The “deeply objectionable” 1998 movie that saw Christopher Lee bombarded by death threats
Half a century into his film career, Christopher Lee won what he felt was his “most important” role, which proved to be his most controversial.
It was a long time coming. For years, the British actor had cemented himself as the second face of Dracula after the original Bela Lugosi. Along with Peter Cushing, Lee starred in countless Hammer Film Productions horror features across decades, the UK company plundering the old Universal monster canon and taking their own gothic, B-movie spin. For UK households, Lee endured as their immortal Count.
Yet his greatest test as a performer came from Pakistan’s turbulent political history. Released in 1998, Lee won the starring role of Muhammad Ali Jinnah in the Jinnah biopic, a joint British-Pakistani production detailing the country’s very first Governor-General as he pushes his two-nation theory during the Hindu-Muslim tensions amid 1920s British Raj, soldiers on as a moderate voice against the Islamic hardliners who oppose him, to then become an eventual witness to the horrors of the 1947 Punjabi partition delivering Jinnah’s political goal at a terrible cost.
It’s weighty stuff that commands an actor of natural gravitas. Questions of ‘whitewashing’ aside, Lee’s effortless authority, decades in the making, meant the Hammer legend was able to pull the role off, exuding all the arresting stoicism and statesmanlike leadership Pakistan’s founder demanded.
Lee thought highly of the role too, telling the BBC a few years later, “The most important film I made, in terms of its subject and the great responsibility I had as an actor,” adding, “It had the best reviews I’ve ever had in my entire career — as a film and as a performance.”
So where did the death threats come from? Amid the generally positive critical response and a reported standing ovation among elite circles in Karachi, fierce resistance to the Jinnah biopic was meted out before screenings had even taken place.
Among the protesters were threats to destroy cinemas screening Jinnah and physical attacks on any distributor. Such incendiary rhetoric was largely spearheaded by the infuriated Daily Khabrain paper, lambasting the female actors involved as “prostitutes” and the editor, Zia Shahed, labelling the feature “deeply objectionable”, plus prominent Pakistani industrialist Mia Azhar Umin promising to lead violent efforts to scupper the film’s spread: “Either they will die, or I will die.”
The “upsetting” 1989 movie Ari Aster wishes he’d never seen: “I regretted watching it for many years”
The 2018 scene Jeremy Renner point-blank refused to shoot: “You’re not going to do me wrong”
The two pieces of advice that turned Clint Eastwood into a legendary director: “That always resonated with me”
It turns out that such rage was triggered by the biopic’s perceived lack of respect for the country’s founder. A near-deified figure in the Pakistani state whose picture hangs in every classroom and public building, anger at the biopic’s liberal portrait of Jinnah was compounded by Lee’s casting, taking offence at the former horror icon and silver screen vampire stepping into the shoes of such a lauded titan of Pakistani history and worrying that such a name would spark ridicule.
The fierce maelstrom surrounding Jinnah resulted in death threats thrown Lee’s way and the recruitment of bodyguards for protection throughout much of the shoot. He’d come through unscathed, ready to embark on a late career spurt with The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars movies as General Musharraf was cementing his military rule in Pakistan, incurring the wrath of Muslim conservatives once again when faced with the new regime’s secular reforms.
