Rasputin: The Mad Monk, 1966.
Directed by Don Sharp.
Starring Christopher Lee, Barbara Shelley, Francis Matthews, Richard Pasco and Suzan Farmer.
SYNOPSIS:
In pre-revolution St Petersburg, Russia, sinister monk Grigori Rasputin (Christopher Lee) proves that he has the unearthly power to ease the deranged and heal the sick, but at what price?
It’s hard to know where to start talking about Grigori Rasputin. The man was notorious in a way few men of his station had ever dared dream. His actions, his lifestyle and his alleged ‘powers of healing’ arguably changed the world.
If you still don’t know who Rasputin was, you won’t get many more hard facts out of Rasputin: The Mad Monk. Terence Fisher is much more interested in the man himself than the political havoc he wrought, and with good reason. We want the legend of Rasputin, and Fisher delivers it with considerable relish.
We begin our story somewhere deep in the snowy forests of Siberia, where an innkeeper’s wife is miraculously healed by the hands of a gigantic bearded stranger. This stranger drinks wine by the crate, dances like a hurricane in leather boots and seduces women at a rate of knots. But who is he? The best account he can give of himself is that he “offers God sins worth forgiving”.
Before long he’s roughing up the innkeeper’s daughter and dismembering her boyfriend in self-defence. As he hotfoots it out through the roof away from the angry villagers, you get the distinct impression this isn’t the first time he’s had to beat a hasty retreat. Driven out everywhere he goes, he soon finds himself drawn to the bustling capital of St Petersburg, where he starts as he means to go on, challenging some ex-doctor bum named Boris (Richard Pasco) to a drinking contest.
Elsewhere, the Tsarina’s lady-in-waiting, Sonia (Barbara Shelley), is bored to tears of court life. She wants fun, she wants adventure, she wants a bit of a-cha-cha. So she and her brother and their aristocrat chums go slum it in the very same dive where Rasputin is drinking Boris under the table. She immediately develops a deep and dark fascination with him, her eyes aglow with fear and trepidation.
Sonia is exactly the kind of connection Rasputin needs to get his massive foot in the door of the palace; he orders her back to the apartment he’s commandeered from his drinking buddy, where he strikes and seduces her in the same instant. Before long he’s hypnotised her into doing his bidding. She will see to it that the little Tsar Prince Alexei will have an ‘accident’ tomorrow by the frozen lake. She will insist the Tsarina calls on the ‘Holy Man’ for help, and Rasputin will do the rest.
Christopher Lee’s sheer power of presence cannot be overstated in this film. He’s a tall man to begin with, but put him in heeled Russian boots and shapka and he stands just about nose to nose with a grizzly on hind feet. He’s no dead ringer for the real man, but with masses of black hair and those dark, hypnotic eyes, he has the unearthly gaze captured so hauntingly as to make no difference at all between the two. Interviewed elsewhere on this DVD, his co-star Barbara Shelley remarks: “If it hadn’t been a Hammer horror, he’d have won all the awards.”
Similarly, horror historian Jonathan Rigby has it exactly right when he calls this role Christopher Lee’s “Russian Dracula”; Rasputin has precisely the same effect on people around him, commanding their attention, inspiring fear and obedience to his every whim. He brings out the basest, most carnal desires of women and the darkest, most murderous instincts of men. All he really lacks is a Van Helsing, but it’s telling of his incredible power of will that no single man can stand against him.
He does however have the formidable cast of Dracula: Prince of Darkness to play to. Barbara Shelley gives as good as she gets from Lee, offering up a fiery, hot-blooded performance as a woman utterly under Rasputin’s spell. Francis Matthews hasn’t as much to do as others, but the delightfully smug front his character puts on to lure Rasputin to his death is a masterclass in making the best of an underwritten part.
Elsewhere, the production deserves Hammer fans’ continuing admiration for delivering lavish, marvellously realised sets on nothing but the tiniest of budgets. Fisher and his crew even had to make do with leftover sets from Prince of Darkness, and still manages to be more evocative.
I mentioned before that Fisher doesn’t seem at all interested in facts. This is just as well, since the facts surrounding Rasputin’s assassination vary greatly, even amongst the men who actually killed him. These Princes and Dukes made a living on these stories for a long time afterward, and made certain to keep the tale as interesting as possible.
It’s fair to say Fisher takes the same approach, with outstanding success. He wants to tell the story of the man who wrapped the Russian monarchy around his little finger; the man with the secret of the world in his eyes; the man who wouldn’t die, just to spite his enemies. Now there’s a story worth telling.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Simon Moore is a budding screenwriter, passionate about films both current and classic. He has a strong comedy leaning with an inexplicable affection for 80s montages and movies that you can’t quite work out on the first viewing.
