Caffeinated Clint
Star of the "Return of the King" Deleted Scenes, Christopher Lee, spoke to The Herald about his next pic "May Day", a follow-up (not sequel) to his cult classic "The Wicker Man".
Lee tells the paper he has no qualms about returning to The Wicker Man, which was made more than 30 years ago.
"It was the best film I ever made," he says. "But it’s not the most successful. When you’re talking about The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, you’re talking astronomical figures. The Wicker Man has now become a cult film."
Lee says this with evident pride. "It was unlike anything anybody had ever seen, which is why it played very badly during its day, of course."
Nevertheless, Lee is excited about the film, in which grand dame Vanessa Redgrave will appear with him. "Same producer, same director," he says, "but it’s not The Wicker Man. How can we make a sequel? It was a very definitive ending, wasn’t it?" he says with a deep guffaw. "There are elements that you find in The Wicker Man: certain beliefs, the fact that we all sing, that it’s funny, quite erotic and very alarming. And that it’s a strange story set in Scotland."
Back to the scenes he shot for "Return of the King", Lee says he’s bewildered why they weren’t included in the finished cut of the film. "Frankly, I do not know why that sequence, which is approximately seven minutes, was removed," he says. "I was told this in October last year. An executive phoned me up. I wasn’t given an explanation. I was shocked. It wasn’t a question of an actor’s vanity. I said: ‘I’m not all that concerned about Christopher Lee the actor, but what about Saruman? The whole world is going to want to know what happened to Saruman.’ I am told the entire sequence is back in the DVD. I’d be delighted to see it, because I have no idea what it looks like.
"After nearly 58 years in this business," Lee says, "I’ve seen and heard everything. One tries not to be cynical about it, one tries to be realistic. But I’ve been terribly disappointed. There are times when one feels very angry, very cheated."
Lee next appears in a couple of Timmy Burton pics – "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "The Corpse Bride".
