Horror icons Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing performed in a number of movies together; here are all 24 films to peculiarity the prominent duo. Cushing, the older of the two performs, directed in the theater before moving to Hollywood and kick-starting his movie vocation. Lee, an intelligence officer during the Second World War, transferred his talents to film acting upon returning to Britain and quickly bridged itineraries with Cushing – though their “double act” status didn’t emerge until they collaborated on Hammer Films’ British horror movie cycle.

Cushing became prominent starring as Baron Frankenstein, while Lee became – for many – the definitive Count Dracula. That said, they often played supporting roles in each other’s movies, with Cushing duelling Lee’s Dracula as Van Helsing, and Lee playing the Creature in Cushing’s first Frankenstein cinema. While “workin on” many Hammer productions, the pair forged a close friendship and – by the time the ‘7 0s rolled around – were a known cinematic entity, with movies marketed on their pairing alone.

Related: Every Hammer Dracula Film Featuring Christopher Lee& Peter Cushing

While modern publics might best recognize the duo from the Star Wars movies( Cushing played Grand Moff Tarkin in the original trilogy, while Lee represented Count Dooku in the prequels ), their shared filmography is like a dealership all its own. From Hamlet to House of the Long Shadows, Lee and Cushing behaved together many times. Here are all 24 movies to peculiarity their pairing, explained.

Based on Shakespeare’s play, Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet tells the story of the Prince of Denmark who clashes over the decision to kill his uncle whom he supposes has slaughtered “his fathers”. Christopher Lee toy a polouse, though this role was uncredited, while Peter Cushing frisked Osric, a courtier who referees a conflict. The movie was the first British production to win the Academy Award for Best Picture but proved controversial amongst Shakespeare followers as Olivier trimmed nearly two hours of the approximately four-hour play. That said, this was likely a plus for general publics. Today, Hamlet is held in relatively high regard, but – as with all things Shakespeare – a lot of the homage feels impelled and ego-based on the part of critics.

Given the posting art and endorsement from dance mythology Bob Fosse, it would be fair to assume that Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing would be appearing in a melodic entitled Moulin Rouge by John Huston. That belief would be wrong. Instead, the film is a biopic of creator Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, based on a novel by Pierre La Mure, with very little of the movie’s runtime taking place in the titular Parisian cabaret. Lee played real-world artist Georges Seurat, while Cushing frisked Marcel de la Voisier – a fictional character. Though Moulin Rouge was both a fiscal and critical hit in the working day, the film has since been viewed as preferably standing, aside from a few striking dance sequences.

Robert Rossen’s Alexander the Great, an historic epic, starred Richard Burton in the title role and tells the story of the king’s life and military conquests. Christopher Lee uttered Nectenabus, dubbing over Helmut Dantine’s physical achievement, while Peter Cushing frisked Memnon – a Greek military officer and antagonist to Alexander. Like his role in Hamlet, Lee’s work became uncredited. While praised for its spectacle and epic scope, Alexander the Great was considered by a number of critics to be bloated and tedious. Nowadays, Burton is often said to be miscast in the title role, though the movie certainly improved Cushing’s career.

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Terence Fisher’s The Curse of Frankenstein is a movie full of cinematic starts: Hammer’s first coloring cruelty film, Peter Cushing’s firstly leading role in a movie, and his first time acting in the same backgrounds as Christopher Lee. Loosely based on Mary Shelley’s novel, the movie tells the story of Victor Frankenstein – an unorthodox scientist who introduces a being to life, simply to have it turn on him in the process. Cushing frisked Frankenstein( and would go on to reprise the character in five other Hammer films ), while Lee dallied the Creature. While mocked by a great deal of British critics for being too graphic, pundits in the USA seemed more attuned to Hammer’s endeavours, and The Curse of Frankenstein has gone on to achieve a very respected position in the horror movie canon.

