there could have been a sequel and man, I wish there had been. The later Hammer movies fascinate me.

You can watch this on Tubi.