Posted By Dan Greenfield on May 27, 2025 | 12 comments

A birthday salute to the late, great actor…

Christopher Lee as the Count in Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966) the first of many sequels to the original Hammer film.

By CHRIS FRANKLIN

Christopher Lee (May 22, 1922- June 7, 2015) feared typecasting. Which is ironic considering the number of fright-inducing monsters and villains he played across his long career.

After spending his early 20s as an Allied soldier and spy in the British RAF, Lee took to acting but found little success until accepting the role of the Creature in Hammer’s color adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic story in The Curse of Frankenstein. This led directly to him teaming with the same creators for Hammer’s Dracula (or Horror of Dracula in the US). Lee’s powerful, imposing, animalistic Count harkened back to Stoker’s original portrait of evil, and suddenly the long-toiling actor was an overnight sensation.

Lee was weary of being identified only as Dracula and so held off appearing in a sequel until 1966’s Dracula: Prince of Darkness. By this point he was an international star but largely found himself playing heavies and nightmarish creatures. While he continued to mostly ply his trade in horror films, Hammer kept calling, begging him to reprise his most famous role. Lee always gave 100% onscreen, but his frustration with Hammer continued as the studio essentially used emotional blackmail to help them keep their productions afloat, just by his very presence as the undead Count.

Lee as Scaramanga from The Man with the Golden Gun; Saruman from The Lord of the Rings trilogy; and Count Dooku from the Star Wars prequels.

Lee eventually distanced himself from horror by the mid-’70s, taking on the role of one of the more memorable Bond villains in The Man with the Golden Gun, and later in life garnering a whole new generation of fans in the Star Wars prequels as Count Dooku, and in film adaptations of his beloved Lord of the Rings as Saruman. His horror output was also reevaluated by fans and film historians alike, with many of his works for Hammer, rival British studio Amicus and countless others being hailed as classics, and all elevated by Lee’s participation.

Let’s look at 13 of Lee’s outstanding horror roles, this side of Dracula:

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13. Corrigan, House of the Long Shadows (1983). Based on the Broadway play Seven Keys to Baldpate, this film has its heart in the right place but honestly isn’t very good. The reason to watch it is its combination of some of cinema’s masters of horror in one film together. Lee teams with old friends Peter Cushing, Vincent Price, and John Carradine as a dysfunctional and potentially murderous family who terrorize a writer who dares to stay at their ancestral home.

That writer is played by Desi Arnaz Jr. in a truly flat performance that brings the otherwise entertaining film down every time he’s on screen. But it’s worth it to see the old fellows ply their craft together one last time. This was the final of 24 films Lee and Cushing made together. They all seem to be having a ball.

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12. Burgomaster, Sleepy Hollow (1999). Director Tim Burton’s reimagining of Washington Irving’s classic tale The Legend of Sleepy Hollow also serves as a tribute to Hammer Horror, so who better to send Johnny Depp’s Ichabod Crane to the haunted village of Sleepy Hollow than Christopher Lee? His role is no more than a cameo, but Lee’s voice, gravitas, and screen persona set the tone for the supernatural awakening Crane is about to experience as he investigates beheadings near Tarrytown.

This was the first of several collaborations with Burton and also opened the door for Lee to work with a younger generation of A-list directors who grew up on his films, like George Lucas and Peter Jackson.

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11. Count Regula, The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism (1967). This West German production is essentially bookended by extended cameos from Lee as the sadistic Count Regula, torturer and murderer of 12 virgins in a plot to gain immortality. Years later he rises from the grave to complete his work and get revenge on the descendants of those who defeated him, played by former Tarzan Lex Barker and Bond Girl Karin Dor.

Despite his relatively short screen time, Lee projects a true air of aristocratic menace as the risen Regula. While nonsensical at times, this is ultimately a fun film that has loads of great spooky atmosphere that often out-Hammers Hammer!

