visit my homepage at http://judyharris.net/index.htm
or E-mail me at foosie@bestweb.net
The info in the table below is gleaned
from Christopher Lee's autobiography, TALL, DARK AND GRUESOME,
published in London by Victor Gollancz in 1997, updated from a
W.H. Allen version published in Great Britain in 1977.
After he was demobbed from his RAF service in 1947, he visited
his cousin Niccolo, Italy's first envoy to the Court of St.
James since the fall of Il Duce. When his cousin heard
his impersonations of his fellow RAF officers, he suggested
Lee try acting. He introduced Lee to Filippo del
Giudice, head of Two Cities Films with the Rank Organization,
who sent Lee to see David Henley and Olive Dodds at Rank's
London office. Lee was put on a seven-year contract,
with no previous acting credits or training, starting at ten
pounds a week, more than he had made at any of his civilian
jobs. Everyone immediately told him he was too tall to
be an actor, and later than he was too foreign looking.
Of the Rank "Charm School", Lee
wrote: "The Charm School at Highbury was a brave
idea, even a good idea. Learning acting techniques
takes at least ten years, and most of it can't be taught,
but that's no reason why a school shouldn't make a start.
... The Method acting was amazing. Each in turn we'd
hurl ourselves through a doorway and register horror, rage,
love or resignation at the sight of a pair of spectacles (teacher
Molly Terraine) in an otherwise bare room, simultaneously
declaiming 'That is a red cash register'. ... The
permutations were infinite. ... Most usefully [Lee] learned
a great deal about fencing on film from a first-class
performer, Patrick Crehan."
"The sharpest prong in the trident with
which Rank chivied [novice actors] towards perfection
was really the best. This was to send [them] down for
two, and sometimes several, weeks at a time to a theatre in
the coastal resort of Worthing for some real live stage
experience. ... The theatre was the Connaught, one of the
best half-dozen stock repertories in the region. ... All in
all [Lee] went through [his] paces with them twenty-seven
times. Many of the plays [he] began to forget as soon
as [he] stepped into the wings. Some were seared in
[his] mind indelibly. ... The first time [Lee] trod the
boards at the Connaught was as Roberto the butler in THE
CONSTANT NYMPH. [He] went on believing that to be an
actor you had to act. All the time.
Non-stop. [He] buttled unrelentingly, and stressed the
Italianate nature of the character at every opportunity,
throwing in some outbursts of "Madonna!" not in the
script. [He] acted everybody's else's part as well as
[his] own, and endorsed all their emotions. If someone
shed a furtive tear, [he] wept into [his] handkerchief, if
someone else laughed, [he] held [his] sides and
bellowed till [he] was puce. [Lee] upstaged everybody
and all but ruined the play. ... Gradually
with practice [Lee] disgraced [himself] less frequently."
"The dueling and the stunts were
arduous but exhilarating. It was fascinating to feel
the surge of adrenalin when the director called 'Action'
- enough to make oneself capable of throwing somebody
forty feet over a house. Except when that somebody had
a rush of blood and wanted to prove he was Hercules, the
duels were straight-forward affairs, only requiring infinite
patience and practice. There was great satisfaction in
getting them right. Even the swashers must work in the
end with a machine-like precision."
Lee "was more than happy to borrow the shoes of Chaney and Lugosi and Karloff and Rathbone and Veidt, considering the mileage of which they were capable and [his] fervid conviction that without exception these five men were among the most outstanding entertainment arts."
"The remake of a classic may be worth
everbody's while. The sequels rarely are. [Lee]
never had any sense of embarrassment over the first Dracula
nor The Face of Fu Manchu, where [he] featured as Sax
Rohmer's archvillain and deadliest of yellow perils.
Alas, in the follow-ups to both, there was much to make
[him] look shifty and suck [his] paws. Knowing this,
[Lee] nevertheless repeated each character many times
over. [He] did this because they were [his]
livelihood."
"Inevitably, audiences expected [Lee]
to expire in exquisite pain, or at least make an ambiguous
exit. If [he] survived, the watchers had the hideous
frisson of knowing that like a wounded animal in a cane
brake, [Lee] was bound to be more ferocious than before when
they came up with [him]. It had the makings of a cult
for buffs to see in how many ingenious new ways [Lee] could
dissolve, disintegrate, evaporate or turn to talcum before
their eyes."
"Bullets, daggers, paper-knives,
stakes, darts and lances were embedded in [him].
Poison, heart failure and old age attacked [him] from
within. [Lee] became dust - red, green or sooty.
[He] was drowned, asphyxiated and incinerated, and three
times when [he] was burnt, the barn or studio went up too."
"In fifty years the longest period that
[Lee] had been out of work was four months, and for [him] it
was like being stretched ... on a rack."
"The closest of [his] friends,
physically, was Boris Karloff. He lived next
door. When [they] came out of [their] houses
simultaneously, people expected to see body-bags dumped on
the pavement. ... He was a versatile actor, like Bela
Lugosi, with whom he'd often worked, and neither had the
opportunity to show it."
"Dracula casts a very long shadow."
[Others have played the role subsequently,] "but [Lee] is
still identified with him. [Lee] appeared before the
cameras in well over two hundred and fifty guises, but
apparently to little avail. Journalists still affect
to be dismayed at the chilling, gaunt figure [Lee] cuts as
[he] comes through the swing doors of some great hotel
they've chosen as an arena in which to bait [him]."
The films which mattered most to Lee were:
| Corridor
of Mirrors |
1948 |
Charles |
Director Terrence Young "got round
the difficulty" of Lee's being so tall by using him
in a scene where he "sat down a a table in a
night-club." Lee played Charles, "without a
surname, who sat with four other nondescripts played by
Lois Maxwell, Mavis Villiers, Hugh Latimer and John
Penrose" and his sole contribution "was to
comment on Eric Portman when he made his
appearance": "Take a look, standing in the
entrance - Lord Byron." ... "This took place at the
Pathe Studios at Buttes-chaumont in Paris. It was
bitterly cold, inside and out, for all the charcoal
braziers." Nobody had wised Lee up "to the usual
dodge of wearing a pullover beneath a shirt."
Director Young advised Lee, "Time enough to consider
Stanislavsky's Fourth Wall," when Lee "had the
experience to walk about the set without bumping into
the other three." |
|
| One Night
With You |
1948 |
Pirelli's
Assistant |
"Another crumb dropped off Terrence
Young's table. ... This time it was so minute as
to be almost invisible." Lee opened his mouth
"once only, to say 'Yes'." Otherwise, he "did
a lot of nodding, in unison with other members of
Charles Goldner's entourage. [Goldner] was very
funny and made the journey to Denham before dawn
worthwhile." |
|
| Hamlet |
1948 |
Spear Carrier |
This was also a one-word part, "but
the film itself had some prestige," being directed
by Laurence Olivier. Lee "was heard, but ... not
seen" shouting out "Lights!" while standing in the
dark. Olivier never spoke to Lee, but he had "time
to see him work and to study many other box-office draws
deploying their techniques before the cameras." |
|
| A Song
for Tomorrow |
1948 |
Auguste |
Lee "had another miniscule role as a
night-club MC." |
|
| Penny and
the Pownall Case |
1948 |
Jonathan Blair |
"An Ivory Production. Ivory was
an exotic name for the Charm School's own home
movies. Only the technicians, working with grim
self-control, were pros in the proper sense. Every
other function, from direction to walk-on parts, was
virtually up for grabs." Lee was "the lead in a B
feature, though Z feature would describe it more
accurately. As the wicked Johnathan Blair in this
thriller," Lee was "very saucy and madly
attractive. ... For the first time [Lee] died on
celluloid, ... shot by Ralph Michael. ... The
prop man put down enough smoke to cover a whole platoon
going in to the attack. There was a long pause
while [Lee] was enveloped in fog and the entire scene
disappeared from [his] view. ... Very, very slowly and
with immense dignity, and no expression at all on [his]
features, [Lee] sank to [his] knees like a telescope
into itself. Disgust and disbelief were writ large
on the faces of the technicians. ... From their sidelong
glances [Lee] detected a need to polish up [his] dying."
|
|
| Trottie
True a/k/a The Gay Lady |
1949 |
Hon. Bongo Icklesham |
Here, Lee "made the acquaintance of
Roger Moore, Jean Kent and Michael Medwin."
Lee had to show "savoir-faire" as a "stage-door
Johnnie." |
|
| Scott of
the Antarctic |
1948 |
Bernard Day |
After the above "trials, it was like
Christmas in Technicolor to be given a speaking part
with a name in the credits." Lee represented "Australian
Bernard Day who was in charge of the motor sleighs in
the Polar expedition." His role was doubled when
the production moved to Norway, but Lee "had the
intense satisfaction of working for Charles Frend in a
major film at Ealing. ... The
set was a full-sized ship leaving a harbour in New
Zealand. Among many curiosities was James
Robertson Justice as Petty Officer Evans, without a
beard because he had to regrow it en route to the
Pole. Jack Cardiff did the lighting and the
enormous banks of carbon arcs made an unbearable heat as
[the cast] trotted to and fro in furs from head to
foot. Then the blizzards came along to choke
[them], being made of salt and acrylic resin, minced in
a sieve and blown across the set by an aeroplane engine."
|
|
| Prelude
to Fame |
1950 |
Newsman |
Lee's "part in it was almost the
least important part about it, a reporter who has to sit
in the front row at a concert waiting to interview Guy
Rolfe as a brilliant conductor. ... The shooting
of the film presumed [Lee's] continuous, albeit silent,
attendance beneath Rolfe's baton," scuppering his
chances to rehearse the lead in the West End play THE FLAT
NEXT DOOR. |
|
| They Were
Not Divided |
1950 |
Chris Lewis |
Lee got "a trip to Germany with the
faithful Terence Young ... to play an officer in the
Guards ... in [this] mawkish film about Allied
co-operation." Lee played "a tank commander who
smoked a large number of cigars supposedly given him by
Eisenhower." Tank scenes were shot
on location at Gmund-Eifel, "still strewn
with live mines". After this film, Rank
declined to renew Lee's contract. |
|
| Captain
Horatio Hornblower, R.N. |
1951 |
Spanish Captain |
One-eyed director Raoul Walsh
interviewed Lee in a corridor at Denham, asking if he
could speak Spanish and use a sword. "A ship was
built at Denham and soon Jock Easton and all the stunt
men in England swarmed about the rigging. As a
Spanish captain who was outclassed by Hornblower but
refused to strike his colours, [Lee] had little to say,
and that little was in Spanish, but [he] did have a duel
with the hero (Gregory Peck)." Lee was
impressed that important Hollywood star Peck and his mate
Robert Beatty "automatically stood on either side of
the camera to give [Lee] an eyeline for [his] close shot."
|
|
| Hans
Christian Andersen Fairy Tales |
1952 |
Various Roles |
Hunting around for work after Rank
dropped him, Lee ventured to Scandinavia where he
participated in this series. "A Norwegian company
made the films. [Lee] was in five altogether over
two seasons. [His] parts were all different.
