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Post by erik on Jun 11, 2015 8:37:38 GMT -5
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Post by Richard W on Jun 11, 2015 11:24:43 GMT -5
Loved him as Dracula in "Horror of Dracula". He brought a physical athleticism to the role previously made famous by Lugosi who, while certainly creepier than Lee, hardly seemed to move at all.
I had the pleasure of seeing Lee in person at the Music Box Theater here in Chicago several years ago. He made a personal appearance for special showing of "Horror of Dracula". He was a very tall man and had a deep, mesmerizing voice.
I liked him as Sherlock Holmes, too.
He was a much better actor than most of his roles allowed.
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Post by erik on Jun 11, 2015 11:57:34 GMT -5
He also played the role of Artemidorus in a 1970 film version of Shakespeare's JULIUS CAESAR, as well as the Nazi commandant Wolfgang von Kleinschmidt in Spielberg's 1941, and was also in AIRPORT '77.
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Post by fabtastique on Jun 11, 2015 14:49:14 GMT -5
Great man, great actor
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Post by Tony on Jun 11, 2015 23:19:30 GMT -5
He was in one of my all-favorite movies. He played Lord Summerisle.
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Post by Tony on Jun 12, 2015 8:03:02 GMT -5
And apparently that was one of his favorite roles:
"One of his favorite roles was that of the hedonistic pagan leader who advocates free love, public nudity and human sacrifice in “The Wicker Man” (1973)."
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Post by Richard W on Jun 12, 2015 8:39:13 GMT -5
He was great in "The Wicker Man", a movie I really like for its weirdness and menacing atmosphere. But for me it falls just short of greatness as a horror movie because the shocking climax was telegraphed by the advertising and poster. Still a more than worthwhile film for many reasons, not the least of which are Lee's performance, Britt's bizarre "wall dance", and the creepy paeanistic imagery. Fantastic obit/career overview of Lee at Salon. "He captured the erotic allure of decadence and the hidden nature of reality." Indeed he did.
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Post by erik on Jun 12, 2015 8:58:55 GMT -5
One of the things that I think Lee managed to do was to find a lot of good roles that took him outside the horror film genre (e.g., playing the villain in the 1974 James Bond film THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN). While it was in the horror genre that he established his career, it could also have been the very thing that limited him as well. This happened to a large extent with Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi in the 1940s, and also, albeit to a somewhat lesser extent, to Vincent Price and Peter Cushing in the 1960s (and, in our time, Robert "Freddy Krueger" Englund).
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Post by Richard W on Jun 12, 2015 11:30:23 GMT -5
I'm not sure about Lee, but Price used his roles in myriad horror films of varying and sometimes indiscriminate quality as cash cows, money in the bank for his art collection, etc. Both found niches and exploited them, and both are memorable no matter how good or bad the movie itself.
Lee found some choice roles outside of the horror genre (a genre considered slumming by many but not by me), as did Price (Whales of August, for example), but Karloff and Lugosi were definitely victims of their own success, although in the case of Lugosi it ruined him. Karloff, like Cushing, seemed to accept his typecasting with a sardonic aplomb.
I love them all.
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Post by erik on Jun 12, 2015 12:51:58 GMT -5
Quote by Richard W:
True (although I believe Cushing was also in the original STAR WARS in 1977, so he got away from the horror genre there). Oddly, I think Lee, Cushing, and Price did appear in a number of horror films in the same cast during the late 1960s and 1970s (mostly for AIP, and mostly in England), but they were never in the same scene at any one time in those films.
As for the horror genre being considered slumming by many--well, I agree with you Richard. It's all in the way such films are done. There's a right way (e.g. PSYCHO; JAWS; THE SHINING)...and then there's a wrong way (the torture-porn that is HOSTEL and SAW).
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Post by Sloan on Jun 26, 2015 13:33:59 GMT -5
Hammer Horror films were the best.
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