The first movie in Hammer’s Dracula series, Horror of Dracula, starred Cushing and Lee in, arguably, their most famous personas as Doctor Van Helsing and Count Dracula, respectively. Loosely based on Bram Stoker’s novel and, again, directed by Terence Fisher, the cinema tells the story of Van Helsing chase Dracula down after the criminal begins to target a vampire-hunter’s family. Horror of Dracula succeeded both financially and critically, was admired for bringing out the sex themes of Stoker’s work, and cemented Cushing and Lee as an iconic fright pairing. To the working day, the cinema is commonly cited amongst the best Dracula movies of all time.

Another Hammer joint, Terrence Fisher’s The Hound of the Baskervilles watched Cushing and Lee reunite in the first hue adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic detective tale. Cushing, of course, played Sherlock Holmes, while Lee toy Sir Henry Baskerville – heir to the Baskerville fortune. The Hounds of the Baskervilles narrative has been adapted many times, but Cushing and Lee’s actions are timeless. Given Hammer’s predilection towards franchise-building, it’s odd that they didn’t cause a whole fibre of Sherlock movies, though the success of their monster-based horror movies was likely to blame. That said, Lee and Cushing would go on to star in several unrelated Holmes makes across movie and TV.

Mirroring their pairing in The Curse of Frankenstein, Hammer’s The Mummy( another Terence Fisher picture) determined Cushing and Lee portray John Banning, an archeologist, and Kharis, the titular mummy, respectively. While Hammer had prepared previous efforts to distance their repugnance franchises from the Universal Monster cycle, The Mummy was clearly based on the Universal series – borrowing plot ingredients and personas from those earlier films. Again, the gothic atmosphere was roundly admired, and The Mummy kick-started yet another Hammer dealership, with three more movies rendered – though neither Cushing nor Lee was involved in any of the sequels.

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John Paddy Carstairs’ The Devil’s Agent, based on a story by Hans Habe, tells the story of a double agent in Germany during the Cold War. Christopher Lee materializes as Baron von Staub, the agent’s friend before the conflict, and would have been acceded to by Peter Cushing had the actor’s representations not been trimmed from the finished movie. Eventually, The Devil’s Agent got lost amid glitzier spy movies and is little recollected today as anything other than a instead pedestrian espionage flick.

Another Hammer movie, Terrence Fisher’s The Gorgon tells the story of the titular demon, oppressing village representatives in Europe by turning its inmates to stone. Lee and Cushing starred as Professor Karl Meister and Dr. Namaroff, respectively. A then-modern reimagining of the Greek Medusa myth, The Gorgon has become something of a worship classic – respected for introducing a female demon to Hammer’s rather male-centric pantheon, though Lee and Cushing don’t share very much screen-time on the whole.

Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, directed by Freddie Francis, was the first film in Amicus Productions’ notorious anthology cruelty repetition. Peter Cushing performed as the narrator, Dr. Schreck( his surname is German for “terror” ), and steered the gathering through five different fright narrations. The fourth segment, “Disembodied Hand”, performed Christopher Lee as an art critic, haunted by the separated side of a painter whose being he destroyed. The cinema is often hailed by modern pundits as an underrated masterpiece, taken for granted during the era in which it was started. Cushing would go on to star in five of Amicus’s six spiritual sequels to Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, while Lee only appeared once more in the series.

While The Gorgon understood Hammer draw focus on a female being, Robert Day’s She – based on the novel by H. Rider Haggard – was the company’s first time building a movie around a female whiz. Ursula Andress( who launched to stardom after to be provided in the first James Bond cinema, Dr. No) dallied Ayesha – the immortal governor of a lost realm – whose subject is discovered by a group of archeologists. Christopher Lee frisked Billali, Ayesha’s priest, while Peter Cushing frisked Professor Holly – the main archeologist. While the grandeur of She was generally admired, gaping more expensive than other Hammer movies, it’s often viewed as a bit of a plod by modern critics.

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Another Amicus production, likewise directed by Freddie Francis, The Skull performed Peter Cushing as Dr. Maitland – an esoteric collector who comes into possession of the Marquis de Sade’s skull and quickly falls under its sinister charm. Christopher Lee performs as Sir Matthew Phillips, the skull’s previous proprietor, and is money as a “guest star” in the approvals. Sade’s offsprings objected to the production, which was initially used the nobleman’s name in the claim, and took legal action against the movie. Critically, The Skull tends to receive middle-of-the-road write-ups in the modern age.