In one [he] was an ancient, playing chess with a very
young boy. In another, a student helping a lovely
but consumptive girl: Boheme style. In a
third, [he] was the peasant husband of a beauty, played
by Signe Hasso. No sets were necessary because the
Skansen Park reproduces houses in different styles over
the centuries. And nobody said a word about
[Lee's] being too English, too tall or too
unknown. For a TV half-hour the production of
Andersen's story The Nightingale was magnificent."
Lee played the Emperor. While on location for this
in the Chinese pavilion of the castle of Drottningholm,
Lee met the King and Queen of Norway. |
|
| Paul
Temple Returns a/k/a Bombay Waterfront |
1952 |
Sir Felix Raybourne |
Lee "was correctly suspected of
villainy in a thriller spun off a well-known radio
personage invented by Frances Durbridge." |
|
| Babes in
Bagdad |
1952 |
Slave Dealer |
"Shot by the Danziger brothers with
John Boles, Paulette Goddard and Gypsy Rose Lee ... in
Spain, where [Lee] met some stars of the bull ring." |
|
| The
Crimson Pirate |
1952 |
Joseph - Military Attache |
"Aide-de-camp to Baron Gruda, ...
most of it made out to sea off Ischia. ... Despite the
discomfort of wearing green velvet under the
Mediterranean sun, [Lee] was delighted to come up
resplendent as the waves." Director
Robert Siodmak "took stock of the material in
forty-eight hours and turned it into a comedy."
Star Burt Lancaster "taught [Lee] a lot about screen
fighting, and how to make something of a duel so that it
is not just a flurry of movement; how to cheat,
exaggerate the sweeps and time the pauses." |
|
| Moulin
Rouge |
1952 |
Georges Seurat |
"Just be yourself,' John Huston
advised" in this Parisian production. |
|
| Innocents
in Paris |
1953 |
Lieutenant Whitlock |
Lee stayed on in Paris for a cameo as "a
feeble and fussy officer in charge of a Marine band." |
|
| The
Mirror and Markheim |
1954 |
Visitant |
A movie for TV directed by Orson Welles
"based on a pungent story by R.L. Stevenson"
with Lee as the Visitant or Devil. "Undoubtedly a
work of genius, nobody had seen it. ... The
notion was of a play within a play, in which a repertory
company step in and out of their roles in the story of
Moby Dick ... shot as a movie in three London theatres,
notably the Hackney Empire", the cast included
"talented newcomers like Joan Plowright and Kenneth
Williams in small parts. Patrick McGoohan was the
Mate. [Lee] played Mr. Flask the second mate and
Welles himself played Ahab." |
|
| Aggie
a/k/a The Adventures of Aggie |
1956 |
Inspector John Hollis |
Directed under a pseudonym by Joseph
Losey "shot at Walton-on-Thames". |
|
| Douglas
Fairbanks Presents a/k/a Rheingold Theatre |
1953-1956 |
Various |
Lee appeared in 11 [according to imdb,
20 according to Lee] episodes of this 156- episode
half-hour anthology series. "Their
stories included Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Germans,
Russians, Swedes and Italians and almost by default, a
few Englishmen. [Lee's] peculiar accent as an
Italian on a desert island made Douglas laugh in the
read-through and opened the gate for [him]. It led
to the kind of experience actors dream about. They
were half-hour movies made -- each in about ten days --
in the British National Studios at Boreham Wood.
[Lee] was successively a Swedish circus proprietor, a
Russian lion-tamer with a clawed face, an American
leading people to safety through the lines in the war, a
Moroccan pimp, a half-witted Yugoslav soldier in a
Dalmatian Laurel-and-Hardy act, a Mongol of the People's
Army and many other descendents of Babel. Of the
twenty in which [Lee] appeared, moving gradually from
support to lead parts, Douglas himself was in four or
five. One of the first was The Triangle.
Here [Lee] fought in the dueling ritual of the Mensur,
as practiced by the students in old Heidelberg".
... There was the great occasion when Buster
Keaton flew from America to Britain to do Gogol's
Overcoat (The
Awakening, 1954). Lee "dubbed in Malay
pidgin, and Japanese English, and Soho Italian, and
Detroit Swedish ...Altogether it's impossible ... to
overestimate the help that the Douglas Fairbanks jobs
gave to [Lee's] professional grammar. They led
directly to only one role in films": Police Dog. |
|
| Monsieur
Hulot's Holiday |
1953 |
English dubbing |
"Sometimes all the dubbers were [Lee]
and [he] came on in a single file. ... Luckily for
[Lee] there wasn't a great deal of dialogue in the whole
of Hulot, but there were testing moments, notably when
an elderly couple potter through the shallows on the
beach: the old lady picks up shells muttering
enthusiastically, while her bored husband accepts them
with a Gallic grunt and discards them contemptuously
behind her back." |
|
| At
Night All Cats Are Grey episode of Colonel March of
Scotland Yard |
1954 |
Monsieur Jean-Pierre |
Lee met Boris Karloff "at Southhall
Studios, he was in his middle sixties and had been
famous for a quarter of a century as the creator of
festering souls in hideous shape. ... It did not bother
him that he had become typecast. Types, he said,
are continually in work. ... There was a lot,
however, to be learned from Boris in the way of sheer
technique, and his observations on how to survive under
heavy monster make-up were extremely interesting. ... If
I had a type at that time, I was cast right against it,
in the character of a fruitily effeminate French
designer. |
|
| Police
Dog |
1955 |
Johnny, a Constable |
Lee played "a dog handler frightened
of dogs." |
|
| That Lady |
1955 |
Captain |
"Terence Young almost did for me
altogether. He who got me out of trouble so often
almost polished me off ... with the help of water. ...
The film was made in Segovia, the lovely old university
town of Salamanca, and Madrid, especially the banks of
the Guadalquivir. According to [Lee's] contract,
[he] was to play the Captain of the Guard and other
parts. The underlined phrase kept [him] busy
from dawn till dusk practically every day [he] was in
Spain." Lee played "masked
assassins lurking in the Salamancan night, devious
grooms in Segovia, and mad riders on Arab horses going
at full tilt by the river. [He] fought with swords
against the Spanish Olympic sabre champion and also
against Gilbert Roland. ... The horse [Lee] was on had
never worked before a camera and shied [him] off.
[Lee] nearly drowned." Paul Scofield played
Philip II of Spain in his first film. Lee
had a long scene with Olivia de Havilland but "what
came out on the screen was the back of my head and a
full treatment of her reacting." |
|
| The Dark
Avenger |
1955 |
French Patrol Captain at Tavern |
Lee "was savaged by Errol Flynn. ...
In that film [Lee] was an officer in charge of French
soldiers, required to interfere with Errol's
plans. [He and Flynn] had enormous broadswords,
but [Flynn] was encased in gloves and [Lee] had bare
hands. It was a four-and-a-half-minute duel, in
which [Lee] mainly fought [Flynn's] double, ... falling
in the fireplace, up and down stairs, breaking up the
furniture and getting some of it back in [Lee's]
face. Errol threw himself
into the fray like a giant refreshed, ... but he slipped
and with the maximum possible zing struck [Lee] a shrewd
blow on the little finger of [Lee's] right hand and
nearly cut through it. ... The finger
was bound up and [they] set to again, but it remained
bent, for ever." |
|
| Cross-Roads |
1955 |
Harry Cooper |
"Cross-Roads gave [Lee] an uneasy
spasm, because [he] was reported to Equity for
misbehavior and sent home in the middle of
shooting. [Lee's] offense was to have laughed
hysterically at a joke told ... by Ferdy Mayne. |
|
| The
Cockleshell Heroes |
1955 |
Submarine Commander Alan Grieves |
Made in Portugal because the submarines
were "the only ones antiquated enough to suit the
period of the film." |
|
| Alias
John Preston |
1955 |
John Preston |
Technically, Lee's first leading
role, as a mad businessman who goes off his
chump, beginning at the top of a table and finishing
over a tombstone. For this, [Lee] was paid
the handsome and by no means atypical Danziger fee of
seventy-five pounds." |
|
| The
Elusive Chauvelin episode of The Scarlet Pimpernel |
1956 |
Louis Longval |
Lee played "Longval as more aristo
than the aristos, more Catholic than the Pope. ...
[Lee] thought ... that the Devil should be given his due
by an actor, in whatever guise he pops up, and audiences
like a cultivated air in a killer." . |
|
| Sailor of
Fortune |
1956 |
2 episodes |
Lee "played an officer of the Foreign
Legion as [he'd] met them [himself] in the desert.
