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LEE, CHRISTOPHER (1922– ). British actor.
Acted in television: "The Sorcerer," episode of One
Step Beyond (1961); "The Sign of Satan" (1964), episode of The Alfred
Hitchcock Hour; "Never, Never Say Die," "The Interrogators" (1968),
episodes of The Avengers; Theatre Macabre (tv series; host)
(1970); Poor Devil (tv movie) (Robert Sheerer 1972); "Earthbound"
(1976), episode of Space: 1999; Mysteries of the Unknown: The Occult
(tv special) (1977); Captain America II: Death Too Soon (tv movie) (Ivan
Nagy 1979); Once upon a Spy (tv movie) (Nagy 1980); Goliath Awaits
(tv movie) (1981); "Evil Stalks This House" (1981), episode of Tales of the
Haunted; An Eye for an Eye (tv movie) (1981); Massarati and the
Brain (tv movie) (Harvey Hart 1982); "The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out
about the Shivers" (1984), episode of Faerie Tale Theatre; "The Rameses
Connection" (1995), five-part episode of The Tomorrow People; 100
Years of Horror (tv documentary; narrator) (Ted Newsom 1996); A Century
of Sci-Fi (tv documentary; narrator) (1996); Moses (tv movie) (Roger
Young 1996); Sorellina e il Principe del Sogno (tv movie) (Lamberto Bava
1996); Strictly Supernatural (tv series; narrator) (1997); Wyrd
Systers (animated tv miniseries; voice) (1997); Soul Music (animated
tv miniseries; voice) (1997); The Odyssey (tv miniseries) (1997); In
the Beginning (tv miniseries) (2000); Gormenghast (tv miniseries)
(2000); Christopher Lee's Ghost Stories for Christmas (tv miniseries;
host) (2000); Les Redoubtables (tv series) (2001); Quest for the Ring
(tv documentary) (2001); A Passage to Middle-Earth: The Making of The Lord
of the Rings (tv documentary) (2001).
That is why, even though he has played the part more than any other actor,
Lee remains one of the screen's least impressive Draculas. To properly
portray a vampire, one must convey that it is occasionally fun to be a
vampire—to turn into a bat and fly around, to bite into a beautiful
woman's neck, to suck some nice warm blood—and one must also convey
that it is occasionally very sad to be a vampire—to never see the sun,
to feel driven to satisfy a corrupt desire, to constantly fear exposure
or extinction. Bela LUGOSI, while handicapped
by a script that would have made him a supporting character, portrayed
these emotions brilliantly; even Leslie NIELSEN, in the farcical Dracula
—Dead, and Loving It, occasionally communicated such feelings. But
for Christopher Lee, being a vampire is only a chore: you get up out of
your coffin every night, you search for some woman to drain her blood,
and you hiss in annoyance at crosses, garlic, running water, and all the
other things that bother vampires. There is the similar aura of an obligatory
routine to his various attempts at Fu Manchu, the Frankenstein monster,
Dr. Jekyll, the Mummy, Sherlock Holmes, and other villains and monsters—colorful parts, colorlessly acted. To be sure, I have read admiring,
even glowing, descriptions of some of these performances, but the simple
fact remains: if you were directing a film featuring one of these roles,
and you were given your choice of every actor in the history of film,
you would choose an actor other than Christopher Lee for every single
one of them. Truly, he is a jack of all horrifying trades, but master
of none.
Perhaps, one
might speculate, Lee was simply bored by horror films—which seemed evident
enough in the late 1970s, when he announced that he would never play Dracula
again, tried his hand at comedy as a guest host of Saturday Night Live,
and began appearing in "mainstream" films like Airport 1977 (1977). But
he didn't appear to be enjoying himself much in these new venues either, and,
understandably failing to make much of an impression in the wider world of
films, he inevitably drifted back into the genre from whence he came, albeit
less frequently than before. No, one is forced to conclude, what bored Lee was
the entire profession of acting itself. Long after they have ceased caring about the predictable contrivances
that are the stuff of most horror movies, viewers may find it stimulating
to observe familiar performers and speculate about the private horrors
they are experiencing while they do their business in front of the camera.
In many cases, based on the evidence of the screen and data about the
performer's life, a satisfying story can be constructed: Bela Lugosi,
frustrated by dreams of the respectable and serious acting career he might
have achieved; Lon CHANEY, Jr., tormented by
his own manifest inadequacies as an actor; John CARRADINE,
unable to bond with family members and friends and increasingly detached
from reality. Yet Christopher Lee remains a complete mystery to me. Clearly,
he didn't want to be an actor at all—but what did he really want
to do? And why didn't he do it? His performances reveal only his profound
dissatisfaction, not its causes, and there are no significant clues in
the available biographical information or the man's infrequent interviews,
in which he unconvincingly proclaims his deep love of and devotion to
the profession of acting. (One must also note that Lee has legions of
fans who discern great acting skills and passionate commitment in his
performances, and a few of them vehemently objected to the original version
of this entry; yet, I would politely suggest that they are seeing what
they want to see more than what Lee actually conveys on the screen—because,
of course, horror movie fans will always wish to believe that horror movie
actors love what they are doing.)
Even if
baffled by his motives, one can still admire his indefatigable, even vampiric,
energy: now entering his eighties, he has continued to soldier on in various
films and television miniseries, and he has recently enjoyed two of the most
prominent roles of his career in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the
Ring and Star Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Clones. In both films,
he portrayed a mystically powerful and once-noble leader who turns to evil,
joins forces with the enemies of his former friends, and constructs and
oversees a vast underground factory of malevolent creation ... all for no
particular reason. Surrounded by inept, under-directed, or unmotivated
performers, as in Attack of the Clones, Lee might garner the best
reviews of his career for yet again going through his motions very well; but
when part of a cast that knows and cares about what it is doing, as in The
Fellowship of the Ring, Lee's robotic posturings are politely left
unmentioned. While he can unpersuasively pretend to love the Dark Side or covet
the Ring of Power, his true desires remain frustratingly inaccessible, as he
privately wrestles with his secret demons that engage his attention more than
the spectacular storylines and special effects that now surround him.
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