 "Vampire Circus" has been well received by modern critics, and currently holds an 80% approval rating on movie review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes.AllMovie called the film "one of the studio's more stylish and intelligent projects".PopMatters also called it "one of the company's last great classics", writing, "erotic, grotesque, chilling, bloody, suspenseful and loaded with doom and gloom atmosphere, this is the kind of experiment in terror that reinvigorates your love of the scary movie artform".