From Christopher Lee: Cinema’s Prince of Darkness, published 2026

By 1976, Christopher Lee was breaking away from the horror genre he had done so much to popularize. He played Mycroft Holmes in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970), a box office failure that nonetheless offered him a chance to work with Billy Wilder. The next year, Lee had a small role in the western Hannie Caulder. Then came the triple threat of Richard Lester’s Three Musketeers (1973) and Four Musketeers (1975), and The Man with the Golden Gun (1975). The latter finally provided an opportunity to play a Bond villain, years after Lee’s step-cousin, Ian Fleming, suggested he’d make a good Dr. No. All three films were international hits, and the actor’s mainstream visibility was at its highest point to date.

Wilder and others had recommended a move to Los Angeles, but it was Richard Widmark, Lee’s co-star in 1975’s To the Devil…a Daughter, who finally convinced him to take the plunge. That project had been fraught with financial and script problems, and gave Lee an anti-climactic death scene that he vocally despised (“A rock! How do you kill a Satanic character with a rock?”). It was, fittingly, the last in Hammer Films’ long run of horror features, the proverbial nail in the coffin of a once-great studio. It didn’t take a rock upside the head to convince Lee it was time to move on.