Christopher Lee’s strange encounter with a ‘Dracula’ fan
There’s a reason why when most of us picture the eponymous vampire, Count Dracula, we picture Christopher Lee. Despite being released almost 70 years ago, Lee’s performance as the blood-sucking prince of darkness is seared into cinema history as the defining version of the character. Other adaptations have been tried, and yet we still keep returning to the seductive and frightening portrayal that Lee gave in seven releases from the iconic studio Hammer Horror.
Lee would play the role from the 1958 original through six sequels, culminating in his final outing 15 years on from his first, in 1973’s The Satanic Rites of Dracula, which would also see the third time Peter Cushing’s Van Helsing take on Dracula on-screen. Lee and Cushing were one of the most frequent cinematic pairings of the 1960s and ‘70s. They would star in 24 films together, and over time, they became incredibly close friends.
The slicked hair, long cape and gliding gait combination of Lee’s performance have become synonymous with the character itself, despite the lack of source material for these choices and the actual dismissal of the book’s description of Dracula being a “white-haired man, with a long moustache”. Ask most people to describe Bram Stoker’s eponymous vampire, and you’ll get a Count closer to Lee’s portrayal than the words of the author himself.
It’s no surprise, then, that for many, Lee’s Dracula is not only the defining example but also Lee’s defining role, despite his filmography touting over 200 roles before his death in 2015.
When on set for Steven Spielberg’s 1979 comedy-war film 1941, Lee would tell Roger Ebert that as he was more used to public transport or private drivers in London, he needed to take driving lessons once he had spent more time in the USA. This unfamiliarity with the traffic system in Southern California led to an encounter that Lee described as a “strange, strange, strange experience the other day”.
He would go on to say that when he came to an accidental stop on the “I believe you call them ‘on-ramps'”, he was stopped by a highway patrolman who would examine his driving license. Lee was never an actor who went by a stage name and, by his own estimation, does “look a great deal like [himself],” so when the patrolman saw who he’d pulled over, the lines of actor and character once again would be blurred.
“You know, of course, that I’ve appeared in a number of vampire movies,” Lee would say and explain that he would jokingly be questioned, “Should you be driving by daylight?’” by the patrolman.
“Must have been a Dracula fan,” added Lee, and frankly, who isn’t.
