“I was going to ask,” I said.

  “Anyway, Reeves was a treasure,” Blythewood gave a sad half-grin, and a nod. “You could tell, just tell, he would do something, given the opportunity. Back to him later, before midnight. So, DEVIL’S CIRCUS. We’re on it now. What do you want to know?”

  As before, what follows is transcribed as accurately as possible from my notes, sans my questions and any interruptions.

  So many horrors then ended in flames—the giant monster movies, the Hammer Frankensteins, the Poe films, just about everything, it seemed—and circus horrors were back in style. It’s all molding and casting: Sidney made the mold with his 1960 success,18 and we all followed, made our own four-ring cine-circus. Towers trotted out Chris for his Edgar Wallace outing before ours,19 bloody Cohen and Kandel dolled up Joan Crawford for their circus murder movie just after ours,20 and we all used Billy Smart’s Circus. Even Sidney Pink had gone off to Spain to make his own fire-and-circus opus,21 so why not? Le Circus Furneaux.

  We owed it all to DR. CALIGARI22 and FREAKS, anyway, didn’t we? FREAKS had only just played at a private ciné club a couple years before, so that was fresh in our minds. Banned in Britain for three decades.23 We based our strong man on Hercules in FREAKS, completely took that “look.” Our idea was to work with how terrifying clowns could be, played that angle to the hilt, as no one seemed to be doing at the time. We based the clown makeups on some of the chestnuts, Lon Chaney’s silent clowns,24 and kitted another character up like Chaney’s knife-thrower, and the like.

  It was my notion to begin and end this one with fire. Grab eyeballs right from the get-go, and see it all out in another blaze of glory. Easy to say, easy to write, risky to stage, but I had an old property needed clearing for a total new building, so we dolled up one side and corner of the property to look a wee bit French, left the rest as was. I worked it all out with the local constabulary and fire and rescue teams, and we torched the place in front of four cameras. Sounds a bit like overkill, but I used the footage for three other films after, too, and no one the wiser, since it looked like four or five different buildings going up. So, the French corner and side burning, we used that footage to open DEVIL’S CIRCUS.

  The burning circus at the end, those were miniatures in an open field, but they were awfully oversized miniatures. It still didn’t look quite right, not quite realistic—you can always tell with fire and with water effects, the true scale always betrays itself—but it worked pretty well, especially filmed at night at faster speed—to slow it down once projected, so it appears in slow-motion, creating an illusion of size and scope—and once it was edited into the shots of a pair of real circus-sized tents burning it worked well enough.

  There were some subtleties the director concocted that I still quite like. Stitching cloth “shadows” to the feet of the clowns for some shots, first as they walked on the edge of and under the stands, the bleachers—later on, in some of the night scenes, and when they were stalking Yvette and Hugo—something I’m sure no one consciously noticed, and we kept it on the sly in the edit, never called attention to the effect. That was awfully clever, and cost nothing of course.

  The husk of the lad’s body was made of papier-mâché, but the fellow who constructed it used paper from two massive wasp nests for the outermost skin, and saved some that we added to the faces of two of the clowns for select shots—just a hint—and especially for little Oskar for the finale. The dummy of that exsanguinated boy was terribly believable, even in broad daylight, so much so that one of Trevelyan’s people took exception to our best shot of the thing, forced us to trim that. It stayed in the American and European export versions, thankfully, always got a visible jolt from audiences. Of course we torched it for the big finale, with a mix of sparklers, wood shavings, and unpopped popcorn—the burning “flying” popping kernels looked enough like wasps for our purposes—crammed inside, like some kind of awful patchwork hive, effigy, and piñata.

  I funded a sort of cultural exchange, swapping homes for four-to-six weeks with actors and circus performers from France with some of my English contacts, all to save on accommodations; it was much less expensive, and more practical, to bankroll the exchange of houses than to try to work with inns and rooms and the like. I had three properties with a fair amount of acreage—one we used for the interiors of the priest’s cottage, the exterior shots were done at another place—varied enough to give us the woods we needed, the open fields for Billy Smart’s circus setup and the additional tents and circus grounds we fabricated for specific scenes and night shots. Easiest to fake the circus by night: just one tent, perhaps a bit of canvas to the side, some ropes staked down, a few visual cues, voilà! The serpent statue tent, that we built as a “fire” set, rigged for the special effects, placed well apart from everything, the furthest from any standing structures or trees.