... In another, [Lee] had to do a five-minute rant, full
of fanaticism and foam, working up to a screaming
climax, as a mad Arab who meant to be another
Muhammad. At the end [he] collapsed against the
tentpole from sheer exhaustion. That was at
Beaconsfield with desert by courtesy of Egham sandpits. |
|
| Port
Afrique |
1956 |
Franz Vermes |
"The setting for Port Afrique
was Ceuta in Spanish Morocco - sordid, verging on
squalid. Again [Lee's] direct contribution to the
story was slight. As Franz Vermes the artist, an
innocent suspect of a murder charge, [Lee] was required
to paint a picture in [his] lovely house on the hill
over looking the harbour. There was a howling gale
at the time which made painting impossible."
The production moved to the capital Tetouan, where there
was a bit of a terrorist problem, "and Arab political
and religious murders were daily occurrences." Lee
was rooming with Anthony Newley, who played Pedro in the
film, and was singing in the shower; "on the spur of
the moment I played a cruel practical joke on him,
pretending to be two Arab voices whispering in the
room. The singing stopped, [Newley's] quavering
voice told [Lee] that he was suffering. |
|
| Private's
Progress |
1956 |
Major Schultz |
Lee's "only strong moment as a German
officer awaiting trial for war crimes was when [he] took
cyanide and cheated the gallows." |
|
| The
Battle of the River Plate a/k/a Pursuit of the Graf Spee |
1956 |
Manolo |
Lee "spoke nothing but Spanish as the
owner of a waterfront cafe in Montevideo." |
|
| Beyond
Mombasa |
1956 |
Gil Rossi |
"Another film that took [Lee] to
Africa -- Kenya -- raised the highest hopes ... of a
personal breakthrough. George Marshall ... gave
[him] [his] first big part, as a white hunter."
... Lee "was called upon to do a full
fall into an opencast mine. The only double they
could find ... tall enough was a Kenyan policeman who
flatly refused to do it. It wasn't a sheer drop,
but there was a slide of forty feet or so. The
plot had [Lee] get shot in the back with a poison dart,
and slither and tumble to perdition. In the
excitement of doing it at all, [Lee] forgot to mime the
moment of receiving the dart, [and the director had
him do it again]. On the second take, [Lee]
ripped [himself] from wrist to shoulder on a jutting
outcrop of quartz. ... In one scene in the river, in
which [Lee] was shot, [he] had a temperature of 103
degrees from a spasm of malaria ... and [Lee] had still
to confront a mechanical crocodile in the studios of
MGM It was programmed in its vicious metal innards
to behave just as nastily as its saurian comrades out
near Mombasa. The wretched thing churned along at
such a pace that it knocked [Lee] to the bottom of the
tank, and carved [him] up with its wires and nuts and
bolts and tin flippers." The film's lack of
success "was a grievous disappointment" to Lee. |
|
| The Errol
Flynn Theatre |
1956-1957 |
Various Roles |
Imdb lists 4 episodes with Lee of this 26-episode 30 minute TV series. Lee remembers a rematch "with rapiers. ... [Lee] was a sort of Heydrich of the Revolution Robespierre and Fouquier Tinville and Camille Desmoulins and Danton, all rolled into one. .. In the first rehearsal [Lee] had to do something virtually impossible. That was to cut at [Flynn's] head and, when he ducked, pass [Lee's] sword through all six flames lit on a candelabra behind [Flynn] in such a way as to make them all go out. ... through some miracle far harder to perform than spoon-bending, [Lee] sideswiped the branched candlestick with complete success. The only trouble was that on the take [Lee] removed [Flynn's] wig at the same time. ... In another Flynn Theatre story, the whole series being based on classic stories, they altered the end of the Maupassant story Love Token ... [so that] John van Eyssen as the lover crashed out through the bricks with a great roar and lo, we were once more straight into swordplay." | |
| Assignment
Foreign Legion |
1956-1957 |
2 episodes |
In one of those tales, As We
Forgive [Lee] was a homicidal French gardener
with a large walrus mustache and a limp who tended
graves in a churchyard. In another, The Anaya
[Lee] played an officer of the Foreign Legion as [he'd]
met them [himself] in the desert. |
|
| The Lady's
Dilemma episode of The Gay Cavalier |
1957 |
Colonel Jeffries |
"Fighting with Christian Marquand was
something else again. Not only was he left-handed,
and reveled in his southpaw dexterity with great
smoothness in rehearsal, but he was taken over by
another personality altogether as soon as the director
cried "Take One - Action!" It was then the real
thing. He interspersed the blows he'd agreed to in
rehearsal with a few delivered from capricious
directions of his own selection. It was like
fighting a human windmill, and literally fighting for
one's life in front of the camera." |
|
| The
Accursed a/k/a The Traitor |
1957 |
Doctor Neumann |
Another Danziger film, Donald Wolfit's
screen debut. Lee played "a German
Jewish doctor." |
|
| Ill Met
by Moonlight a/k/a Night Ambush |
1957 |
German Officer at Dentists |
Lee "spoke only German, to Dirk
Bogarde in a dentist's chair, and was penalized for
being a German SS officer by being shot at his feet and
also, perhaps, by being cut from some versions of the
film." |
|
| Fortune
is a Woman a/k/a She Played With Fire |
1957 |
Charles Highbury |
Lee played "an idiot Welsh opera
singer suspected of murder." He mimed "to
a record which was rather wounding (Lee being an
opera singer himself) the largo al factotum from The
Barber of Seville." |
|
| The Truth
About Women |
1957 |
Francois Thiers |
Lee "had a damn good cameo as the
cuckold in a French farce sequence with Eva Gabor as
[his] wife, and Laurence Harvey as the lover whom [Lee]
interrupts after doing calisthenics on the veranda, for
which [Lee] was penalized by being shot in a duel.
That was a Betty Box comedy which [Lee] enjoyed",
made at Shepperton. |
|
| Bitter
Victory |
1957 |
Sergeant Barney |
"Bitter Victory was utter chaos,
though made by another brilliant director, Nicholas
Ray. The story was about a commando unit being
parachuted behind the lines in the desert. ... [Lee] was
greatly attracted by the invitation to work in Libya and
the chance to see again the fantastic changing beauties
of the sands." The cast included Richard
Burton and Curt Jurgens. "Everybody
(except the stars) got a part they either did not want,
or somebody else coveted more than they did. ... [Lee]
was in none too agreeable a mood after being told, as
Sergeant Barney of the Guards, 'not to bring all this
British Army nonsense into it.'" |
|
| The Curse
of Frankenstein |
1957 |
The Creature |
"From the time we met on
the set of The Curse of Frankenstein at Bray, Peter
Cushing and I were friends. Our very first
encounter began with me storming into his
dressing-room and announcing in petulant tones, "I
haven't got any lines! " He looked up, his mouth
twitched and he said drily, "You're lucky.
I've read the script."... I soon found Peter was the
great perfectionist, who learned not only his own
lines but everybody else's as well, but withal had a
gentle humour which made it quite impossible for
anybody to be pompous in his company. ...
Generally when I was fully encased in bandages I
preferred to go in and harass Peter, singing opera
to him through the crevices, and performing
soft-shoe shuffles with him before the blank screen
while we all waited for the rushes to come up.
The whole set was very small, a tiny grotto under
the office of the producer. ... The atmosphere of
the unit was the happiest I'd ever worked in.
Even the food was out of this world, ...[although
the] make-up made it very hard for
[Lee] to eat it. [He] had to subsist on mash
and mince and spinach and drink through a straw. ...
Playing the Creature taught [him] to appreciate just
how great the skill was that Boris had used in
creating his Monster. ... [Lee] decided that [his]
hands must have an independent life, and that [his]
movements must be spastic and unbalanced. It
was absorbing work. [Lee] was never so
content. The five weeks of the schedule flowed
by, plus a sixth. ... Naturally disaster-prone,
[Lee] had those crises which make an insurance
company blench. In the first of these the
Creature was shot in the eye. [Lee] had blood
in the palm of [his] hand, the viscous, acrid stuff
Hammer facetiously called Kensington Gore, and had
to smack it up in [his] face and then take [his]
hand away. It got into [his] eye. It was
excruciating. [Lee] shrieked with the shock
and the pain of it. [He] couldn't see
anything. |
|
| Operation
Firefly episode of O.S.S. |
1958 |
Dessinger |
Lee portrayed "a ruthless
SS leader modeled on the Butcher of Czechoslovakia,
Reinhard Heydrich." [Lee] called upon his wartime
experiences to portray this character. ...
Naturally [Lee] could only expect a bloody ending in
that." |
|
| This Hungry
Hell episode of White Hunter |
1958 |
Mark Caldwell |
Lee played "an unethical rival in
league with slave traders ... bowled over by a huge
stuffed lion and after writhing about for a few seconds
was pronounced dead. ... [Lee] grumbled a bit about the
violence with which this thing was thrown at [him] and
how [he'd] been badly bruised and almost suffocated by
its massive weight and of course everybody present was
put in a high good humor by [his] discomfort." |
|
| The German
Knight episode of Ivanhoe |
1958 |
Sir Otto from the Rhine |
[The cast] "were using claymores, in
Ivanhoe, when [Lee] was brought in as a sort of medieval
hit man, a massive German knight swathed in chain-mail,
to destroy the regular hero Roger Moore. [They]
hacked away with broadswords in a field for hours on
end, under a hot sun. |
|
| A Tale of
Two Cities |
1958 |
Marquis St. Evremonde |
"To offset the bemusingly sudden
identification with horror [Frankenstein], [Lee]
sought and obtained a part in the remake of another
classic. ... This was a top-level swank villain, the
Marquis de St. Evremonde, who was offhand and ruthless
with peasants and paid for his sins with a knife in his
chest while sleeping. ... It was an undemanding
part, but a magnificent showcase. It was shot in
Bourges and ... the cast was solid gold: Dirk
Bogarde, Dorothy Tutin, Paul Guers, Rosalie Crutchley,
Donald Pleasance, Athene Seyler. ... And a neighbor, the
photographer Tony Armstrong-Jones took some mesmerizing
glossy stills of [Lee] in the course of a magazine
assignment. |
|
| Dracula
a/k/a Horror of Dracula |
1958 |
Count Dracula |
"It was the one that made the
difference. It brought [Lee] a name, a fan club
and a second-hand car, for all of which [he] was
grateful. ... [Lee] deliberately chose not to [see
the Bela Lugosi film] to avoid being influenced. ...
