"Please don't describe me as a 'horror legend.' I moved on from that." - Christopher Lee
Don't let him fool you, Christopher Lee is a horror legend.
He's been Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, Count Dooku, Saruman, Fu Manchu, and even Rasputin. He's fought Van Helsing, Gandalf, James Bond, and Anakin Skywalker, not to mention Gorgons, Aliens, Satanists, Witches, Gremlins, and a host of other baddies.
Over a period of seven decades, Lee grew from a humble background character in Hollywood to play in (at least) three of the most successful movie series of all time. After seeing far more real horror than he could stomach in WWII, he decided to go into acting, a field so distant from war that he'd never have to see death again. At least not the real kind.
He was excessively tall, not especially handsome, had a too-deep voice, and was otherwise not an ideal leading man, or so the casting directors of Hollywood said. He was only offered the role of the monster in "Curse of Frankenstein" because he was the tallest actor in the room. The film was a hit, and he was lucky enough to be cast in "Dracula" the following year. The rest is film history.
Starring in dozens of chilling films from Hammer and Amicus, he soon became one of the great icons of horror. Toward the end of his career, he took roles as the evil Saruman in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit series as well as Count Dooku in two of the Star Wars prequels, which popularized him with an entirely new generation of fans that couldn't get enough of his earlier work. We're here to look at his horror films. All of them.
This is not a Christopher Lee biography. What the book does do is go through each and every one of Lee's horror films, going through a complete synopsis, including spoilers and commentary. We'll look at Lee's array of characters shifting from monsters to victims and back again. We'll look at fifty-five horror films as well as seven important non-horror films that are significant in Lee's career.
"Every actor has to make terrible films from time to time, but the trick is never to be terrible in them." - Christopher Lee
