Directed by Don Sharp
Written by Anthony Hinds
Starring:
- Christopher Lee as Grigori Rasputin
- Barbara Shelley as Sonia
- Richard Pasco as Dr. Boris Zargo
- Francis Matthews as Ivan Kesnikoff
- Suzan Farmer as Vanessa
Rating: 
Marry aristocratic sensuality with baroque violence, all lacquered in polychromatic splendor, and you arrive at the essence of Hammer horror. Their fevered retelling of the Rasputin myth makes this palette explicit—but never are its themes so venomously political or scathingly decadent as they are here, unfurled across the film’s sweeping anamorphic canvas. It renders scandal and moral collapse with a grandeur few of Hammer’s more salacious titles ever achieved. It is mordant cinema writ large—unfolding in the grand theatricality of CinemaScope, burnished by the lurid opulence of the DeLuxe color process. Christopher Lee’s Rasputin oozes sleaze from frame one—drinking, manipulating, pawing at aristocrats, and loving every minute of it. And it is, in every sense, a wicked pleasure to watch him slither through his Machiavellian schemes.
Don Sharp, Hammer’s Aussie export, delivers what might be the most gleefully overblown version of Rasputin’s tale—a pseudo-biopic less concerned with history than with scandal and sleaze. With Christopher Lee relishing every lecherous moment and Anthony Hinds supplying a script thick with shock and conjecture, the film turns the infamous mystic into something bigger than life. Rasputin becomes less man and more monster, part of the same mythic fabric as Hammer’s Dracula or Frankenstein—only here, the horror wears historical robes.
You don’t need to dive deep into Russian history to realize Rasputin was a hot mess—greasy, horny, and basically a con man in holy drag. His “mysticism” would get laughed off today as a scam. But really, how far off is he from some smooth-talking modern populist in a tailored suit, spouting lofty speeches to manipulate the masses? That’s the kicker: Hammer’s film doesn’t just play the story for shocks—it leans into that parallel and turns it into something satirical and sly. Christopher Lee nailed it when he said, “He was a saint and a sinner.” That split is what powers his whole take on Rasputin: monstrous and mesmerizing. He drinks like a beast, scores with every woman in sight, and cuts loose on the dance floor like he’s in a trance. But there’s also something freaky about him—he can heal with a touch, and when he talks, people go slack-jawed and follow him like zombies. It’s a charisma that feels less human than supernatural. He stands as the antithesis of biblical righteousness: Rasputin, a debauched messiah rising from vodka-stained taverns, laying hands on women and the sick alike, his presence both seductive and dreadful. And yet, he climbs—upward into the courtly heights of Russia’s dying monarchy. In the vast width of the 2.55:1 frame, Christopher Lee’s Rasputin glowers and commands, his every glance a blade. This is not merely a villain, but a figure of reverence and fear—a tyrant whose darkness inspires devotion.
Held together by a streamlined plot mostly involving Lee’s Rasputin getting drunk, getting laid, and getting into fights, the film doesn’t attempt to explain who Rasputin really was or what he meant, the film reveals more about the uproar Rasputin incited than the man himself or his actual role in Russian history. In this way, it manages to hold both the seriousness and the absurdity of his legacy in balance. Whether one deems it a camp confection or a shrewd exercise in sensationalism, Rasputin the Mad Monk triumphs, above all, through what may be Christopher Lee’s most consummate performance. “Rasputin is one of the best things I’ve ever done,” he once declared—and with this role, he conjures one of Hammer’s most unforgettable fiends. I count the film among the studio’s top five of the 1960s. A magnificent affront to British prudery and a sardonic unraveling of Russian orthodoxy, it loses none of Hammer’s lush gothic spectacle or its delight in dark theatricality.