[He] decided that [his] source would be Bram Stoker's
novel, and [he] read it twice. It was about a
vampire not at all like [him] in physical character, but
there were aspects of him with which [Lee] could readily
identify -- his extraordinary stillness, punctuated by
bouts of manic energy with feats of strength belying his
appearances; his power complex; the quality of being
done for but undead; and by no means least the fact that
he was an embarrassing member of a great and noble
family. Naturally, [the production] did not follow
the book exactly. That was never done. ... We
hadn't the money. The whole thing cost eighty-two
thousand pounds which would not stretch, for instance,
to a shipwreck. ... The same wonderful back-up
Hammer team officiated ... And the real star of the
picture, who could make sow's ears out of silk purses
and vice versa, was the art director, Bernard
Robinson. On this occasional [Lee's] mishaps were
the consequence of the contact lenses designed to give a
blood-red effect. They irritated [his] eyes so
that [he] wept copiously, which was utterly out of
character for the heartless Count. Furthermore,
they hindered [him] seeing where [he] was going, so [he]
was constantly crashing into people and falling over
things. ... The final sequence was a contrivance of
genius by the writer Jimmy Sangster, brilliantly shot in
one day by Jack Asher. Flapping about like a bat,
pinned by a shaft of sunlight, [Lee] disintegrated into
dust. There were many stages in the process. ...
It was almost an honor to be so ably pulverized."
Lee's pay for the film was 750 BPS. He was able
to afford a used Mercedes. "The film
is said eventually to have grossed something like
twenty-five million dollars. ... The profit/cost ratio
was higher than for any other British picture ever made." |
|
| Corridors
of Blood |
1958 |
Resurrection Joe |
Production of this was interrupted while
Lee and Cushing flew to New York for a midnight showing of
Dracula. There was a billboard of Lee "several
stories high -- some fifty feet of blood-thirsty Count
holding a girl in his/my arms -- on a building beside
the cinema in Times Square. |
|
| Missiles
from Hell a/k/a Battle of the V-1 |
1958 |
Brunner |
"Made near Brighton", Lee called
this "a no-account picture", in
which he "played the part of an SS officer, an
out-and-out baddie who has his head crushed by the hero
with a rock, and had swaggered about a good deal in the
full rig of an oppressor. The uniform caused great
alarm to the citizens of Hove." |
|
| The Manhunt
episode of William Tell |
1959 |
Prince Erik |
Lee was "another sort of aristocratic
killer. ... [His] portion as Duke Erik was to hunt
people with hounds, like Zaroff in The Most Dangerous
Game. Having provoked a certain meed of hatred
from the audience, Mad Duke Erik ended his wicked career
by stopping a bolt from Tell's crossbow." The
Mad Duke's "slavering hounds ... were actually bassets,
shorter in the leg than the average canine terror.
Even made up, they still looked no more likely to tear
your throat out than a couple of amiable beagles.
But they were extraordinarily strong. At one point
in [the] helter-skelter chase they veered off-course" --
... and before Lee "could check them they'd
hauled [him] through a bush and a hedge. [Lee]
hadn't the presence of mind to let go until it was too
late and emerged the other side cut and bruised and
[his] thighs as full of sharp spines as a pincushion." |
|
| The Mummy |
1959 |
Kharis/The Mummy |
"One could only breathe through the
holes in the eyes. ... What a dear man Peter Cushing was
and how fortunate [Lee] was to be teamed with him, how
he was the only actor [Lee had] ever known to keep
eighteen props in action a once, ... who could tear off
a piece of paper, light his pipe, look out of a window,
and remove his shoes, all while reeling off his lines.
... [Lee had] been most horribly bruised and
battered and bashed in this film, bursting through real
glass windows, and a door that someone had bolted from
the inside without telling [him] so that [Lee had]
almost dislocated [his] shoulder, and had had explosive
charges detonated on plates set within [his] bandages,
to give the illusion of ... being peppered with a
shotgun," |
|
| The Hound
of the Baskervilles |
1959 |
Sir Henry |
"One of Hammer's best
money-spinners. As Sherlock Holmes, Peter Cushing
was wonderful. There was villainy from the Hammer
regular villain, Francis de Wolff, and comic relief from
the regular Hammer comic, Miles Malleson. ...
Spiders head [Lee's] list of fearsome things This
one was a ghastly bird-eating spider from South
America. ..It was not at ease in the studio and
shed its entire skin the floor. ... [Lee] said [he]
hated the thing [and] wouldn't have it on [his]
neck. A compromise was agreed whereby it only
strolled on [his] arm and shoulder. This was
enough to turn [Lee] green with nausea. The
realism of [his] performance was universally
commended. The dog was not at all realistic.
... He was a Great Dane called Colonel, ... so amiable
... that he was a non-starter as a hound of hell. ... He
stood a great deal of vexatious treatment from everybody
without a bleat until suddenly, .... he lost his cool
and hurled himself" on Lee, biting him through the
arm. |
|
| Uncle Was
a Vampire a/k/a Tempi Duri per i Vampiri |
1959 |
Baron Roderico da Frankurten |
"A slavish parody of a success. ...
The result was fairly jolly. The pint-sized
Italian comedian Renata Rascel [costarred], and the
contrast between [them] was very amusing. It was
directed by Steno in the castle of the blond giant
Prince Livio Odescalchi on Lake Braccinao. ...
[Lee] declined to be Dracula, but played a baron vampire
in similar apparel -- played him straight in comic
situations. |
|
| Pedigree episode of Tales of the Vikings | 1959 |
Lord Roderick |
Lee appeared in an episode of this Kirk
Douglas-produced TV series for the chance to work with
Wilfred Lawson about a bull as a symbol of concord between
William the Conqueror and Norway. Lee
played "the
Norman tyrant" with Lawson cast as the Saxon. |
|
| City of
the Dead a/k/a Horror Hotel |
1960 |
Alan Driscoll |
Lee was "burnt to death in a monk's
robe as a Satanist in an American Gothic with a
Lovecraftian flavor." |
|
| Too Hot
to Handle a/k/a Playgirl After Dark |
1960 |
Novak |
"Made in an alternative version for
those who preferred Jayne Mansfield with her nipples
painted out." |
|
| Two Faces
of Dr. Jekyll/House of Fright |
1960 |
Paul Allen |
Lee played "a cad strangled by a
python." |
|
| The Sorcerer
episode of Alcoa Presents One Step Beyond |
1961 |
Wilhelm Reitlinger |
Lee was "cast as a Nazi officer ...
[in] a far-fetched story about [Lee] as a far-fetched
murderer, literally magicked eighty miles or so through
thick walls, providing the perfect alibi, but much less
painful than most of the crashing through walls that
melodrama usually demands." |
|
| The
Terror of the Tongs |
1961 |
Chung King |
Lee "tended to limit [himself] to
speaking Cantonese. |
|
| Taste of
Fear/Scream of Fear |
1961 |
Dr, Pierre Gerrard |
"Directed by Seth Holt,
ex-cutter and one of the best British directors
ever. the film was nearly Hammer's best. ... Jimmy
Sangster wrote a strong story ... and [Lee] had a
goody's part, as a family doctor with a French accent." |
|
| The
Devil's Daffodil |
1961 |
Ling Chu |
Lee's part was "a Chinese detective
called Ling Chu in this thriller by Edgar Wallace.
... Contriving a Chinese accent when [he] spoke
the German lines was a new problem. Being fluent
in German, [Lee's new wife] Gitte was able to
harken to me, though naturally the Chinese aspect was
new to her as well. |
|
| Hercules
in the Haunted World a/k/a Ercole al Centro della Terra |
1961 |
King Lico |
Made with Reg 'Mr. Universe' Park as
Hercules, and Lee as "the Satanic monarch of the
earth's core, Lico of Ecalia, who turned to flame at the
end and disappeared. The posters billed [Lee] with
Dracula fangs, borrowed by the artist from some other
film [he had been] in, not unconnected with vampires." Director
Mario Bava "looked like Toto and mugged before the
camera before saying 'Cut!'" |
|
| Pirates
of Blood River |
1962 |
Captain LaRoche |
"One of the top ten money-spinners of
the year. ... Pirates was a fearsome film to work on.
... Black Park near Pinewood looked most
appetizing. It was a cruel deception.