  At first, was a bit tense, as it had been at first working with the Chinese troupe for SWORD OF THE DEMON, with some of the old British-French animosities at play, but the circus folks bonded and everyone else got along by the end of the first couple days, and the shoot went well. Uneventful, really, except for those fire scenes.

  Went with two unknowns in the lead roles of Hugo and Yvette. He was a French folk singer, with the androgynous hairstyle very fashionable in the late 1960s, handsome enough, and she was a dancer. I thought they were quite good, had a real chemistry between them, and the camera adored her in particular, but we had no boxoffice names to bring in an audience. Still, DEVIL’S CIRCUS did pretty well. Tried to avoid performers faking French accents—my brother’s influence, again. Why go that route? Nevertheless, the inevitable stew of accents, since we had to cast a certain number of locals to play by industry rules. They didn’t sound like anything except what they were.

  Landing Flora Robson for Elfriede was a real coup, I thought, and she was marvelous. Our only “name” player. She was only in the film for those two scenes, but Amicus was doing the same thing with the likes of Jack Palance, Burgess Meredith, a bit later on Richard Todd, Ralph Richardson, so we put her name front and center. The actor playing the priest was French—I forget his name now, I’m sorry25 —as was the fellow who played Claude, Stéphane Fey, and the boy playing Oskar, Jean-François Maurin. The lad appeared a year or so later in a very peculiar film Gérard Brach wrote, playing a troubled youth obsessed with his father’s mistress; mind you, if my father’s mistress had been Jacqueline Bisset, I might have had a killer crush myself.26 The boy absolutely loved the makeup he had to wear for the climax, and asked for photos afterwards that he could show off to his friends.

  We hosted a sort of ceremonial dawn burial the last day of the shoot, after the last of the effects filming. It had become a sort of tradition for us by then, our third “burial.” Bury the burned sets, any materials or scrap we couldn’t recycle, and the like. Louis said a few words in Goidelic, as was his practice, and we did a little ritual, and that was that.

  As I mentioned already, Trevelyan’s censors weren’t happy about the withered child carcass, and were even less happy with Oskar’s fate. They’d cautioned us after their assessments of not one but two screenplay drafts, and we adhered to their restrictions, but there was still one woman at the BBFC who was unhappy with the last reel. We went back and forth, but the funny thing was this: you could tell Trevelyan you’d made the requested cuts, and send back the same reels, no cuts, and sometimes it was Blind Man’s Bluff, he’d approve the same reel they’d just insisted you trim. This time, though, that woman wouldn’t let it go, and we had to make cuts for the UK release we didn’t adhere to for export. It was happening more and more that way, it seemed, according to others making their horrors, but the film still worked despite the compression of Oskar’s onscreen demise that bloody woman insisted upon.

  The film opened in London in 1967 on a double-bill with a strange German crime film I’d picked up and dubbed for distribution,27 and we did all right with that combo, but DEVIL’S CIRCUS kept earning for us from export sales in its uncut length. Only one province in Canada—Ontario, I think—insisted on edits, so we sent them the UK cut and that went out without any further ado.

  It opened in Paris as LE CIRCUS FURNEAUX and played for four weeks, then became a sort of perennial at one little theater that kept bringing it back every six months or so with different “circus” movies. They sent me a flyer in the early 1970s, they were still running it. It was interesting, all the pairings of DEVIL’S CIRCUS with a procession of silent and early sound era circus movies, including CALIGARI, FREAKS, the silent Charlie Chaplin and Harry Langdon’s circus comedies, as well as the Lon Chaney pictures.

  After dinner, over coffee and my choice of the fruit desserts, Blythewood teased me with mention of another circus horror movie they’d completed, “the last Blythewood horror,” he called it, “a picture called CIRCUS OF BLOOD.”

  “CASTLE OF THE LOST pushed the envelope, with all kinds of sex, so we decided to go further. Didn’t work, went too far.”

  “Too far?”

