The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

Veteran actor and possessor of one of the most wonderfully silky voices in acting Christopher Lee has received a knighthood in the Queen’s birthday honours list. Sir Christopher, now in his mid 80s, has appeared in a massive number of international films across the decades, playing a diverse number of roles, although it is some of his more fantastical genre offerings for which he will forever be best known, notably the villain who is almost a match for James Bond as he played Scaramanga in The Man With the Golden Gun, the powerful wizard Saruman in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings (which it transpired was one of Chris’ favourite novels and one he had re-read many times over the years) and Lord Summerisle in Hardy’s iconic Wicker Man.

And of course there is his Hammer work (often with the delightful gentleman actor Peter Cushing), especially Dracula. It is probably hard for modern audiences to realise just how much those films pushed the boundaries of what was permissable, moving beyond the more static, black and white Lugosi era to make the count vibrant in lurid, blood soaked colour and to push film censors with the horror effects and the sexual undercurrents (which would become more obvious in later Hammer flicks). (via the BBC)