Circus of Horrors

3/24/2020

***Lurid, comic booky circus flick with myriad beautiful women, wild animals and devious murders*** A couple years after WW2 an English plastic surgeon (Anton Diffring) flees to France with his two cronies (Kenneth Griffith & Jane Hylton) and ends up going into the circus business. A dozen years later he has a successful traveling show that’s notorious as The Jinxed Circus, which draws the suspicions of an inspector (Conrad Phillips). “Circus of Horrors” (1960) is like a thriller comic book version of “The Greatest Show on Earth” (1952). It’s similar to “Circus of Fear,” aka “Psycho-Circus” (1966), which reportedly borrowed some of its circus footage, but this one’s more entertaining. While some of the animals featured are real (lions, horses and a bear) others are glaringly f

5/10/2026

Old timey glory There is a lot one could say about a movie that is over 60 years old, to put it down compared to modern blockbusters, but as far as being a movie this is a good one. Its production value is high (despite some of the hokey animal props/costumes) and the acting is rock-solid. The music is repetitive, which goes with the circus theme, and there are hooks for subplots that never go explored, leaving you with a sense of a bigger world than just the runtime of the movie itself.