  “Yes, well, you’ll be seeing CASTLE OF THE LOST next. Let’s see how that goes down. There was almost no end of trouble with Trevelyan’s staff on that one, particularly that same bloody woman who’d insisted upon DEVIL’S CIRCUS trims. I’m sure CASTLE OF THE LOST is tepid tea today, but you’ll see for yourself.”

  Blythewood paused, finished his coffee, and suggested we take a break. Might I consider an outdoors walk?

  “You’ve got two more features to screen between now and evening’s end,” he calmly stated. “These are the strongest fare I’ve selected for you to watch, and especially after food and wine—”

  “Yes, a walk would be appreciated,” I replied.

  “Shall we resume at, say, a half-hour from now, at the latest? Then off you go to CASTLE OF THE LOST, a break, we’ll chat again over coffee, then we’ll wind up after the second feature. As I say, should be done around eleven, well before midnight, then you can turn in.”

  I nodded and bowed, thanked Blythewood again, and pushed my chair away from the table. He gave me a little wave, and tilted his head back.

  Before I was through the doorway, the BBC newsreaders were once again audible, talking about the state of the world.

  15Herbert J. Leder, producer/writer/director of IT (1967), starring Roddy McDowall.

  16Tony Tenser, co-founder of Tigon Pictures, producers of WITCHFINDER GENERAL (1968, US title: THE CONQUEROR WORM); according to interviews with Tenser, Reeves had contracted for five more productions to beging with an IRA suspense-drama tentatively titled O’HOOLIGAN’S MOB. Reeves was found dead on February 11, 1969, by an apparently accidental overdose.

  17IL CASTELLO DEI MORTI VIVI (1964), aka CASTLE OF THE LIVING DEAD, co-starring Christopher Lee and, in two roles, Donald Sutherland in his screen debut role.

  18Sidney Hayers directed CIRCUS OF HORRORS (1960), which indeed was an international success.

  19Harry Alan Towers produced the British/German adaptation of Edgar Wallace’s Again the Three Just Men as DAS RASTEL DES SILBERNEN DREIECK aka CIRCUS OF FEAR aka PSYCHO-CIRCUS (1966), starring Christopher Lee.

  20Herman Cohen and Aben Kandel co-produced and co-scripted BERSERK! (1967).

  21Sidney W. Pink scripted and co-produced PYRO: THE THING WITHOUT A FACE in Spain in 1963, released in the UK as WHEEL OF FIRE (1964).

  22DAS CABINET DES DR. CALIGARI aka THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (1920).

  231963 was the year FREAKS finally played in Britain for the first time; future distributor/filmmaker Anthony Balch saw it then, bought the UK rights, and opened FREAKS in London.

  24Lon Chaney famously played tragic clowns in HE WHO GETS SLAPPED (1924) and LAUGH CLOWN LAUGH (1928), and his knife-thrower Alonzo the Armless appeared in THE UNKNOWN (1927).

  25Alexandre Rignault. No wonder DEVIL’S CIRCUS did well in France, given its cast of French support players.

  26The actor was later better known as Jean-François Vlerick; the film Blythewood is referring to is LA PROMESSE aka SECRET WORLD (1969). Jean-François had just turned ten years of age when he appeared in DEVIL’S CIRCUS. Stéphane Fey had the lead role as a Union soldier and officer in two stories in Robert Enrico’s Ambrose Bierce portmanteau feature AU COEUR DE LA VIE (1963), and he is excellent in DEVIL’S CIRCUS.

  27NEBELMORDER (1964), aka MURDERER IN THE FOG; Blythewood retitled it TEEN MOB MURDERS.

