The CraggusOct 5, 2024

Roll Up, Roll Up! It’s a Big Top Big Teeth carnival!... click link to read more.

#1972 #adriennecorri #anthonyhiggins #blogging #davidprowse #hammerhouseofhorror #horror #johnmoulderbrown #lallaward #laurencepayne #monthofspooks #movieblog #richardowens #robertyoung #robinsachs #thecraggus #thorleywalters #vampirecircus #vampirecircusreview

https://thecraggus.com/?p=38453

Vampire Circus (1972) Review

Roll Up, Roll Up! It’s a Big Top Big Teeth carnival! If you’ve ever thought, “What Hammer horror really needs is more circus clowns and a whole lot o

What The Craggus Saw
Andy AldridgeJul 2, 2024
I just watched Vampire Circus (Robert Young, 1972) and rated it 6/10 ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire_Circus?wprov=sfla1 #films #cinema #cinemastodon #VampireCircus #RobertYoung #AdrienneCorri #JohnMoulderBrown #LynneFrederick #HammerFilms
Vampire Circus - Wikipedia

November GrauDec 8, 2023
Last night I saw Deep End by Jerzy Solimowski (1971) after seeing it recommended by a mutual at The Other Place, and it was terrific. It's about Michael, a fifteen-year old boy (John Moulder-Brown) who becomes obsessed with his colleague (Jane Asher, no less!) at the sleaze-ridden public baths where he works.

It's a beautifully shot film making use of an unusual green and yellow colour scheme, both lurid and dark at the same time - the photos online don't do it justice - and lots of verve. Moulder-Brown is perhaps a bit posh for the job but he does capture the sweet but daft and often intensely irritating nature of some teenage boys, which curdles into something more unpleasant as the waters of his obsession rise, and Jane Asher is great. And there are some amazing supporting acts such as Erica Beers, a randy lesbian baths cashier and the only person there who even comes close to standing up to Asher, and Diana Dors, terrifying as a sexually predatory client. When she assaults Michael, it's presented as a serious threat, and the weird football-based nature of her sexual fantasies if anything makes it even more uncomfortable to watch, the total opposite of comic relief.

And in fact Deep End is a very unusual film, when it comes to its treatment of child abuse by authority figures. In so many films of that era such things are either giggled at or treated with a kind of man-of-the-world resignation, but in Deep End it's a source of real anger. There's an amazing scene where Jane Asher's character Susan tears a pervy schoolteacher a new one, and you can see the past trauma lurking under her tough exterior. The film goes beyond the baths, following Michael into the wider world to show a whole ecosystem of sexual predation in a way that feels very modern.

But it's not a didactic film. It's intense, almost feverish, with scene after scene full of exhilarating strangeness and memorable images. It's a bit like Performance in that way, but much less self-indulgent, and really I don't think I've ever seen any film quite like it.

#70sMovies #JerzySkolimowski #JaneAsher #DianaDors #JohnMoulderBrown