#CHRISTOPHERLEESATURDAY!
FALLING DEADLY! Under the heading of The Many Deaths of Christopher Lee
In The Movies, should be a sub-heading . . . 'Falling and Falls' Can
you name and count how many times one of Christopher Lee's Bad Guys or
Monsters, FELL while dying??? Here's My favorite from 'Dracula Has Risen
From The Grave' Hammer 1968 . . .
IT'S AMAZING when you stop and examine how many death's Christopher Lee's DRACULA experienced that also featured FALLING...! You would have thought after his giant 'Whoops-a-Daisy' in '#DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE' in 1968, in his next adventure in 1969, 'TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA', he'd be watching his step... nope. That Church balcony was pretty high too. That's gorra hurt . . . all hail to the stuntman, the late Eddie Powell.
COME 1970 and 'THE SCARS OF DRACULA', he goes and falls head first,from the parapet of castle DRACULA ...ON FIRE! In 1972 he still proved to be not that steady on his pins, when Van Helsing tricked him, in a pit of wooden stakes, in DRACULA AD 1972.
BACK IN 1966 Lee's Rasputin, fell to his death, from a three story castle window, on to an ice covered moat, that only three months earlier, he had slipped and slithered through, a ice hole to a watery death as DRACULA again, in DRACULA, PRINCE OF DARKNESS . . .
FLAMES AND A STAIRCASE, provided the 'out', when Lee played in an adaption of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, cunningly renamed 'Dr Marlow and Mr Blake' in Amicus films, 'I MONSTER'. When this film made its debut in 1970, audiences must have thought that the guys pushing the pens, got some weird pleasure seeing a 6ft' 5 guy hitting the deck...!
FULL MARKS must be awarded to scriptwriter Michael Armstrong, who I am sure realised this too. When it came to writing 'HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS', the only film to star Lee, Peter Cushing and Vincent Price in scenes together, Armstrong was careful to litter the story with skip loads of visual references to the three 'Masters of Terror's' long careers. So when it came to offing Christopher Lee, you can take a guess at how his exit was dispatched. Armstrong decided that only a double nod would suffice . . . the falling down the stairs from 'I, MONSTER' and poleaxing and Shish kebab from 'DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE'... even down to the shocked expression on realizing he was impaled, was a nice touch.
AND FINALLY, perhaps the longest fall, was kept until last, with Christopher Lee's Saruman the White, from 'Lord Of The Rings : The Return Of The King' (2003), unfortunately cut from the theatrical version . . . . but thankfully they
can be seen in the extended version of the film, available on the blu
ray release.
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