Directed by Terence Fisher, but not a Hammer production, Island of the Burning Damned( named Night of the Big Heat in Britain) is a sci-fi movie about a British island that knowledge an extreme heat-wave in the middle of winter, stimulating Lee’s Professor Hanson to suspect an alien takeover. Cushing appears as Dr. Stone, taking Lee’s “guest star” billing from The Skull, who assistances Hanson in trying to stop the alien aggressors. Based on a novel by John Lymington, Island of the Burning Damned is generally viewed as another middle-of-the-road picture though, as per Fisher’s involvement, is often praised for its gothic atmosphere.

Despite stellar Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and iconic cruelty actor Vincent Price, Gordon Hessler’s Scream and Scream Again – based on a story by Peter Saxon( a pseudonym used by various thriller columnists of the period) – aspects very few stages in which the top-billed trio actually appear together. In fact, Cushing shares no screen-time with either of his co-stars. Telling the story of a serial murderer whom the police believe to be a vampire, Scream and Scream Again traverses multiple categories – gothic horror, sci-fi, plot thriller – and is commonly cited as an underrated introduction in British genre cinema.

A sequel to comedy punch Salt and Pepper( 1968 ), Jerry Lewis’s One More Time tells the story of two nightclub proprietors who end up on the wrong side of the law and have to work together to prove their innocence and solve a murder. Lee and Cushing cameo as Count Dracula and Baron Frankenstein, in adoration to their famous Hammer attributes – though their appearances are very brief. Nowadays, One More Time is generally despised by reviewers, with the caveat that it is superior to the Richard Donner-directed original.

Related: How Many Times Christopher Lee Played Count Dracula (& Why He Stopped )

Another Amicus horror anthology, Peter Duffell’s The House That Dripped Blood facets four segments – each focusing on a different genre whiz of the period. Peter Cushing suns in the “Waxworks” segment as Philip Grayson – a retired stockbroker who finds upon a wax museum and becomes obsessed with a statue that resembles his dead lover. Christopher Lee adepts in “Sweets to the Sweet” as John Reid, a widower who moves into a live with his young daughter only to discover that she has superhuman abilities. Doctor Who’s Jon Pertwee and Indiana Jones’ Denholm Elliot perform in the other segments, and – while The House That Dripped Blood received mixed scrutinizes upon initial exhaust – the cinema has gone on to become a cult classic.

An adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s influential horror novel, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Amicus’ I, Monster, directed by Stephen Weeks, idols Christopher Lee as Dr. Charles Marlowe – a psychologist who invents a drug that turns him into his deranged alter-ego, Mr. Edward Blake. Peter Cushing frisks Frederick Utterson, Marlowe’s lawyer, who believes that Blake is blackmailing his patron before slowly detecting the true nature of the situation. While the movie didn’t perform very well at the box office, Lee’s dual action has been praised by modern commentators and, despite reforming the name of the protagonist, the cinema is commonly cited as one of “the worlds largest” loyal changes of Stevenson’s text.

The seventh film in Hammer’s Dracula series, Alan Gibson’s Dracula A.D. 1972 was something of a soft-reboot for the franchise – reuniting Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing as Dracula and Van Helsing, respectively. Departing from Hammer’s Victorian aesthetic, the movie was set in the then-contemporary 1970 s and boasted a assortment of hippies recreating Dracula, with Van Helsing’s studious predecessor red-hot on the vampire’s tail. While the film received fairly weak reviews upon exhaust, experience has been kind to the production, and it is now as much a span portion as Hammer’s earlier output. Watching the free-love generation fall under Dracula’s gothic charm is a genuine rapture, with Cushing and Lee on tip-top form.

The plot of Eugenio Martin’s Horror Express – based on a novella by John W. Campbell Jr. – will be familiar to horror supporters, with Campbell’s story providing the basis for Christian Nyby’s The Thing from Another World and John Carpenter’s The Thing remake. Horror Express, nonetheless, includes a brand-new construction, defining the escapade on a moving train with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing trying to contain an foreigner menace that is possessing various passengers. Upon release, the movie was relatively well-received, and it remains a fun horror flick – even if other adaptations of Campbell’s novella have become bona fide classics.

