Well they really went for it with Circus of Horrors. Or went for it as about as much as they could for an early 1960's horror film, A maniacal plastic surgeon has developed a new surgical technique that unfortunately has a side effect of disfiguring one of his patients. He goes on the run and ends up at a defunct circus. He gets the brilliant idea of performing plastic surgery on criminals to hide them from the police. Lots of plot later the circus ends up in London where the plastic surgeon who now runs the circus kills off anyone who might reveal him to the police.
We get lots of scenes of women getting transformed into beautiful babes before that are knocked off by the surgeon. For good measure there is a nasty bear in the circus who occasionally gets out of his cage so he can maul someone. There's also a knife throwing act that doesn't end well for the woman on the receiving end of the knives.
The film has quite a cast. Perennial bad guy Anton Differing plays the plastic surgeon. Donald Pleasence plays the original owner of the circus and he's not around very long. Yvonne Romaine was in a lot of Hammer films. She's a lion tamer who doesn't have much luck taming one of the lions. Yvonne Monlaur played the daughter of Donald Pleasence. I remember her as one of the future brides in
Brides of Dracula.
Circus of Horrors was photographed in very bright colors by Douglas Slocombe. Slocombe went on to work with Steven Spielberg on the first three Indiana Jones films. He was a major factor in the success of that series.
The screenplay was by George Baxt, the running time is 87 minutes.
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