This movie aired on TCM tonight.
Christopher Lee stars in this movie about Rasputin. Now, if historical accuracy is what you're looking for, you're not gonna find it here! According to Robert Osborne (the guy who hosts the TCM movies), the original script was much more accurate, however, the studio got scared of possible legal action by the remaining Romanov family members (they had filed a lawsuit against a 1930's movie called Rasputin and the Empress). So the script was altered to fictionalize the whole thing. The only "real" characters are Rasputin, Alexandra, and Alexei. Everyone else is totally fictional.
Mr. Lee has a grand old time chewing up the scenery as Rasputin. However, at times, he seems more like Count Dracula than Gregory Rasputin, especially his ability to hypnotize others to obey his commands. Still, his performance saves this movie.
As for the inaccuracies, the average movie goer would not notice them, but I did. The most glaring..
-using a fictional lady-in-waiting under his command, Rasputin has her arrange an accident by having her push Alexei off a bridge onto a frozen river (never mind that an injury like that would probably have KILLED him outright, but hemophilia is not even mentioned). So he can arrive on the scene and save Alexei.
Of course, what really happened was that Alexei was injured while getting into a boat in Poland, and later, the injury was irritated when he went riding with Alexandra. Rasputin wasn't even there when his "miracle" cure happened (he was in Siberia at the time). Rather he had sent a letter saying something like "The Little One won't die".
-where's Nicky!? He's not even shown. This movie gives the impression that Alexandra is the one running the Empire (oddly enough, she is not even mentioned by name, always being referred to as "Tsarina", I wonder if the lawsuit worries had something to do with this).
-wow, Russia seems very peaceful throughout the movie, never mind we were in the middle of the First World War and a revolution was brewing.
-Rasputin's death scene was wrong. Instead of Felix Y. and Dimitri P, he is killed by two fictional characters. one of the assassins is killed in the process (when in reality, both assassins survived). Also, in the movie, Rasputin dies by being pushed out a window and falls to his death (when the poison doesn't work). In reality, he was shot, and then thrown into the Neva, where he drowned.
No, the movie was okay, but don't use it as a history lesson!
