Christopher Lee Reads Edgar Allan Poe: “The Raven,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” & More

Sir Christo­pher Lee and Edgar Allan Poe went way back. Or at least they went as far back as 1969, the year of The Oblong Box, a loose and lurid film adap­ta­tion of the epony­mous sto­ry star­ring Lee and the also Poe-asso­ci­at­ed Vin­cent Price. Lee plays the doc­tor to whom a gang of grave-rob­bers deliv­ers Price’s char­ac­ter, an Eng­lish­man dis­fig­ured in a voodoo cer­e­mo­ny who fakes his own death in order to escape the cap­tiv­i­ty of his broth­er. What­ev­er its enter­tain­ment val­ue, the pic­ture does­n’t rank espe­cial­ly high in the canon of Poe adap­ta­tions. Nor, for that mat­ter, does the orig­i­nal sto­ry rank along­side works like “The Pit and the Pen­du­lum,” “The Fall of the House of Ush­er,” “The Cask of Amon­til­la­do,” or “The Black Cat.”

You can hear Lee him­self read all those macabre, imag­i­na­tive sto­ries and oth­ers besides in the YouTube playlist above. Some of the record­ings come from Christo­pher Lee Reads Edgar Allan Poe Tales of Hor­ror, the 1979 bud­get-label cas­sette pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. Oth­ers include Lee’s per­for­mances of “The Masque of the Red Death,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “Hop-Frog,” and “The Mur­ders in the Rue Morgue,” which is com­mon­ly cred­it­ed with launch­ing the entire genre of detec­tive fic­tion.

Though now most wide­ly remem­bered as a hor­ror actor, the pro­lif­ic Lee proved com­mand­ing in a vari­ety of gen­res: in the final decade of his life, he appeared in numer­ous crime pic­tures, adap­ta­tions of The Gold­en Com­pass and Char­lie and the Choco­late Fac­to­ry, and sev­er­al Star Wars and Lord of the Rings movies.

Not that he’d left Poe behind. Among the last cred­its Lee racked up in his life­time is Extra­or­di­nary Tales, from 2013, a five-sto­ry anthol­o­gy film in which he nar­rates “The Fall of the House of Ush­er.” Though British, his dis­tinc­tive man­ner and slight­ly mid-Atlantic accent were as ver­sa­tile on the screen as they were in read­ings of Poe, whose writ­ing dates from a time when more than a few Amer­i­cans still con­sid­ered lit­er­a­ture itself an import from across the pond. This Hal­loween, if you don’t have the hours free for a com­plete lis­ten-through of the playlist do con­sid­er at least putting on “The Raven.” It remains a mat­ter of debate among Poe enthu­si­asts to what extent Lee’s deliv­ery of “nev­er­more” real­ly cap­tures the spir­it of the poem, but it would be hard to imag­ine a more appro­pri­ate fig­ure to pre­side over All Hal­lows’ Eve.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Down­load The Com­plete Works of Edgar Allan Poe: Macabre Sto­ries as Free eBooks & Audio Books

Watch Vin­cent Price Turn Into Edgar Allan Poe & Read Four Clas­sic Poe Sto­ries (1970)

Hours of Edgar Allan Poe Sto­ries Read by Vin­cent Price & Basil Rath­bone

Hear Clas­sic Read­ings of Poe’s “The Raven” by Vin­cent Price, James Earl Jones, Christo­pher Walken, Neil Gaiman & More

Hear Edgar Allan Poe Sto­ries Read by Iggy Pop, Jeff Buck­ley, Christo­pher Walken, Mar­i­anne Faith­ful & More

A Read­ing of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” in 100 Celebri­ty Voic­es

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.