In the middle of the park was a lake more stagnant and
polluted than anything in Poe and through this filth and
the hazards of sharp underwater obstacles [Lee], as the
pirate captain LaRoche, had to lead[his] piratical stars
and a cohort of piratical stuntmen. The ooze and
the sludge and the stench were appalling. Poor
Oliver Reed's eyes were so badly affected that he had to
be treated in hospital." Lee's height
helped but "was offset by seaboots which filled and
made walking right across an immense muscle-racking
strain." |
|
| Secret of
the Red Orchid a/k/a Das Rasel der Roten
Orchidee |
1962 |
Captain Allerman |
Lee played "an FBI agent hunting
gangs moved from American to London and fell out with
the director openly ... because he struck [Lee] as a
throwback to the manners of the totalitarian
state. Furthermore, he criticized [Lee's]
American-German accent." |
|
| The
Devil's Agent |
1962 |
Baron Ferdi von Staub |
"An Irish venture" with "German
money behind it, ... made in England," including "Peter
Cushing in the cast" (although Lee never met him). |
|
| Sherlock
Holmes and the Deadly Necklace a/k/a Sherlock Holmes und
das Halsband des Todes |
1962 |
Sherlock Holmes |
"Made in Spandau, with some location
shots in Ireland. ... Terrence Fisher was over to
direct, and a brilliant replica of 221B Baker Street was
made on a German stage with everything so much in its
place that Holmes's redoubtable housekeeper wouldn't
have been able to fault it. Thorley Walters made
an excellent Watson. ... [Lee] looked like [Holmes
and] was naturally brusque. The production were
backed by many eminent German actors. And the sum
of it all was a mess. The sound was unusable, ...
they dubbed even the English version. The music
was awful, a jazzed-up anachronism." |
|
| Katarsis |
1963 |
Mephistopheles |
"Back to the Odescalchi Castle and
Lake Braccino near Rome and characters spawned by
Dracula." The film was "very
hard for those involved to follow. It seemed to be
about drop-outs who find an old man in a castle, who
turns into the Devil and seizes them. ... In an
effort to find itself, the film forked into two films,
the sequel being Faust '63. [Lee] was Faust
in the first and Mephistopheles in the other, which must
have confused the people with the strength to see both." |
|
| The Whip
and the Body a/k/a La Frusta e il Corpo |
1963 |
Kurt Menliff |
"Back to the wonderful Mario Bava.
... The thrills here depended largely on white flesh and
whips and the uses made of them by me, as the Byronic
Kurt Menliff, in the imagination of the astonishingly
lovely Daliah Lavi. |
|
| Horror
Castle a/k/a La Vergine de Norimberga |
1963 |
Erich |
Lee played "a scarred SS man, ...
where the leading female presence was of the Iron
Maiden. As [his] adored master, a tortured SS
general who'd been turned into a living skull, the
Yugoslav Mirco Valentin went through extraordinary
tortures in make-up. It was quite relaxing, for
once, to be able to look at somebody else getting the
sticky end of the wedge." |
|
| The
Devil-Ship Pirates |
1964 |
Captain Robeles |
"On this pirate lark it was
understood [his] boots stayed dry. [Lee] was
Captain Robeles, a satanic privateer with no redeeming
features. A full sized galleon was mounted on
sub-surface cast-iron blocks in the reservoir by Egham
sandpits. ... The mighty vessel rode there proudly
until the launching of the tea-boat. ... All hands
flocked for their cuppa. Their combined weight,
added to the trolley, capsized the ship. As she
turned, the technicians and carpenters were hurled into
the scummy, inky water. ... [Lee] saved the
continuity girl's typewriter. The whole structure
took several days to right, so that it could be blown up
at the end in a glorious holocaust. [Lee] died
nastily, shot dead among flaming rigging, and as a
bonus, [his] wig caught fire." |
|
| The Gorgon | 1964 |
Prof. Karl Meister |
"A fine cast made it a promising
proposition, and [Lee] was a saintly Einstein
figure. Alas, like the amiable hound of hell who
was meant to fray the nerves of the Baskervilles, the
Gorgon in question wouldn't have thrown a scare into
anyone. ... She was a sad anticlimax. Patently the
snakes in her wig were being run by a remote hand with
an electrical kit." |
|
| Crypt of
the Vampire a/k/a Maledizione dei Karnstein |
1964 |
Count Ludwig Karnstein |
"A confection of elements of Le
Fanu's Carmilla, and here it was [Lee's] pleasure to be
Count Ludwig von Karnstein, the noble father of a brood
of lesbian vampires." |
|
| Castle of
the Living Dead a/k/a Castello dei Morti Vivi |
1964 |
Count Drago |
"Another newcomer to the scene was
the Canadian Donald Sutherland, who in the same film was
at once very funny as a policeman and very scary as a
witch. Fellini's cameraman Tonti was there,
waving his stick at everybody. The doomed and
clever young Michael Reeves was all the assistants from
first to fifth. [Lee] was something called Count
Drago and [the cast] spent much of [their] working time
in a shivery garden replete with statues of gods and
demons." Producer Paul Maslansky lost
the sound for the entire film and the continuity girl
never wrote anything down. |
|
| The Sign
of Satan episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour |
1964 |
Count Jorla |
Lee was loathe to leave his family in
Switzerland to fly to Hollywood for this prestigious
series, because his wife had given birth only 12 weeks
prior, and his daughter had a severe handicap with her
legs. He had never experienced fear of flying prior
to this, but because of the reluctance to leave, he became
"filled with an absolute horror of flying, ... gripped
by a phobia which was never to leave [him] again."
While in the makeup chair there, he met one of his
idols, Groucho Marx. The episode was
written by Robert Bloch, based on his story Return to the
Sabbath. "It was about an American producer in
search of an actor to play in a macabre film. One
day he sees the man he wants in a piece of film about a
Black Mass. So he tells his henchmen to get him
over to play the lead. They get the actor, but the
fellow won't collaborate on publicity Every day he
comes to work, and at the end disappears again to hole
up incognito. The reason is that the Black Mass
clip was the genuine article and the coven are after his
blood." Lee did not meet Bloch but
met Ray Bradbury at work in his basement; "he said he
wanted [Lee] to play Mr. Dark, in Something Wicked This
Way Comes. That never came about, but [Lee] did
get Leviathan
99 - his SF version of Moby Dick, on to the radio
airwaves and played the Ahab figure in it." |
|
| Dr.
Terror's House of Horrors |
1965 |
Franklyn Marsh |
"Directed by a first-rate
cameraman, Freddie Frances." Lee appeared
in The Disappearing Hand story of this portmanteau
film. |
|
| The Face
of Fu Manchu |
1965 |
Fu Manchu |
The production "went to Ireland. ...
The author's widow went too, and told [Lee that he]
exactly resembled the man her husband had seen one night
in foggy Limehouse, a tall and imposing Oriental,
getting out of a Rolls with an elegant half-caste girl,
who had given him the idea of the book. North of
Beijing ... the Chinese are often as tall as
Texans. The conditions were execrable. The
weather was bleak and miserable. Everyone on the
unit was croaking under the impact of flu. ...
[The production] worked in a number of ramshackle,
dilapidated dwellings abandoned by their occupants and
the water ran all the time down the walls. [They]
worked also in Kilmainham Gaol." For his
execution scene, Lee "lay in thin robes on the freezing
ground with [his] throat upturned, to give an extra
frisson. ... The makeup for Fu Manchu was
extremely complicated. It took two and a half
hours to put on and left [Lee] extremely
uncomfortable. [His] features were rendered
immobile - [he] had only [his] eyes left with which to
act. And at that, [his] eyelids were fixed
and [he] was unable to blink. ... The picture did
well. In America it was called Chop-suey
Bond. Once again tall posters of [Lee] appeared on
the walls in New York. ... On polling day, Fu Manchu
scored a considerable write-in vote. |
|
| She |
1965 |
Billali |
Lee and family departed Switzerland and
returned to London, where Boris Karloff was a near
neighbor. He "got the part of Ayesha's high
priest, Billali ... for the old gang, Hammer She
was a perfectly happy film. Ursula Andress was
charming. ... There was a scene on an extremely large
set of a throne room where [Lee] stood while Roman
soldiers, obedient to the tyrant, flung endless
quantities of victims through a hole in the floor to the
flames beneath" during which Lee experienced
claustrophobia. He ran off the set, without pausing
to make any excuse. He walked in the rain until the
"hideous threat dissolved in the downpour" and
then returned to the set. Lee "had a violent
fight with John Richardson in the story, and he thrust a
torch into [Lee's] face, causing [him] to look like Al
Jolson. ... [Lee] died to the best of [his]
ability. It was like old times. |
|
| The Skull |
1965 |
Sir Matthew Phillips |
"Based on a better story because it
was by Robert Bloch. [Lee's] lines were few,
however, and not Bloch's." |
|
| The
Brides of Fu Manchu |
1966 |
Fu Manchu |
"Brides of Fu Manchu was tosh,
in which an extravagant publicity stunt almost sank the
picture." Lee toured European
countries choosing a national beauty contest winner from
each, who were not allowed to speak in the film as they
were not members of Equity. |
|
| Rasputin:
the Mad Monk |
1966 |
Rasputin |
Lee felt this deserved to be a
success. "Healer and rapist, peasant and seer,
Rasputin was a legendary enigma, a real actor's part,
one of the best [Lee had] had. From a mass of
conflicting evidence, [he] tried to convey inspired
wisdom and grotesque appetites. And [he] had a
long-drawn-out, exquisite death to get [his] teeth
into." Lee met Rasputin's daughter Maria in
1976, and she told him he had her father's expression. |
|
| Dracula:
Prince of Darkness |
1966 |
Dracula |
Lee "never said a word. [He]
hissed, [he] spat, [he] snarled, but no word escaped
[his] ruby lips." Lee had realized that "it was
impossible to write convincing lines" so "rather
than say the lines written down, [he] said
nothing. ... The death prescribed ... was still a
memorable piece of shooting. It was based on the
superstition that vampires expire if they try to cross
running water." Lee "had to slide down a
piece of wood on a hinge, painted white to look like
ice, and disappear through the crack into a watery
grave. But there was a malfunction." Lee
got stuck and his stunt double Eddie Powell was trapped
under the ice when the hinge swung back, and nearly
drowned. |
|
| Circus of
Fear a/k/a Psycho-Circus |
1966 |
Gregor |
Made at Billy Smart's Circus at
Winkfield. Lee played "a lion-tamer and since
[the production] dealt in real lions the only double ...
was the real lion-tamer. All the shots of him had
to be close-ups because he was half [Lee's]
height. ... The story was fatuous and [Lee] was
disguised for nine-tenths of the movie in a black mask. |
|
| The
Vengeance of Fu Manchu |
1967 |
Fu Manchu |
This film took Lee to Hong Kong for some
excellent golf, "more excruciating make-up and, as an
economy measure while there, ... simultaneously made
Five Golden Dragons. |
|
| Five
Golden Dragons |
1967 |
Dragon #4 |
Three of Lee's fellow Dragons were
George Raft, Dan Duryea and Brian Donlevy. "This
syndicate of crime had little to do except fly in from
all over the world" and look like themselves around
a table. Lee opined that a film of Raft's life "would
have been better value." |
|
| Theatre
of Death a/k/a Blood Fiend |
1967 |
Philippe Darvas |
Lee "howled snatches of opera at [Sam
Gallu] between takes." He played "a
theatrical producer drowned for severity by one of his
actors." |
|
| Victims
of Terror a/k/a Victims of Vesuvius |
1967 |
Narrator |
"A nice, sensible, erudite
documentary on the relics of Pompeii and Herculaneum." |
|
| The
Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism a/k/a Blood Demon |
1967 |
Count Frederic Regula/Graf von Andomai |
"A perfectly dreadful composite of
The House of Legends, Eternal Life, The Hunchback of
Notre Dame and The Pit and the Pendulum.