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10. Reid, The House That Dripped Blood (1971). Lee made his second appearance in an Amicus horror anthology in this film’s segment, “Sweets to the Sweets.” As a character named Reid, he hires a governess to watch his young daughter Jane. The governess is appalled at how cold and stern Reid is with his daughter, but he is convinced Jane is following in the footsteps of her late mother and is practicing witchcraft. With little screen time, Lee conveys the fear this man feels for his own daughter, as he simultaneously tries to protect her, and himself, from the growing influence of her heritage.

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9. Paul Allen, The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll aka Jekyll’s Inferno (1960). A very unusual role for Lee, especially during the Golden Age of Hammer Horror. Rather than play Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (a role he would play in everything but name only in the later film, I, Monster), Lee is cast as Paul Allen, the captivating but weak-willed lover and bought man of Jekyll’s wife, Kitty (Dawn Adams).

Lee as Paul Allen and Dawn Adams as Kitty Jekyll in The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll

Paul Massie’s Jekyll is a boring, bearded scientist obsessed with his work and unleashes a Mr. Hyde who is handsome and decadent. He befriends an unknowing Allen who introduces him to the seedy side of London. An interesting if somewhat unsatisfying take on the Robert Louis Stevenson classic, Lee is nonetheless great as the unusually whiny and dependent Allen.

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8. Professor Karl Meister, The Gorgon (1964). Lee teamed once again with Cushing and director Terrence Fisher on Hammer’s rather unique take on the Greek legend of The Gorgon. But he and Cushing switch their usual roles, with Cushing playing the heavy, and Lee the wise heroic mentor figure who ultimately vanquishes the title creature. It proved Lee could play the moral compass in these morality plays disguised in Grand Guignol.

Lee as Professor Meister in The Gorgon. Behind the scenes, old friends Peter Cushing and Lee share a laugh.

Fellow Hammer stalwart and their most prolific leading lady Barbara Shelley also gives a strong performance in this quiet little gem. The somewhat lackluster monster effects don’t deter from the entertainment.

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7. Franklyn Marsh, Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965). Lee features in the wraparound and one of the segments in the first of Amicus Studios’ famous horror anthologies, with Peter Cushing as the title character. In the segment “Disembodied Hand,” Lee plays art critic Franklyn Marsh, an arrogant, disdainful bully who uses the weight of his opinion to destroy those in the art community he deems unworthy. When an artist (fellow Hammer alum and future Alfred actor Michael Gough) makes a fool out of him, Marsh resorts to attempted murder.

Gough loses a hand, which somehow receives a life of its own, seeking revenge against the man who maimed him. Lee is delightfully unlikeable as the pompous Marsh, and it’s a hoot to watch the usually terrifying actor cower in fear as he’s pursued by a possessed appendage.

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6. Professor Alan Driscoll, City of the Dead aka Horror Hotel (1960). Produced by the team that would later form Amicus, City of the Dead centers around a college student who visits the remote Massachusetts town of Whitewood to study the history of witch-burning that occurred there centuries earlier. She is sent by Professor Alan Driscoll, whom Lee plays as an engaging but aloof educator, with a sinister side just bubbling under the surface.

The film’s story is at times strikingly similar to Robert Bloch’s Psycho, made into a legendary film the year later by Alfred Hitchcock. But unlike that film, there is a real supernatural threat here, and the eerie atmosphere of Whitewood makes for a surprisingly bleak and violent film for the times.

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5. Professor Sir Alexander Saxton, Horror Express (1972). Lee and Cushing get the chance to play friendly rivals in this one, and this film perhaps better than any of their collaborations shows a glimpse of the strong friendship they shared for decades. After Cushing lost his beloved wife Helen to a long illness, Lee talked his grieving friend into taking the role to occupy his mind. Lee’s Professor Saxton is traveling aboard the Trans-Siberian Express with his latest anthropological discovery, the preserved body of a prehistoric ape. But the ape’s body is inhabited by an alien entity that goes about the train murdering and possessing everyone it encounters.

