MovieChat Forums > Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970) Discussion > THEORY: DID CHRIS LEE COME BACK BECAUSE ...

THEORY: DID CHRIS LEE COME BACK BECAUSE OF LAZENBY?

posted 11 years ago by psychocosmic-1
8 replies | jump to latest

Just a thought! Two super stars of Brittish Cinema: Christopher Lee and Sean Connery. Lee didn´t want to be typecast after his first Dracula film in 1958, so he didn´t come back to portrait Dracula until 1965. By 1969, Lee wanted to quit again. But Connery had quit too, and a replacement w Lazenby secured a new Bond film saving the franchise. Taste Of Dracula was shot with a plot without the real Dracula and starring Ralph Bates. Did Lee see the development of a huge Bondfilm with a new Bond actor for a new age, OHMSS, taking off and got worried he would be forgotten as the ultimate Dracula? Suddenly Christopher Lee changes his mind, and announce he is entering the TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA shooting. The film team had to change the script and allow Lee some screen time, and since that film he kept on being Dracula until 1973 and Hammer Studios couldn´t do it anymore!

Wrong or Right or Maybe?

[–] KingCobra686 9 years ago

Interesting theory. Could be true, but from everything I've seen he was kind of sick of these movies at that point and was just doing this one because of pressure from the studio. I think that his performance in this movie was excellent, but in a composed and somewhat casual way. If he was a man afraid of losing that role, I would have expected it to be over the top and much more dramatic.

The difference between this and 007 is that Connery was James Bond from the very start of the movies, while Lee was just the newest in the long line of Dracula actors. No matter how good Lee played Dracula in these movies, he was still sharing that role with Lugosi and Schreck and all the others. Connery giving up the role to Lazenby was a much different affair.

[–] The_Keeper_of_Angela_Baker 9 years ago

While of course we've heard the official story from Lee hundreds of times, in a recent(ish) interview with Fangoria magazine, director Peter Sasdy said that Lee came back for "Taste" and "Scars" because he didn't like the idea of Ralph Bates playing his part.

True or not, who knows?

[–] millsey72 (9557) a year ago

No way. The James Bond movies have nothing to do with vampires

[–] PaladinNJ (20310) a year ago

Technically they do since Christopher Lee did both.

[–] millsey72 (9557) a year ago

Nonetheless, all of Christopher Lee's iconic roles all came when he was the villain

[–] PaladinNJ (20310) a year ago

Not true at all. He played heroic roles in quite a few films.

[–] Otter (24464) a year ago

Ian Fleming, who wrote the Bond's books, was Lee's cousin. And Lee and Fleming's brother Peter were allegedly in the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, or Special Operations Executive (SOE), which allegedly helped inspire the James Bond stories.

So I've always wondered what exactly Christopher Lee *really* had to do with the creation of James Bond...

[–] [deleted] 7 months ago

I have no idea. I never heard him talk about that.

Maybe they just offered him more money than he could turn down.