The Life And Deaths Of Christopher Lee

Final Curtains

The Life And Deaths
Of Christopher Lee
Directed by Jon Spira
UK 2024
Canal Cat Films
UK Premiere FrightFest 2024 screening

I’ve been following Jon Spira on Twitter for well over a decade... I even made a small contribution to some of his crowd funded books (which I promise I will get around to reading) but I never watched any of his films until now. I figured, if I didn’t like them and posted a review, he’d probably hate me.

That being said, it’s almost a time honoured tradition for me and my friend to attend a FrightFest screening which is a documentary about something which may be considered to be connected to Hammer horror films and so, The Life And Deaths Of Christopher Lee seemed to fit the bill. I somewhat reluctantly bought tickets and... well... I have to say I was quite pleasantly surprised in that this is easily one of the best documentary films I’ve seen in many a year (possibly the best and certainly the best I’ve seen at FrightFest).

Why? Well because it’s so well written and moves along at a fair lick. And my one small criticism, which I’ll get to in a while, is absolutely no fault of the film makers at all. That’s my personal baggage. Let me set the scene for why this documentary is so well put together by describing the opening minutes...

The animated opening credits show a wonderful cartoon, as they roll, of Sir Christopher Lee walking on from each side of the screen and being killed in some manner... arrow shot, cannon, bomb etc. All the while, just off to the left of shot, nicely lit and silhouetted so you can’t yet see it properly, is a figurine which I at first thought was one of those horrible bobble heads, of Christopher Lee. And then, on the right we see actor Peter Serafinowicz practicing his impression of the voice of Lee. And then the light comes up and we see it’s a pretty great looking marionette puppet of Christopher Lee, who then proceeds to narrate the whole story of his life. It’s ingenious and works really well.

One of the talking head interviewees of the film is, of course, the great horror scholar and sometimes actor Jonathan Rigby (who I’ve mentioned on this blog numerous times) and he knew Lee quite well. So he was, according to the director in his Q & A session at the end of the movie, on hand to help vet Spira's script and ensure that things Lee wouldn’t say or which were tonally off for the actor were not included in the running narrative and, yeah, there’s nobody I could think of who would be better suited to know about such things.

The film takes us quickly through Lee’s long family lineage and speeds us to his school days, his life in the airforce... with brief mention of his stint as a nazi hunter, I’ll get to that... and onto his choice and easyish access into the world of acting. It, of course, tells of his later distaste of being associated with such things as Dracula and talks also about many of his films, including obvious ones like The Wicker Man (Lee’s favourite performance, I believe) and The Man With The Golden Gun, playing one of his cousin Ian Fleming’s characters on the big screen. It even mentions the colossal flop that was Spielberg’s 1941.

The film also takes you through his triumph of singing heavy metal concept albums and, in some very nice clips, his friendship with Peter Cushing. And it’s all assisted with some wonderful interviewees, such as the aforementioned Rigby and people such as Caroline Munro, Joe Dante, Peter Jackson and, in a very funny turn, John Landis. Not to mention a few revealing clips of the man himself and various animated segments in different styles by different artists (including Dave McKean).

And I can’t say enough good things about this. I can only hope this gets a Blu Ray release at some point soon... this is a must have purchase for me but I’m not doing that horrible streaming stuff. And my one, very small, problem with it (other than the fact that I could easily have watched another hour) is that it doesn’t reveal any details about Lee’s days as a nazi hunter during (and I think also after) the Second World War. But, it turns out that this is because, since it was confidential information, Lee would never talk about what went on to anybody. In fact, John Landis tells a very funny story (among many) about his attempts to get the information out of Lee whenever he saw him.

So, yeah, a shame it’s not there but the information is not up for grabs and the way Spira and crew handle the lack of data here is, at least, brilliantly done and shot through with humour (like the rest of the documentary). So, yeah, I had an absolutely marvellous time with his new film The Life And Deaths Of Christopher Lee and would urge all fans of the great man to see this one as soon as possible. A fitting tribute and one, I hope, he would have approved of.