The Great Escape had Donald Pleasence in it, and I was reminded just how great he is as an actor. I took to Amazon and added every movie of his I hadn't seen to my queue. First one down, Circus of Horrors. A movie where it's more an extended cameo by Donald "Pleasence to Watch" Pleasence. DP is a alcoholic father with a dwindling circus business and a facially deformed daughter. Plastic surgeon Doctor Rossiter finds the two of them and says he will fix Pleasence's daughter.
Soon enough, Doctor Rossiter cures the girl, and Pleasence, in a fit of happiness, says he'd gladly split ownership of the circus with Rossiter. Later that night, Pleasence is attacked by his pet bear while the doc stands there and does nothing, and hence the circus is his.
This movie has a ton of unanswered questions. Also, there is hardly a "bad guy" in it. Rossiter being the only candidate, you'd peg him for the baddie immediately, however he is not evil. He did not cause the bear attack, he didn't fuck up any of the surgeries on purpose, etc. Later on, he inherits the circus and becomes the manager, and in fact saves the circus and revitalizes it. He finds people who are deformed, fixes them up, and recruits them for the circus, but it's always shown or at least implied this was a agreed upon situation.
It leads us to my overall takeaway with the film, which is that it felt broadly unfocused and almost pointless. As a genre I'd be hard pressed to call it anything besides straight drama, with a horror edge to it. There's some cool blood I guess occasionally but overall it's very mellow, and very little really happens in the movie. There are some minor cool things along the way, such as a death by throwing knife and some real lions.... but uh, you know.
In all this isn't like "a bad movie". I guess my hazy memory makes me feel like it was sorta boring, but it is also 1960 and it's Hammer. So I should give it a break. I'd recommend it mostly for completionists though, not much to the casual viewers.
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