  CASTLE OF THE LOST

  TIM LEBBON

  HE KNOWS WHAT HE will see, and that it will be awful, but he is not deterred from walking along the wide high castle corridor towards the open oak doors. The eyes of his ancestors follow him as he walks, their portraits having hung in place for hundreds of years. He knows some of their names but most are strangers to him, mysteries lost in the complex and misty histories of the Grayland family. He feels the stares of soldiers and poets, explorers and artists, but there are less enlightened characters in his family’s past. On his left, the face of a hanged man is almost obscured by the dust and dirt that has collected on his likeness, as if being ignored or shunned by his descendants has made his image grow stale. On his right a woman stares with the eyes of a witch as he walks by. He has never liked this painting. Her eyes seem to follow him all along the corridor, from the vestibule at one end towards the open doors leading to the ballroom at the other, and sometimes he feels her eyes on his back even when he is no longer in the castle. Margaret sees everything, his sister Mary sometimes jokes, and she often follows it with something lewd and improper. When you’re playing with your pale little cock in the moonlight, Margaret sees. When you’re doing other things, any things, she sees.

  Mary is three years older than him, and she has always been a bitch.

  Where is Mary now? he thinks, a thought that comes from elsewhere, not this poorly lit corridor that is leading him closer to the sounds. It comes from outside. Where is Mary now?

  He reaches the doors and steps through.

  And he sees Mary.

  She is naked, writhing on top of a fat, sweating man who Jack thinks he recognises from the village. The man grabs her breasts as she rides him, kneading, digging his fingers in, and she cries out with a mixture of pain and delight. There is blood on her hands and running down her arms. She holds something in each hand that resembles a chunk of meat. The fat man’s flesh wobbles each time she drives herself down, and Jack sees places where great gouges have been clawed from his fatty sides.

  Mary looks at him and grins.

  All around his sister and the fat man are other naked forms, squirming and squealing, slick with sweat and blood, leaning back on floor cushions with their legs wide open and a lover lapping between their thighs, standing and bending over to be taken from behind, bucking rhythmically, driving back and forth, hands and mouths and feet and limbs from a score of bodies forming one copulating mass.

  His mother and father are the only people in the room wearing clothes, though even their clothing is slight, and they seem to be walking around and spectating. His mother crouches down to get a better view of two men fucking in one corner. His father pauses by a man with one woman on his face, one on his groin, leaning into each other and kissing while they grind their hips.

  Jack feels a surge of disgust and a flush of sexual desire, and he tries his hardest to turn around and flee back along that corridor of ancestors. But he cannot turn, he cannot flee, and as his parents both pull long, curved knives from their belts, he hears only disapproving sighs from those dusty portraits. Sighs, and a long low laugh from Margaret the witch.

  His mother grabs one of the rutting men by his long hair, lifts his head to expose his throat, and slashes it one with stroke of her knife. His body spasms and stiffens in death, and as his blood gushes and spurts, the man beneath him also spasms in ecstasy.

  His father drives his knife through a woman’s back, and it protrudes from her chest and slices into the other woman’s heart. The man beneath them seems unaware that their movements have ceased, and his own continue. Jack’s father helps, rocking the two dying, conjoined women back and forth.

  Someone cries out in joy.

  Another voice groans in pain, delight, or both.

  “Jack, you should join us,” his mother says. She’s staring at him, holding her bloodied blade tight against her own throat.

  “Yes, Jack,” his father says. “Don’t be a bad boy, now. Come along. Your family needs you.” He grins and steps over squirming bodies, coming for Jack, raising the knife which he has tugged from the women’s corpses.

  The two women are moving again, kissing once more, blood flowing from their wounds and spattering on the man still lying beneath them. Their eyes seem brighter than before—the kind of eyes that follow you around a room from a painting, or from memory—and their ecstasy rises to a shivering, tremulous crescendo.

  The man whose throat his mother cut is also moving again, driving into his companion with wild red abandon. They both climax and shout at the same time.

  Everyone in the ballroom let out a cry, and Jack’s own mouth falls open ready to echo their screams of pain and bliss with one of terror.

  “Listen to your mother, Jack,” his father says, and he is now close enough to reach out and open Jack up with his bloodstained knife, should he wish. “Join us forever.”

  For a moment, Jack could not open his eyes. His heart was thudding in his chest, skin damp with sweat, cooled by the early morning air breathing through an open window. Blood on my skin warm to cold and I’m painted in it covered in it and soon I’ll open my eyes to see. His erection was solid beneath the sheets, hard and heavy against his stomach. He panted, and with each exhalation he let out a slight groan.

  A hand touched his shoulder and he jumped, opened his eyes, and realised where he was.