Optical connections: The optic nerve failure behind Dracula’s hypnotic gaze

It is not just the fangs that are notable as Count Dracula, portrayed by Christopher Lee, stares out from the screen open-mouthed. The piercing, dark, bloodshot eyes are almost as scary. Those eyes are responsible for the story of how Lee’s wartime service took an unexpected turn which, in some measure, was to inform his acting career.

Acting had never been his life’s ambition but, for someone born (albeit in a different year) on the same day as Vincent Price and a day after Peter Cushing, perhaps his fame as a horror movie star was somehow pre-ordained.

Lee’s family background, while having only remote theatrical elements hardly suggestive of the acting profession as a likely career choice, was, nevertheless, rather exotic. His mother was an Italian contessa, Estelle Maria Carandini, a descendant of the Borgias and whose parents founded the first Australian opera company. His father, Geoffrey Trollope-Lee, was a Lieutenant-Colonel in the 60th King’s Royal Rifles who had seen action in the Boer War and First World War and was, Lee claimed, descended from a band of gypsies from Hampshire. Rather different from his mother’s lineage which, according to Lee, could be traced back to Charlemagne.