Trying to sum the career of Christopher Lee in three films is absurd. This is better considered a look at three personal favorites, all films where Lee’s methodical ice-blooded elan redefined how generations of viewers considered tropes as well-worn as vampirism, devil worship and Bluebeardian bloodsoaked aristocracy. Not since the days of Conrad Veidt has anyone possessed a stare like Lee’s, and it’s our hope with these films that same stare pierces into your very soul this July.
THE TORTURE CHAMBER OF DR. SADISM
(aka Die Schlangengrube und das Pendel)
Dir. Harald Reinl, 1969
West Germany, 80 min.
FRIDAY, JULY 3 – 10:00 PM
WEDNESDAY, JULY 8 – 10:00 PM
SUNDAY, JULY 12 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, JULY 25 – 10:00 PM
Based loosely on THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM, THE TORTURE CHAMBER OF DR. SADISM is a mix of Bava-influenced gothic revenge from beyond the grave and Corman’s Poe films, telling the ghastly tale of Count Regula (Christopher Lee), killer of maidens, sentenced to be executed with a Black Sunday-style spiked mask hammered into the skull. Regula swears he will return to exact bloody vengeance. Secret passageways, ruthless highwaymen, and the body of Regula in his glass coffin, waiting for his time to rise…
THE CITY OF THE DEAD
(aka Horror Hotel)
Dir. John Llewellyn Moxey, 1960
UK, 78 min.
MONDAY, JULY 6 – 10:00 PM
SUNDAY, JULY 11 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, JULY 14 – 10:00 PM
FRIDAY, JULY 24 – 10:00 PM
“For all eternity shall I practice the ritual of Black Mass. For all eternity shall I sacrifice unto thee.”
Our film opens in Whitewood, Massachusetts in the year of our lord 1692 with a mob hunting down Elizabeth Selwyn, an accused witch, and sentencing her to burn upon the pyre. Selwyn prays to Lucifer for aid, pledging her service and cursing the people of Whitewood for all eternity. As the flames rise higher, we find ourselves in a classroom where Professor Driscoll (Lee) discusses the trial and execution to a mostly bored group of students, with one notable exception, Nan Barlow (Venetia Stevenson), who is so into the subject she wants to visit Whitewood for her senior paper on witchcraft. Driscoll sends her off, despite warnings from her dopey boyfriend, her disapproving brother and a guy at the filling station, and checks into the Ravenswood Inn, only to learn the town is not as it seems, and the practice of witchcraft is not relegated to history…A moody, beautifully shot black and white creeper in the spirit of the Val Lewton films or NIGHT OF THE DEMON, we’re happy to show it in the original unedited version with none of the cuts made for the HORROR HOTEL US cut you may have caught on a late night Creature Feature.
THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA
Dir. Alan Gibson, 1973
UK, 87 min.
SUNDAY, JULY 5 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, JULY 11 – 10:00 PM
THURSDAY, JULY 16 – 10:00 PM
MONDAY, JULY 27 – 10:00 PM
“Evil rules, you know. It really does.”
The last in Hammer’s run of Lee vs. Cushing Dracula films, the last Hammer film to use actual occultists as consultants, and a lurid stew of spy tropes, supernatural horror, black masses and one of the absolute best-ever monologues of cosmic dread and horror from Freddie Jones, playing Julian Keeley, a professor commanded to create a virulent variant on the black plague. Sidestepping earlier period-piece Gothic trappings for a thoroughly contemporary London, it’s both sleek and pulpy, with as many gunfights, dirtbike chases, double crosses, regular crosses, basement nightgown covens of undead brides and occult goings-on as one could possibly want. A secret sect of British VIPs perform unholy rites of sacrifice in order to appease their abominable lord! It’s always fun to watch Lee and Cushing face off, the secret agent/cop drama aspect keeps everything at a brisk clip, and it literally starts with a black mass in which a woman is sacrificed and returns from the dead.
HORROR EXPRESS
Dir. Eugenio Martin, 1972.
90 min. Italy/UK.
In English
SATURDAY, JULY 11 – MIDNIGHT
In this essential Trans-Siberian classic, the great Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing are rival anthropologists aboard a train en route from China to Moscow housing a crate with an amazing discovery: a primitive humanoid creature. The problem is, the creature’s body itself is the vessel for a shapeless, ancient alien entity hopping from body to body as hosts suck the memory, knowledge and brains from their victims. Lee and Cushing must combine their scientific expertise to understand and conqueror the otherworldly, demonic menace. In the meantime, Telly Savalas shows up as a domineering Cossack officer, and Argentinian spaghetti western star Alberto de Mendoza plays a nefarious, mad monk who renounces his faith and pledges his devotion to the ancient evil. Like THE THING re-written by Paul Theroux aboard a bullet train to hell and featuring creepy, eye-bleeding make-up effects, freaky blazing-eyed zombies and top-notch performances by Lee and Cushing, HORROR EXPRESS is a total classic!