From the Archives of Evil # 2 by Christopher Lee

Lee as a Satanic priest in ‘To the Devil a Daughter.’ “If I had such a collection, I’d be living in a bathroom.”

In 2011, Lee was asked at a Q&A session at the University College in Dublin, if it was true that he had “a huge collection of occultism-related literature that amounted to 20,000 books?” Lee replied: He was introduced to this esoteric subject by his friend author Dennis Wheatley and it became a bit of an obsession after he read the works of Aleister Crowley. He had an impressive war record where he was attached to the SAS and by his own admission had an incredible knowledge of the occult. He was debonair and presented himself as a man of knowledge and experience. Even so, Lee was a major box office draw and his name above a title ensured a couple of hours of thrilling entertainment.ĭespite the fact Lee had a tendency to be bumped-off in his films, he was the kind of guy you’d want on your team when battling monsters, demons, and Satanic creeps. If Lee was in a film, you could usually bet he’d be dead by the last reel. Over his long and successful career, Lee was staked several times as Dracula, destroyed by daylight, eradicated by fresh running water ( Dracula Prince of Darkness), staked then set alight by lightning ( Scars of Dracula), impaled on a cartwheel ( Dracula AD 1972), snared by a hawthorn bush ( The Satanic Rites of Dracula), dissolved in an acid bath ( The Curse of Frankenstein), killed by James Bond, stabbed by his treacherous servant ( The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King), and decapitated by Anakin Skywalker (aka Darth Vader) in Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, to name but a few of his most memorable exits. I can’t think of many leading actors who have died on-screen as often as Christopher Lee.

From the Archives of Evil # 2 by Christopher Lee