This is a devastating one for me.  The last of the giants of horror has passed.  I grew up watching Christopher Lee battle Peter Cushing at the movies. By the time Christopher Lee made his horror film star debut in The Curse of Frankenstein he had already appeared in a couple of dozen movies and British TV series.  However, with Hammer Films first foray into the horror film business, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing would begin their climb to film immortality joining the likes of Karloff, Lugosi and Chaney.  Between 1957 and 1959, Christopher Lee would play the Frankenstein Monster (to Peter Cushing’s Baron Frankenstein), Count Dracula (to Cushing’s Professor Van Helsing) and The Mummy (to Cushing’s archeologist, Banning).  He played three of the four classic movie monsters (Oliver Reed would play the werewolf) and guaranteed his place in film horrordom.  During the same period he appeared in Hammer’s Hound of the Baskervilles playing Sir Henry to Cushing’s Holmes.  Thus began a long and glorious association with Hammer Film Studios.  Just as Universal Studios had become the premiere horror film studio of the 30’s and 40’s, Hammer became the top horror film studio of the 60’s and 70’s.  Universal would leave the horror film genre for science fiction with the dawn of the atomic 50’s.  Hammer on the other hand would turn back to horror from science fiction in the late 50’s.  Throughout it’s long run, Hammer Films would always be linked to Lee and Cushing.  Lee would appear in a number of terrific horror films.  In addition to appearing as Count Dracula in Horror of Dracula, Dracula, Prince of Darkness,  Dracula has Risen from the Grave,  Taste the Blood of Dracula, Scars of Dracula, Dracula, AD 1972 and The Satanic Rites of Dracula, Lee stared in any number of wonderful films.  Scream of Fear, The Gorgon The Skull, The Devil Rides Out, Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors,  the Fu Manchu series,  Horror Express, The Creeping Flash and on and on.  He also played Bond Villain Scaramanga in The Man With the Golden Gun, the nasty Rochefort in Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers, as well as the unforgettable Lord Summerisle in The Wicker Man.  A terrific talent who continued to act right to the end.  He re-introduced himself to a new generation of viewers through Sleepy Hollow and more importantly the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings franchises. 
Thanks for the wonderful memories.
It is doubtful that we shall ever see his like again.   RIP

Yes, the last of the original greats. He will never be forgotten by genre enthusiasts.

R.I.P.