Undoubtedly influenced by John W. Campbell Jr.’s novella Who Goes There, Horror Express carries some of the DNA of the earlier official adaptation of that story, The Thing from Another World, and the later, more famous version, John Carpenter’s The Thing. Look for a scene stealing cameo by Telly Savalas as a Cossack raider.

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4. The Creature, The Curse of Frankenstein (1957). The film that put not only Lee on the map, but Hammer Films as well. The first teaming of Lee, co-star Peter Cushing, director Terrence Fisher, and writer Jimmy Sangster, The Curse of Frankenstein was a gory leap forward for horror, sensationalizing the genre with bloody color, but never losing sight of the gothic source material.

Cushing is the star, and his deliciously amoral Baron Frankenstein will continue throughout the franchise. But Lee, as his first creation, presents a truly pitiful creature, full of rage, but listless and soulless. His long limbs seem to work as if there is no true motivation behind them, presenting the Creature as an unholy marionette that just shouldn’t exist. All of this with no dialogue, one uncovered eye, and being slathered in Phil Leaky’s disturbingly cadaverous makeup.

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3. Kharis, The Mummy (1959). Lee teamed once again with the Frankenstein and Dracula crew of director Terrence Fisher and co-star Peter Cushing for Hammer’s color reimagining of Universal’s Mummy series. In my opinion, this film outshines all of them, even the fabled original 1932 film of the same name starring Boris Karloff. Unlike that film, the Mummy here is on full view throughout, and a force to be reckoned with.

Lee’s powerful frame is truly intimidating as he incessantly stalks his prey, smashing through doors and windows like paper. Buried under Roy Ashton’s impressive makeup, Lee is nonetheless able to convey the love and heartbreak Kharis feels when he encounters the reincarnated form of the princess he loved millennia ago. With only his eyes Lee expresses the torturous longing this once noble creature feels, and actually makes you want to root for him, despite his murderous rampage!

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2. Duc de Richleau, The Devil Rides Out aka The Devil’s Bride (1968). Lee was instrumental in getting this adaptation of Dennis Wheatly’s novel produced at Hammer, and his enthusiasm for the project shines through. Getting the rare chance to play the lead hero, Lee excels as the charming and commanding Richleau. Out to save a family friend from being taken in by a Satanic cult, Lee conveys Richleau’s experience with the supernatural, and his disdain for the dark arts, perhaps due to very personal experience.

Add in an excellent Charles Gray as the silver-tongued cult leader, along with Terrence Fisher’s taut direction, and you have perhaps Hammer’s finest film. Lee considered it the best he ever made for the studio, and it’s hard to argue against that!

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1. Lord Summerisle, The Wicker Man (1973). Lee was often quoted as saying this was one of his greatest film roles, and the best scripted film he was in. Considering he and many sources claim that the cast worked on the low-budget film for free, that’s a testament to its quality! Lee plays Lord Summerisle, the charismatic leader of a small Scottish island community. When a police detective (Edward Woodward) arrives to search for a missing girl, he finds the island’s inhabitants indifferent to her plight, and all engaging in lustful pagan rituals.

Lord Summerisle is avuncular and very persuasive in his beliefs, and Lee portrays him not as a sadistic monster, but a truly devoted community leader who only seeks the best for his people. The fact that this involves human sacrifice conceals the true horror beneath the smiles, dancing and frivolity. The site of a boisterous Lee leading his people in a sing-song chant as the title Wicker Man burns is truly unsettling, and unforgettable.

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MORE

— CHRISTOPHER LEE: The Greatest RA’S AL GHUL That Never Was. Click here.

— Because You Demanded It: CHRISTOPHER LEE as RA’S AL GHUL! Click here.

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13th Dimension contributor Chris Franklin is a graphic designer, illustrator, writer, and podcaster, who co-hosts and produces several shows on the Fire and Water Podcast Network, including JLUCast. Check out his illustrative and design work at chrisfranklincreative.com.