A Horror Legend

This past Sunday June 7, 2015 marked the passing of film veteran Christopher Lee. At age 93, Lee had amassed a huge body of work that will influence and entertain the world for ages. He acted in over two hundred movies, his first back in 1948. His versatility gave him the opportunity to take on a variety of roles, though after his premiere as Frankenstein's creature in 1957, he tended toward the mysterious and even morbid. And he helped kick-start the waning horror genre. 

Christopher Lee joined earlier horror great Lon Chaney Jr. as one of very few actors to portray several of the classic movie monsters. Chaney Jr. played Dracula, Wolfman, and the Frankenstein monster. Lee tackled roles as Dracula, Frank's monster, and the Mummy. Like Chaney, and even Karloff, Lee imbued his performances with pathos. Even with the snarling and violence, we could sympathize on some level. There was always a deeper background story than the immediate beastly behaviour. 

Just a few of Lee's horrific - and effective -

contributions to the genre that would not die

I've had a blast discovering Lee's wonderful films over the decades, Back in the late 70's and early 80's, while in my early teens, I used to set my alarm clock for 1 or 2am just so I could watch a great old Hammer, Amicus or AIP horror movie on TV, often starring Lee. And that was how I first saw him as the evil undead count, and as the unholy creation of the professorial madman Baron von Frankenstein. He also had strong, though sometimes secondary, roles in films like The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll, The Man Who Could Cheat Death, and The Hound of the Baskervilles. He also did a string of lurid Italian horror flicks in the early 60's, but I've never seen those. 

The Gorgon and Rasputin The Mad Monk are a couple of my favourite weird and creepy Lee movies. I had only seen a handful of his films until the mid-90's, when I became a serious "student" of cinematic horror history. I read books and websites, and began collecting home videos of both landmark and obscure movies of the genre. That was when I unearthed some gems and finally saw Lee in all his glory in all (finally!) of the Drac and Frank movies. And then I came across notables like The Wicker Man and The Devil Rides Out.

In Hound of the Baskervilles, Lee got

co-star billing to buddy Peter Cushing.

The two joined forces many times in

horror and mystery films of the era.

Then Sir Christopher Lee (for he was knighted for services to drama and charity in 2009) wowed us with some great non-horror roles, such as James Bond villain Scaramanga in 1974's The Man With the Golden Gun, one of my favourites. During the 80's, Lee had various and numerous smaller parts in movies, and I confess I didn't see many of them... but the man certainly kept busy. I have a soft spot for the demented Howling series, and Lee appeared as a vampire hunter in the first sequel.

As an elder statesman of the acting profession, Lee found his footing in parts that suited his age and appearance in the 2000's, and gave his career a serious reboot. The biggies were as Count Dooku in the Star Wars prequels (joining old Hammer buddy Peter Cushing in the Star Wars universe; Cushing was Tarkin in A New Hope) and especially as the evil sorcerer Saruman in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Good, but not quite the stuff I'll remember him for best.

I know Mr. Lee also carved out little niches for himself in other areas, such as voice acting, contributing to video games and animated films. He was also a recording artist, having worked in things as divergent and unusual as opera and heavy metal. 

But my fondest memories of Christopher Lee will always be his horror classics of the 50's, 60's and 70's. And with that, I will now watch one of my favourites, only the second of his fright films, from 1958, The Horror of Dracula. 

R.I.P., Sir!

Better than Lugosi, in my books