[Lee] was chastised by having a gold mask driven into
[his] face with spikes attached to it, so that
[his] features resembled a green at the end of a
major tournament. [He] was also torn asunder by
four horses, but joined up again to wreak undead
havoc. The conclusion, when [he] vanished like a
pantomime king in a cloud of green smoke, can hardly
have persuaded the audience that [he] was dead enough to
stay away from their jugular veins when they put the cat
out for the night." Lee did not
fancy erotica; "the effluvium that rose [from
the bodies of nude women] as the lights grew
hotter was like marsh gas, but [he] could not believe
the picture incited to erotic indulgence." |
|
| Night of
the Big Heat a/k/a Island of the Burning Damned |
1967 |
Godfrey Hanson |
This little science fantasy "dealt
with the invasion of Earth by alien protoplasm.
Looking like fried eggs, they ruined the climax.
They were as bad a letdown as the Hound of Hell and the
Gorgon's snakes. They rode in from space on a heat
ray." The cast worked in shirtsleves to give the
illusion of heat, "except it was the middle of the
night in winter. To foster the impression of sweat
[they] were drenched in glycerine." |
|
| Blood of
Fu Manchu a/k/a Fu Manchu's Kiss of Death |
1968 |
Fu Manchu |
Lee played on some spectacular golf
courses in Brazil. "Fundamentally the weakness of
the series was lack of trust in Sax Rohmer. ... It
is always a mistake ... to take a plot and try to
[insert] an extraneous character just because he has
box-office appeal. The character must give rise to
the story, so it's only logical to go back to the
original author for the series." Chinese
actress Tsai Chin, "Fu Manchu's deadly whelp ...
provided a stark contrast as she walked beside [him].
... She helped [him] with the Chinese bits." |
|
| Face of
Eve a/k/a Eve |
1968 |
Colonel Stuart |
Made in Spain, Lee played "an
explorer reduced to a wheelchair, and died of natural
causes." |
|
| Dracula
Has Risen from the Grave |
1968 |
Dracula |
"Dying as Dracula was usually worse
than having a tooth out." |
|
| The Devil
Rides Out |
1968 |
Duc de Richleau |
"After years of urging black-magic
themes on Hammer, [Lee] had a break-through with The
Devil Rides Out. ... [Lee]
appointed [himself] black technical adviser, as well as
playing a goody, and spent many hours in the British
Museum guddling for Satanic trout, and came up with a
useful catch, notably the genuine prayer of exorcism ...
used at the end. And [Lee] had the friendship of
Dennis Wheatley, the author of the story, who lived on
the other side of the square. ... Charles Gray was
tremendous as the Satanist, and Terence Fisher and
Hammer made a superb job of it. [Lee] was
delighted. It was a new venture for everybody, and
it came off. It did well then, and it had a strong
reprise in a cult revival. The terrible vibrations
of Evil were clearly felt. It was right to scare
people, to put them off the sinister dangers implicit in
dabbling with black magic." Even
in his old age, this film remained in Lee's imagination "as
an ongoing project. Here is a case for the special
effects that were beyond anybody's scope at the time." |
|
| Curse of
the Crimson Altar a/k/a The Crimson Cult |
1968 |
Morley |
"Karloff was in his eightieth year,
and as many as five films he'd worked on had yet to
appear when he died." |
|
| Castle of
Fu Manchu |
1969 |
Fu Manchu |
This film introduced Lee to golf in
Barcelona. |
|
| The
Oblong Box |
1969 |
Dr. Newhartt |
The film where Lee met Vincent Price, "an
extremely funny man, ... a dazzling all-rounder.
As a professional lecturer he toured in painting,
sculpture and cookery. ... He was as much at ease in the
theatre as in the cinema, a model of versatility. ... He
could be acid and devastating, as could his wife Coral
Browne, but they were never otherwise than sweet to
[Lee]." |
|
| Eugenie...the Story of Her Journey into Perversion | 1970 |
Narrator |
Lee "only had the part as narrator in
the Marquis de Sade's tale ... as a result of an
emergency" due to illness by George Sanders.
He wore his Sherlock Holmes smoking jacket. "Little
did [he] know that the woman on the altar behind [him]
was naked. ... Little did [he] know that the same scenes
were reshot when [he] was back in London, and the actors
then peeled. Little did [he] know of the
cross-cutting ... to scenes of debauch that would take
place." |
|
| The
Bloody Judge a/k/a Night of the Blood
Monster |
1970 |
Judge Jeffries |
Lee "was the terrible Judge Jeffries,
handed down all kinds of ruthless sentences against a
mild background, and when the film was completed, found
[himself] playing to scenes of extraordinary depravity
in the stews. |
|
| Julius
Caesar |
1970 |
Artemidorus |
Lee played opposite Sir John Gielgud as
Caesar, Charlton Heston as Marc Antony and Jason Robards
as Brutus. Director Stuart Burge gave
Lee the direction that Artemidorus was quite mad. |
|
| Taste the
Blood of Dracula |
1970 |
Dracula |
"Three elderly gentlemen are
desanguinated. It had the best cast but after an
initial burst the story drooped". |
|
| Count
Dracula |
1970 |
Dracula |
"Made against the grain of this
decline by Jess Franco in Spain, and outside the Hammer
aegis, [this] was a damn good try at doing the Count as
Stoker meant him to be. ... Here the tragic,
doomed Count was an old man getting younger as he
imbibed the indispensable fluid. ... It was a
shadow of what it might have been, but nevertheless it
had the right outlook on the protagonists. The
film also benefited from Herbert Lom as Van Helsing and
Klaus Kinski ... as Renfield. |
|
| Scars of
Dracula |
1970 |
Dracula |
"Truly feeble. It was a story
with Dracula popped in almost as an afterthought.
Even the Hammer make-up for once was tepid. ... [Lee]
was a pantomime figure. Everything was over the
top, especially the giant bat whose electrically motored
wings flapped with slow deliberation as if it were doing
morning exercises. The idea that Dracula best
liked his blood served in a nubile container was gaining
ground with the front office and [Lee] struggled in vain
against the direction that the fangs should be seen to
strike home, as against the more decorous (and more
chilling) method of shielding the sight with the Count's
cloak. |
|
| Umbracule |
1970 |
The Man |
From imdb: "Christopher Lee stars in this bizarre avant garde film commenting on censorship in Franco-era Spain that presents documentary footage along with surreal, overexposed scenes in which Christopher Lee walks around Barcelona, witnesses a kidnapping, visits a museum and has silent encounters with a woman." Lee found it "a bewildering project ... the expression of [the director's] personal feelings and ... a cry against the oppressive regime in his own country and the suffocation of artists." Lee recited "a sizable chunk of Poe's 'Raven', sang without music excerpts from The Flying Dutchman and The Damnation of Faust, and had a long, silent, motionless close-up " lasting one and a half minutes, which most people assume to be a still. | |
| The
Private Life of Sherlock Holmes |
1970 |
Mycroft Holmes |
Made around and about the south shore of
Loch Ness. Lee's "first encounter in a major role
with direction as a class act". Performing
for director Billy Wilder gave Lee "a glimpse of
how to be so much better than usual. ... It was a witty
and beautiful picture. It was the nearest [Lee]
had come to being in a movie where all the desirable
qualities featured on both sides of the camera. |
|
| Hannie
Caulder |
1971 |
Bailey |
Lee's only Western, when he was nearly
50. "Shot in Spain to look like Mexico, with a
tumultuous shoot-out and Raquel Welch, and [Lee] as a
retired gunman, complete with cigar and straw hat." |
|
| Horror
Express |
1972 |
Alexander Saxton |
"The train in question was meant to
be the Trans-Siberian Express, but our location was just
outside Madrid, in an unspeakable studio at
Daganzo. The food was deadly, salmonella the
principal sauce. Peter never used the
restaurant. He always ate the same meal, day after
day, year after year, ... apple and cheese.
Afterwards he would smoke a cigarette wearing white
gloves, because the stain might show on the
screen. ... [Cushing] was the gentlest and most
generous of men. It could be said of him that he
died because he was too good for this world. |
|
| Dracula
A.D. 1972 |
1972 |
Dracula |
"At the age of fifty, [Lee] took the
firm decision to Draculate no more. The deciding
factor" was this film and The Satanic
Rites of Dracula. Lee "was aghast at the plan to
bring the story into modern times, but a compromise was
effected whereby at least his Gothic homestead and the
church were retained. ... At the same
time, the hippy idiom used was already out of date when
the film was made." |
|
| Nothing
But the Night |
1973 |
Colonel Charles Bingham |
Lee set up his own production company,
Charlemagne, to make this film near Dartmoor with
Rank. He had the rights to all Wheatley's
black-magic novels. "That Charlemagne effort,
based on a John Blackburn story about a possessed girl,
failed because it was ahead of its time." |
|
| The Three
Musketeers |
1973 |
Rochefort |
This "somehow bifurcated into two
films, such was the quantity of celluloid in the can,
with the second portion issued as The Four
Musketeers. It was reasonable to do this, rather
than waste the richness of the material. ... It wasn't
exactly seamless, nor were they even in quality -- the
Three is better than the Four -- but they were High
Romance and only partly an irreverent view of everything
that was everything in the thirties and forties."
