Thursday, 11 June 2015

RIP Christopher Lee

A lot of people will rightly associate Christopher Lee with Hammer Films, or Star Wars, or indeed the Lord of the Rings. But let's remember a versatile actor who played a broad range of characters, was kind and modest, and had a great voice. Here he is opposite Alan Arkin in the somewhat overlooked superhero parody, Captain Invincible.

2 comments:

Aonghus Fallon said...

This was great. I never heard of this film, anymore than I knew Lee could sing (well...sort of). He's surprisingly limber for so big a man. I first saw him as the Comte d'Rochefort in 'The Three Musketeers'.

valdemar said...

I think he did over 250 films and couldn't remember them all! But he did love singing and recorded several heavy metal albums.

Incidentally, here's Kim Newman's comment from Facebook re: Lee's obits.

'When Peter Cushing died, Christopher Lee and I did a radio obit show – and the host (can’t remember who) was tactless enough to ask ‘well, Vincent Price has gone and now Peter Cushing ... what do you think people will say when it’s your turn, Mr Lee?’ His response – amazingly polite in the circumstances - was to say that since he wasn’t as nice as Price and Cushing were he wouldn’t rate the kind of outpouring of affection and respect they got. As it happens, he was wrong about that.'

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