Poll of the Day > Which of these classic horror actors was the best?

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Christopher Lee played Count Dracula in seven Hammer horror films, Francisco Scaramanga in The Man with the Golden Gun, Count Dooku in the Star Wars prequels, and Saruman in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Hobbit trilogy. He played Frankenstein's monster in The Curse of Frankenstein, which also starred Peter Cushing. and Sir Henry Baskerville in The Hound of the Baskerville, again opposite Cushing. He served in the Special Operations Executive in WWII, and he released a heavy metal album in 2010. He also sang on the soundtrack for The Wicker Man.

Vincent Price is probably best remembered as Egghead on the Batman TV series, but he started in many horror movies including House of Wax, The Tingler, The Last Man on Earth, House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum, and The Masque of the Red Death. He also starred in a few comedies such as Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, as well as voicing Professor Ratigan in The Great Mouse Detective. On the radio, he played Simon Templar in The Saint. He was a gourmet cook and authored several cookbooks with his wife Mary and even had his own cooking show, Cooking Price-Wise. On an episode of Johnny Carson he once showed the audience how to cook a fish in a dishwasher. He had a degree in art and was a renowned art collector.

Peter Cushing was, of course, best known as Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars, but he also starred in a number of other science fiction movies such as Dr. Who and the Daleks and the BBC adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four. He appeared in 22 Hammer horror movies, playing Baron Frankenstein in six Frankenstein films, Doctor Van Helsing in five Dracula films, and Sherlock Holmes in several movies including The Hound of the Baskervilles. He collected model soldiers and enjoyed miniature wargaming and watercolor painting. Carrie Fisher, who as Princess Leia in Star Wars referred to Tarkin's "foul stench", remarked that Cushing actually smelled of "linen and lavender".

Christopher Lee and Vincent Price share a birthday, May 27th, and Peter Cushing was born just a day earlier on the 26th.

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captpackrat posted...

Vincent Price is probably best remembered as Egghead on the Batman TV series,

I doubt that. He is probably the one from those three most remembered as a horror actor.

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boris karloff
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Nichtcrawler X posted...

I doubt that. He is probably the one from those three most remembered as a horror actor.

Yeah that sentence made me laugh too, lol

Krazy_Kirby posted...

boris karloff

and Bela Lugosi

While I like Price, his campy performances aren't to the same caliber as the two.

So probably Cushing > Lee > Price

ReggieTheReckless posted...

Yeah that sentence made me laugh too, lol

I think it was meant as a gag but yeah, it is one of the things to jump to mind for me. However, I mostly think of Price as himself.


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Lee, but my favorite movie is LotR so that might have an influence on it

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Whos on the bottom?

Price because he didn't only do horror and/or science fiction movies. He was, early in his career, a stock actor that had roles in historical dramas (Song of Bernadette, he was the town prosecutor) and other movies. Price had prominence as an actor long before Lee and Cushing did.

zebatov posted...

Whos on the bottom?

Grand Moff Victor Van Helsing, to mash up just 3 roles while not counting the times he played Sherlock Holmes.

GastroFan posted...

Price because he didn't only do horror and/or science fiction movies. He was, early in his career, a stock actor that had roles in historical dramas (Song of Bernadette, he was the town prosecutor) and other movies. Price had prominence as an actor long before Lee and Cushing did.

Which is a stunningly ignorant remark, considering Cushing was acting for decades before getting into horror including multiple movie and tv roles, same for Lee. And even after starting horror, both men had roles in non-horror and non-scifi (and excluding scifi is weird in general, unless it's to favor Prince who wasn't really known for scifi).

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@Zeus

Thanks. He looked familiar, but I actually havent seen any of those.

zebatov posted...

Whos on the bottom?

Exactly!

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captpackrat posted...

Vincent Price is probably best remembered as Egghead on the Batman TV series

That's not what I remember him from:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUfNBHigR90

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32iKMXrLeek


The other thing I'll always remember him for is the fact that he basically looks like my dad (or vice-versa). When you look at younger photographs of both of them they look like the same person, and later in life just imagine Vincent Prince with a full beard and you can pretty much imagine what my father looked like.
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If you only consider classic horror then I dunno what the answer is but if you consider everything then it's obviously Christopher Lee. The breadth of his work alone is mind blowing.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

That's not what I remember him from:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUfNBHigR90

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32iKMXrLeek

tbh, I was going to highlight those two things before I realized I mostly know him as himself and that both roles just riffed on who he was rather than being things unto themselves.

Another thing that comes to mind:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GD-_v1FYUoQ

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Fred Fuchs

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