The films were "a physically exhausting stream of
battles with men twenty or thirty years [Lee's]
junior: Oliver Reed, Michael York, Richard
Chamberlain. Nothing was faked; [they] were all
quite badly knocked about." In his first
duel, Lee "tore a ligament in my left knee which
hindered running, jumping, fighting on ice and walking
up or down stairs. ... at 52 [he] could still do
it, but it took longer to recover. |
|
| The
Satanic Rights of Dracula |
1973 |
Count Dracula |
Lee "reached [his] irrevocable full stop, ... [declaring that he would] never get on board unless the story faithfully followed the book, or alternatively if the account of Henry Irving and Dracula were set up. ... Being struck by lightning was the least of [Lee's] discomforts. The worst was the time they discovered that vampires cannot abide hawthorns. [Lee] had to crash through a tangle of hawthorn bushes with a crown of thorns on [his] head, with Peter Cushing on the further side waiting to impale [him] with a stake snatched from a fence. They lacked the foresight to provide a dummy tree, and [Lee] had to tear a way through vegetation with spines two inches long, emerging for the coup de grace shedding genuine Lee blood like a garden sprinkler." | |
| The
Wicker Man |
1973 |
Lord Summerisle |
"Written by Anthony Shaffer ...
[this] was the best-scripted film [Lee] ever took part
in, and it turned out in the end to be a flawed
masterpiece. It was a terrifying story of the Lord
of Misrule, a conflict between Christianity and
paganism, worked out on a Scottish island in the spring,
when the people respond to the urges of the sap rising,
and pay their dues to the ancient gods of fertility for
themselves and to reverse the trend of poor
harvests. The virginal and puritanical policeman
from the mainland, enticed into a game of cat and mouse
by the islanders, and burned alive in the Wicker Man as
a sacrifice to the Druids, was beautifully played as an
obstinate young bullock of duty-bound energy by
Edward Woodward, oblivious of the portents of his
horrible fate until the great wicker totem appears
before him, rearing up on a headland with the sun going
down behind it." Lee thought before it was
written, the part of Lord Summerisle was intended for
him. The film was made in Ayrshire,
Kircudbrightshire, Newton Stewart, the local Botanical
Gardens and Culzean Castle in October when it "was very
cold, and the flowers had to be attached from trucks.
... It was about growth, not decay. ... Two
versions of The Wicker Man eventually went out on the
circuits, with twenty minutes more for America than
Europe ... and there was not a squeak of publicity to be
heard. ... [Lee thinks] it's
mandatory for critics to know the film." |
|
| The Four
Musketeers: Milady's Revenge |
1974 |
Rochefort |
In his final duel, Lee "was run
through, pinned to the Bible and died." |
|
| The Man
With the Golden Gun |
1974 |
Scaramanga |
Ian Fleming was Lee's cousin through a
stepfather. They had golfed together and Fleming
wanted Lee to play Dr. No, but that did not happen.
After Fleming died, Lee was offered the role of "a
nasty piece of work called Scaramanga. ...It was fun,
... with a better-written script for Scaramanga than for
any other Bond heavy bar Goldfinger." The role was
rewritten from the book "with a more diverse character,
some ambivalence about his own compulsive sexuality
(mysteriously linked to his third nipple) ... an edge of
humor and a sense that he is indulging himself in a
great game." Lee's bizarre sidekick was
played by "a diminutive Frenchman, Herve
Villechaize." Made in Phuket and Pinewood
Studios in England. "A promotion tour on behalf
of a major film such as The Man with the Golden Gun is
harder than shoveling snow, and not so healthy. ...
[Lee] "had a love/hate relationship with the Gun.
... which was like any other gun except for the
pretense of being gold, and unable to function. ... [The
gun] was 100 percent
gadget. An armourer's brainstorm. It
consisted of a cigarette case, a lighter, a pen and a
cuff link, all complete and workable away from the
weapon. It was a cute invention, but taking them
apart and putting them together again was exceedingly
difficult." |
|
| In Search
of Dracula |
1975 |
Narrator |
Lee traveled to Transylvania for this
exploration of the Dracula legend "from the bat that
punctures, then licks, to the monastery of Snagov where
Vlad III, Knight of the Order of the Dragon, Voivode of
Wallachia, known as the Impaler, who signed himself
Dracula, Dracole, and Dragwyla, supposedly lay in his
tomb for five centuries. ... The countryside was
faithful to all [Lee had] read and beautiful beyond the
book, with towering pinnacles of rock, cloud-capped
peaks, mists coiling through valleys, and a strange
unease and unreal cold when the moon flickered through
the foliage" |
|
| To the
Devil A Daughter |
1976 |
Father Michael |
Lee's company Charlemagne organized with
Rank and Hammer this production, eventually made for
350,000 BPS with Richard Widmark and Natassja Kinski. |
|
| Airport
77 |
1977 |
Martin Wallace |
First film made after Lee relocated to
Hollywood. He played "an oceanographer whose job
is more interesting to him than his wife. ... The
passengers of a jet are trapped in an air bubble when
their plane ditches and submerges. ... The list of
famous players could be recited like a mantra:
Jack Lemmon, James Stewart, Joseph Cotten, Olivia de
Havilland, George Kennedy, ... Lee Grant (who was
[Lee's] wife in the story). Lee was provided
training for his drowning scene in two separate tanks at
Universal and CBS. "The scenes in the tanks were
not quite fun but [Lee] was with Jack Lemmon." |
|
| Saturday
Night Live |
1978 |
Guest Host |
Lee had his arm twisted to appear on
this popular late night live 90-minute TV series as guest
host, introducer and participant in sketches.
In his monologue, he listed some of his non-horror roles,
as an introduction to a parody of 3 upcoming films.
He portrayed Professor Henry Higgins, using dialogue from
the MY FAIR LADY songs, which were never sung, faced with
the appalling difficulty of helping Baba Wawa speak
distinctly. Eventually proximity to her forces
Higgins to talk like her, and declare his love. In another sketch Lee portrayed Mr. Death apologizing to a young girl for the death of her puppy. Finally, he played a German accented apparent vampire hunter who stakes the memoirs of Richard Nixon so the ghost of Watergate will lie peaceful. |
|
| 1941 |
1979 |
Capt. Wolfgang von Kleinschmidt |
Lee turned down the doctor role given to
Leslie Nielsen in Airplane! to appear in this comedy bomb
directed by Steven Spielberg for the chance to
appear with and meet Toshiro Mifune and Slim
Pickens. Lee played "the German observer ...
required to speak only German. .... The outrageous
things they say to annoy each other ... make a running
gag. There were no subtitles, except for the last
outpourings from the Japanese commander when he uses
karate on his tormentor, flings him overboard and grimly
says 'Auf Wiedersehn,'and these were translated simply
as 'Sayonara'. ... At the end of the premier
showing, "there was a rare and peculiar silence. [Lee]
had never seen such harsh reviews" |
|
| Bear
Island |
1979 |
Lechinski |
Lee played a Polish scientist, more or
less simultaneously to 1941, in this Alistair Maclean
thriller shot in Alaska, where he had to learn to walk on
snowshoes and also flat on skis. "The cold ...
was at times intense enough to garble our speech, and
Donald Sutherland once risked being impaled on [Lee's]
skis when he remarked [that he didn't recognize an
iced-up dialogue line of Lee's]... [Lee's]
fate was to be struck down by a sabotaged radio mast.
... [He] returned to Pinewood for [his] death scene"
where he fell asleep in his lovely warm hospital bed while
Vanessa Redgrave and Richard Widmark recorded their
dialogue. |
|
| Once Upon
a Spy |
1980 |
Marcus Valorium |
A pilot for a TV series Lee would not
have been in if it sold. Ted Danson was the star. |
|
| Serial |
1980 |
Luckman Skull |
Lee played "a hard-headed
businessman" with an American accent who "at
weekends ... is the leader of a band of gay Hell's
Angels." Lee managed on the motorbike "except
the wheelies and the drive up some stairs in a
house. The highlight ... was the dash across the
Golden Bridge, in black leathers and Nazi regalia." |
|
| The
Salamander |
1981 |
Prince Baldasar, the Director of
Counterintelligence |
"Despite [his] character's name being
changed from Borghese to Baldassare, and a muster of
actors that included Anthony Quinn in the title role,
Eli Wallach as [Lee's] collaborating carabiniere
general, Franco Nero as a good person and Claudia
Cardinale as the beautiful person, the film has never
... had a showing in Italy." |
|
| Charles
and Diana: a Royal Love Story |
1982 |
Prince Philip |
"In a blond wig and blond eyebrows,
[Lee] played the Duke of Edinburgh opposite Margaret
Tyzack as Elizabeth II. ... Alas, it
was all terribly proper: no tiger-shooting, no
chastising of reporters, no gaffes and, as a result,
unforgivably dull." |
|
| Massarati
and the Brain |
1982 |
Victor Leopold |
"Another completely forgettable pilot
for a TV series [Lee] would not have been in." He
played "a Nazi war criminal." |
|
| The
Return of Captain Invincible |
1983 |
Mr. Midnight |
"An off-the-wall gift" shot in
Australia, which gave Lee a chance to sing on camera.