Related: Horror Express Was The First Remake Of The Thing( Before John Carpenter’s )

The only production processes Christopher Lee’s Charlemagne Films, Peter Sasdy’s Nothing But the Night – based on a novel by John Blackburn – tells the story of police inspector Charles Bingham, played by Christopher Lee, who enlists the help of pathologist Mark Ashley, giving full play to Peter Cushing, to show a whodunit encircling the deaths of various orphanage trustees. Upon release, re-examine were pretty lackluster, with pundits mocking the convoluted scheme and poor renditions from “their childrens” performers involved. That said, Nothing But the Night’s creepy intention has been praised in recent times.

Freddie Francis’ The Creeping Flesh tells the story of a Victorian scientist, giving full play to Peter Cushing, who returns from Papua New Guinea with a container of old bones. Like family-friendly-marketed Gremlins, when exposed to water, the bones take on a brand-new soul – unleashing a skeletal brute on the scientist and his friends. Christopher Lee represents the scientist’s brother, who runs an asylum, and becomes involved in the superhuman scheme. Despite arriving rather late in the British gothic fright cycle, the movie received pretty good reviews which are continuing to the modern age, and the cinema is often viewed as one of the very best to peculiarity the Cushing/ Lee pairing.

A sequel to Dracula A.D. 1972 and the eighth movie in Hammer’s Dracula series, Alan Gibson’s The Satanic Rites of Dracula once again features Lee and Cushing as Dracula and Van Helsing. Even more contemporary than its precede, the cinema fusions the political thriller category with mysterious cruelty as Dracula attempts to bring about Armageddon by unleashing a deadly virus. Reviews for the cinema were desegregated, though – in the modern period – it tends to receive better write-ups. In fact, amid the cinema-delaying coronavirus pandemic, the movie takes on a whole new relevance – its plot somewhat mirroring the various virus conspiracy ideologies that have cropped up in recent times. That said, it was the last Dracula film to star both Cushing and Lee, and is rarely viewed as a fitting swan-song for the famed reference pairing.

Kevin Connor’s Arabian Adventure tells the story of an evil sorcerer, giving full play to Christopher Lee, who searches power by obtaining a supernatural climb. A ruler, accompanied by a boor boy and a flying carpet, aims to take the wizard down. Peter Cushing also performs as Wazir Al Wuzara, a loner and a far cry from the actor’s normal put-together characters. As the designation indicates, it’s an adventure movie through and through, peculiarity genies, swamps, and fire-breathing ogres – all realized with practical effects. That said, the effects depicted ardor for looking too low-budget, though – in the modern, CGI-laden film landscape – said influences have a certain charm.

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Pete Walker’s House of the Long Shadows – a slapstick fright movie based on a novel by Earl Derr Biggers – would prove to be Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing’s final cinema together, accompanied by fellow horror icons Vincent Price and John Carradine. They all continue members of a strange category who reunite in an old manor house, while a young novelist tries to write around them. While the returning fright adepts were certainly a gather for publics, the story was roundly blamed and said to be unworthy of their involvement. That said, House of the Long Shadows is certainly entertaining on a cast degree – with all of the members of the mythical ensemble having fun in their campy roles.

Sadly, Peter Cushing passed away in 1994, thus bringing an end to his on-screen pairing and off-screen friendship with Christopher Lee. Lee – the last of the true horror icons – passed away in 2015, and cinema has never seen the like again. Back in the working day, horror movies were sold based on the actors involved, with enjoyable pairings being a key part of the experience – like Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi or, definitely, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. Nowadays, horror movies are largely marketed based on their premise, which isn’t undoubtedly a bad thing – it’s just different. That said, streaming and movie preservation means that modern gatherings can access older manipulates more readily than ever before – meaning that, like Lee’s Dracula, classic movies are no longer beholden to the cinematic grave, and can once again walking among us.

Next: Every Way Peter Cushing’s Van Helsing Killed Christopher Lee’s Dracula

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