Rasputin the Mad Monk is a 1966 Hammer horror film directed by Don Sharp and starring Christopher Lee, Barbara Shelley, Francis Matthews, Suzan Farmer, Richard Pasco, Dinsdale Landen and Renée Asherson.

Rasputin heads for Saint Petersburg, where he forces his way into the home of Dr Zargo, from where he begins his campaign to gain influence over the Tsarina.

He places her in a trance and commands her to cause an apparent accident that will injure the czar's young heir Alexei, so that Rasputin can be called to court to heal him.

Rasputin the Mad Monk was filmed back-to-back in 1965 with Dracula: Prince of Darkness, using the same sets at Hammer's Bray Studios.

Sharp had greatly enjoyed the experience of making his first two Hammer films - Kiss of the Vampire and Devil Ship Pirates - but not Rasputin.

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "The Rasputin legend is enough of a blend of historical fact and embroidered myth to merit something more than this undistinguished melodrama has to offer.

Don Sharp's direction makes little attempt to capture the essence of the crumbling splendour of the Tsarist court, and Christopher Lee's towering presence is at odds with the ordinariness of the script.

Only in the final sequence, with Rasputin pacing restlessly round a room picking at a box of poisoned chocolates while his assassins cower in the shadows, is any life injected into the proceedings.

"[11] Variety wrote: "This British import, to be released as top-half of a double bill with The Reptile is a worthy entry, if not a classic, for the shocker market.

As the screen peccadilloes of Russia's bad boy have, in ithe past, wound up in court, producer Anthony Nelson Keys had scripter John Elder take a somewhat fanciful (and unbelievable) approach to the subject.

Actually, this Hammer Film effort's surface appeal, in its really first-class color photography, art direction and professional casting, makes the thin plot immaterial.

Christopher Lee's Rasputin is completely in character – huge, deep-voiced, compelling stare – oh, he's a proper rascal – and this variation makes him also a dancer (not that one ever sees a long shot of dancing.

...The shocker mood is set early when the libertine holy man, fighting off a young assailant, chops off his hand with a scythe.