Lee was "once again a Fascist Beast, playing
opposite but also singing a duet with the most diversely
talented performer ... Alan Arkin. The number,
'Name Your Poison', was written specially for [Lee] by
Hartley and O'Brien, ... mixing the names of some thirty
drinks into a barrage of temptations used by the villain
to seduce the superhero back into the alcoholic ways
he'd given up to save the world. ... The film, part
rock, part opera, part musical comedy, had some good
patches, but they didn't hang together in a seamless
piece." |
|
| House of
the Long Shadows |
1983 |
Corrigan |
Lee's last film with Peter Cushing, with
Vincent Price and John Carradine, "billed by the press
as the four masters of the macabre, and there wasn't a
single marvelous speech to share between us. The
direction was a blank, and [the cast] agreed with the
critics who shredded the film [a remake make of
Seven Keys to Baldpate]. |
|
| The Far
Pavilions |
1984 |
Kaka-ji Rao |
Lee was struck with gut-rot on location
in Jaipur, "with a bonus of asthma" brought on
when his horse ran away with him in a large crowd scene,
having been frightened by an elephant. Sir
John Gielgud was the only cast member unaffected
intestinally. "A film for
television in three parts, ended up well as a wonderful
romantic mix of the Raj and princely India. Even
the Indians thought it very good." |
|
| The Boy
Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers episode of
Faerie Tale Theatre |
1984 |
King Vladamir V |
Lee was "cast as the sorcerer .. [he]
was amused to find a musician playing [his] malevolent
hunchback retainer in the castle: the late and
much lamented Frank Zappa." |
|
| Howling
II, Your Sister is a Werewolf |
1985 |
Stefan Crosscoe |
"The feeling of the blend
of the real and the fantastic impressed me strongly
.. as [Lee] stood beside the grave of Kafka in the
Jewish cemetery on the outskirts of Prague,
attempting to dispatch a werewolf with a silver
bullet. ... The Bohemian castle gave it a family
resemblance [to a fairy story], and the wolves
walking around upright did give it a
children's-theatre aspect. ... It failed to frighten
or amuse. ... Fighting on the side of the angels
with holy water and crosses, [a group] creep round
the outside of the castle to surprise the evil
wolves, and are ourselves surprised by an attack
from a werewolf." |
|
| Jocks |
1986 |
President White |
A comedy shot in Las Vegas with
many scenes in a casino "a nightmare for continuity,
with random gamblers drifting in and out of shot.
The piece de resistance ... was a scene in which [Lee]
realizes that the girl [he] madly loves, who has invited
[him] to her room, is a man." Lee's body clock
found it difficult to work all night "because there is
never any light in Vegas casinos." Lee won
$600 playing craps. |
|
| The
Disputation |
1986 |
King James of Aragon |
Lee's first role after recovering from
his heart valve operation. It "proved
fairly demanding, though the argument of the play is
more vigorous than the action." Bob Peck played a
Jewish convert to Catholicism. |
|
| Mio in
the Land of Faraway |
1987 |
Kato |
"An authentic fairy story by the
Swedish children's author Astrid Lindgren, with a great
black castle surrounded by birds." Lee found
the food in the Soviet Union "was uneatable, the
sanitation unspeakable, the political people ubiquitous.
... As the mournful knight in the castle who entraps the
souls of boys and girls and turns them into birds, [Lee]
wore a steel hand. ... The boy in the tale whose
soul [Lee] coveted had to face not only the steel hand
but a sword in it, which [Lee] had to whirl down, just
missing him, and cleave a marble table in two." |
|
| The
Return of the Musketeers |
1989 |
Rochefort |
Lee was "brought back to life again
and dispatched once more to Spain, to join most of the
same crowd, now verging on fifty themselves, for some
swashbuckling under the magnificent towers of
Toledo. The story was loosely connected to the
Dumas sequel Twenty Years After. ... [Lee] was safely
excused from sword-fights by a plot that had [him]
coming out of the Bastille after seventeen years of no
exercise." However, Lee thought the film "should
never have been made. They attempted the
impossible, trying to shoot a twelve-week picture in
eight weeks. Much worse than the failure of the
film, however, was the accidental death of Roy Kinnear"
from a fall from a horse onto cobbled streets. |
|
| Honeymoon
Academy |
1989 |
Lazos |
Lee played a forger "doing a sort of
eccentric waltz while bleeding to death".
Shot in Spain. |
|
| Murder
Story |
1989 |
Willard Hope |
Shot in Amsterdam, it included a scene
of Lee coming out of a porno shop. |
|
| Le
Revolution Francaise |
1989 |
Sanson |
Lee's real life experience of seeing the
last guillotine execution in Paris as a teenager came in
handy in this bicentenary production, when he "played
Monsieur de Paris, the public executioner Sanson, who
dispatched Louis XVI on the guillotine.
Lee also had known the English hangman Albert
Pierrepont very well, having met in 1945 in connection
with War Crimes Investigation. Lee "spent
two weeks on a scaffold with an exact replica of [a
guillotine]. ... It was terribly cold except under the
lights where [he] polished them off one after another.
...It was a grief to execute the King, and a shock to
execute the Queen." |
|
| Around
the World in 80 Days |
1989 |
Stuart |
Lee did his bit "in the
Travellers' Club in Pall Mall. ... [He] had only to play
whist ... and lay the crucial bet." |
|
| Treasure
Island |
1990 |
Blind Pew |
Lee wore "overwhelming make-up of
hideously scarred blind eye-sockets" opposite
Charlton Heston as Long John Silver and Oliver Reed as
Billie Bones with a strong Glasgow accent. |
|
| The
Rainbow Thief |
1990 |
Uncle Rudolf |
"Peter O'Toole was the man who lived
in the sewers, Omar Sharif his visitor and [Lee] was
O'Toole's uncle, raving mad in a pleasant way.
Paralyzed from the waist down, [Lee] careered around
mounted on a cowboy's saddle on a machine like a small
car, singing Wagner. As another part of [his]
eccentricity [Lee] gave a dinner at which the guests ate
dogfood while the chairs were occupied by dogs, eating
food for people." In Lee's last
scene, he sang 'Plaisir Amour' "lying in a four-poster
bed, cosseted by a dozen topless girls, and died of a
heart attack." |
|
| Gremlins
2: The New Batch |
1990 |
Doctor Catheter |
Director Joe Dante "subsequently
became a much valued friend. ... The charming Mogwai and
his fiendish destructive offspring that swell in a
gelatinous ooze to terrorize a building, then a city,
dominate the screen with their fantastic shapes and
brilliant colours. The film crackled with jokes
and pastiches, a rare instance of a sequel improving on
the original. It was unnerving playing a scene
with a gremlin since all you see is a dot of light on a
table. When you have a full-scale gremlin to react
to, about three feet tall, there are four or five
puppeteers hidden, controlling eyes, arms, mouth, body
and legs with wires. They were amazingly
convincing, so real you almost felt that actors of flesh
and blood would become redundant -- if not already
sidelined by the departments of explosions and special
effects." |
|
| L'Avaro |
1990 |
Cardinale Spinosi |
"A totally Italian rendering of
Moliere's play" in which Lee's 17th century
cardinal character was inserted. "The
aggravations here were a barrage of pinpricks --
practically everything except the fantastic sets in real
palazzi in and around Rome, the sort of backgrounds you
couldn't buy for a million dollars. Among them was
the Palazzo Farnese" where Lee was plagued
with echoes. Lee thought it was the
acoustics, but it was costar Alberto Sordi repeating every
line Lee spoke. "In Italy people talk
non-stop during a take. They smoke too, and the
smoke goes wafting in front of the camera. And
they move around all the time, in your eyeline.
They have helicopters and fighter-bombers going past
your window, and while those had to be ignored, the
general commotion got to the point" where Lee
leaped up and called for silence. Lee got his
silence for 20 minutes, but Sordi had the last laugh and
put Lee's credits smaller than contractually obliged in
the final print. |
|
| Cyber
Eden |
1992 | Cedric |
Made in Italy at Lake Como and Cinecitta
in Rome, "it had basically to do with an old lady
(Carroll Baker) who hits on a make-up formula for making
people young. [Lee] was her butler." The
leading man spoke no English and learned his lines
phonetically but spoke them in an unintelligible
slur. "The whole thing was a nightmare, what
Jimmy Durante would call a 'catastrostroke'." |
|
| Flesh and
Blood: The Hammer Heritage of Horror |
1994 |
Narrator |
Lee co-narrated with his great friend
Peter Cushing this TV documentary about Hammer
Films. Lee recalled Cushing "was always busy with
his hands, making row upon row of lead soldiers and
painting them, so you'd talk to them amid the set pieces
he contrived for battles, and planes dangling from the
ceiling. Or he'd make mock-ups in cardboard of
theatrical productions. ... In Whitstable he became a
kind of patriarch, with a pier named after him and a
regular place for his meals in the Tudor Tea Rooms."
Lee and Cushing appeared in 22 films together, not
always as a pair. "Together, [they]
knocked off a row of fantasy milestones. Most
often [Lee] was the menace, and Peter was the force from
academe, a savant, devoted to putting a stopper on
[Lee]. ... He was the most tolerant of men, expressing
for instance nothing but pleasure when [Lee] sang arias
to him in our dressing rooms. |
|
| Police Academy: Mission to Moscow | 1994 |
Commandant Rakov |
|
|
| Moses |
1995 |
Ramses |
Lee played Ramses II, pharaoh for
sixty-seven years. |
|
| Princess
Alisea a/k/a Sorrellina |
1996 |
Azaret |
"This was an Italian film, and
[Lee's] blood boiled. But there was a nuance of
difference: It was made in Slovakia, already
separated from Czecho. |
|
| The
Stupids |
1996 |
Evil Sender |
Lee played the archvillain, "the
wretch attempting to corner the American garbage market"
in Toronto in a record temperature of 105 with Robert
Wise, David Cronenberg and other directors appearing as
Petrol Pump Attendant or Man in Garden or Second Builder. |
|
| Ivanhoe |
1997 |
Tiresias |
Lee played "the Grand Master of the
Knights Templar" in this TV miniseries. |
|
| Jinnah |
1998 |
Mohammed Ali Jinnah |
Lee played "the father of his
country, Pakistan." |
