Sunday 5 February 2012

Roll Up


'Circus Of Fear' is basically quite a slow crime film, where the proceeeds of a daring wage snatch (on Tower Bridge) are hidden at the headquarters of a travelling circus resting up for the winter. The mysterious man who hid it there is quite precious about his ill-gotten gains, and tends to chuck great big knives at anyone who gets close to it.

Rather dull and meandering, there are, however, some intriguing sub-plots, including a masked Christopher Lee as a lion tamer posing as his own horribly scarred brother, although these mostly come to nothing and the film ends quite abruptly and dishonestly. Most disappointingly, the killings are fairly prosaic and rarely exploit the myriad of murderous possibilities provided by the circus environ (see 'Circus of Horrors' or 'Beserk' for tips).

Klaus Kinski pops up in this, as he did in several British B pictures before he established himself as a sort of star. He isn't given much to do, but his extraordinary face is a welcome extra in a professional but not particularly exciting film.

No comments:

Post a Comment