Christopher Lee

I was recently telling a friend (who's a Brit) about some of the English films I'd seen recently: "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp," "Zulu," "The Meaning of Life," etc. One of them was Richard Lester's 1973 adaptation of "The Three Musketeers." I mentioned that while I found the fight scenes to be a bit dull, I was very much amused by all the comedy in it, and that the cast was terrific. One of the members featured was the towering figure with a deep baritone voice, Christopher Lee, one of my favorite actors. In it, Lee plays Rochefort, the one-eyed henchman of Cardinal Richelieu (played by Charlton Heston), a man whom he despises but ultimately is obedient to. Lee as Rochefort struts around with such confidence that he doesn't even flinch as a bumbling future musketeer (played by Michael York) comes crashing down near him, desperate for a fight with the man we know he can't possibly beat. And if Lee's performances over the years had anything to do with that character's realization, it's understandable: Lee fought 17 sword fights in films (a record), including one of his last, with Yoda, in "Star Wars: Attack of the Clones." Their fight was so entertaining that they won the MTV Movie Award for Best Fight, and Yoda accepted the award and gave a complimentary shout-out to his on-screen adversary Lee (as well as giving thanks to the audience and "your queen...Latifa").

Anyway, I mentioned the words "still kicking" in regards to 93-year-old Christopher Lee to my friend, to which he raised an eyebrow and responded that Lee had died. I told him that wasn't true, that Lee, who was knighted in 2009 and received an honorary Bafta two years later (and who holds the record for the most film appearances--244) was still alive. A quick Google search revealed that I was wrong, that Lee had actually been dead for over a week. What an actor we have lost. This is a man, an actual descendant of Charlemagne and a trained opera singer, who on his 91st birthday released a heavy metal album. According to Rob Bricken, his life featured numerous incredible events, both tragic and impressive: He met the assassins of Rasputin when he was a child, could speak six languages, witnessed the last public execution by guillotine in France, fought the Nazis in North Africa and helped retake Sicily, and worked for the secretive Special Operations Executive (aka "The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Wars"). His bravery earned him commendations from the British, Polish, Czech, and Yugoslavian governments, and all of this was before he was 25. All that triumph meant there were more than enough episodes of disturbances. He claimed to have seen many people die in front of him, some of them blown to pieces. On the DVD commentary of "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King," Peter Jackson described how Lee re-directed the acting of a death scene to show how someone actually dies when being stabbed, but didn't need to elaborate on how he knew.

Like many young people, I first saw Lee in 2001 in "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring," his best film. In it, he plays Sauruman the White, the wizard corrupted by Saron's power. His fight scene with Ian McKellen as Gandalf the Grey is truly spectacular. I don't think I really understood quite who Lee was as an actor until I was introduced to some of the Hammer horror films he first became known for. He appeared in 1957 as the Creature in "The Curse of Frankenstein," a gorier version of the famous story, but despite the gore, Lee appeared to have never judged these characters he played. He once said that he "always felt sorry for them, that they didn't want to be that." The grotesque makeup applied to him and the lack of dialogue do not do much to present an image of the actor's abilities, but the film's follow-up did. That film was in 1958 as Dracula, the elegant count. The Guardian put it this way: "Christopher Lee was Dracula; he had taken over the character as clearly as Sean Connery took over James Bond."

And these two films weren't even his best horror films. The best was what's been called the "'Citizen Kane' of horror movies," the disturbing movie from 1973 called "The Wicker Man" (not to be confused with the one featuring Nicolas Cage and his bees). Here Lee is not disfigured or suave, but fairly normal, as are most of the citizens in the peculiar pagan village. The climax at the conclusion of the film is utterly terrifying, perhaps because, unlike Dracula and Frankenstein, this scenario seemed, for whatever reason, to be quite real.

But the '70s and especially '80s weren't all that glorious for Lee. He was continually being overplayed as Dracula (and even claimed that he was being blackmailed to keep appearing in those films), and aside from "The Wicker Man" and "The Three Musketeers" trilogy, there wasn't anything that truly challenged him. He appeared as a Bond villain against Roger Moore in "The Man With the Golden Gun" (Ian Fleming was a cousin of his), and yet that film comes across as tremendously flat (and Lee's character having three nipples added unnecessary absurdity). But he owes a lot of his renaissance to Tim Burton, who was such a fan of Gothic horror that he cast Lee in a small yet powerful role in "Sleepy Hollow," his 1999 adaptation of the famous story. From there, Lee was used in practically all of Burton's films: "Corpse Bride," "Alice in Wonderland," "Dark Shadows," and best of all in "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," playing Willy Wonka's strict dentist father. ("Lollipops. What we call cavities on a stick!") From there, George Lucas cast him as Darth Tyranus in the "Star Wars" prequel trilogy, and then Martin Scorsese picked him for a small but memorable role in "Hugo."

The role he was most proud of was in "Jinnah," playing the founder of modern-day Pakistan. The role he was most ashamed of is unclear, though he clearly grew sick of the Dracula image. There is one film, though, that he perhaps would like not to be remembered for. In 1970, he flew to Spain to shoot a film about the Marquis de Sade for one day's worth of work as the film's narrator. According to an interview with Nigel Farndale of the Telegraph, Lee had a friend who told him there was a dirty theater showing a movie he was in. Heavily disguised in dark glasses and a scarf, he found out that it was indeed true: the movie he had filmed turned out to be a softcore porn film.

The opponent of many of Lee's characters on screen was Peter Cushing, but they were tremendously good friends in life. When asked about Cushing, who died in 1994, Lee sadly said the following:

"I don't want to sound gloomy, but, at some point of your lives, every one of you will notice that you have in your life one person, one friend whom you love and care for very much. That person is so close to you that you are able to share some things only with him. For example, you can call that friend, and from the very first maniacal laugh or some other joke you will know who is at the other end of that line. We used to do that with him so often. And then when that person is gone, there will be nothing like that in your life ever again."

I think the same could be said of Christopher Lee, a man unlike any other in the cinema, and there will be no one else like him in our movie-going lives ever again. Rest in peace, Sir Christopher.