So the folks out at Synapse Cinema sent over a copy of their recent re-releasing of the 1972 horror…um..classic, if you’re being charitable, Vampire Circus. I generally don’t watch much horror released before I was born because it has an unnerving tendency to be unpleasant. Will this one follow suit? Let’s find out!

Vampire Circus takes us to the 1800s, when in a little Austrian village, a girl is murdered by a vampire. The townspeople react in classic townspeople style, complete with pitchforks and torches, and go after said vampire, who in turn curses the townspeople thusly: all their children will die, and when that happens, he will come back to life. Fifteen years later, the town has the plague and the circus has just arrived–so things are sort of mixed for the town right now. At least…until their troubles REALLY get started. Seems the kids are going missing, and the longer the circus stays in town, the closer things get to the resurrection of the evil vampire that cursed them all. Will any children survive? Or will the vampire rise to run amok on the surface of the earth once more?

Admittedly, I’m actually rather pleased with this. The concept is interesting, and as vampire movies go, this is definitely one of the least unpleasant. Not that that’s exactly a big field, mind you…the list of vampire movies that don’t suck could fill a very small thimble.

That’s not to say this is perfect, though–the effects are clearly on the lowest of the low end. One particularly memorable sequence involved a man in a panther suit fighting a guy and a whole lot of orange paint being tossed on perfectly good ferns.

But it is pretty good, still, with lots of strange back and forth and unusual circumstances, with suspicion and tension built and released and discharged in due course.

Interestingly, this is one of the older Hammer horror films, re-released on DVD and Blu-ray by Synapse, so if you’re game to see a chunk of historical horror, this is a fine place to start.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Vampire Circus a six out of ten–it will do a fair enough job, but a lot of its points come from being a big fish in a mud puddle. It’s worth your time to watch, of course, but if you’ve got other stuff in mind to see first, do so, as this isn’t anything spectacular that you’ll regret putting off.