Pervy But Chic: A Tribute to Udo Kier
- heathermariedrain
- Jan 12
- 6 min read
Our world is one beauty and style is often defined by conforming superficiality and paled honey blandness. Glassy-eyed influencers and Hollywood A & B listers are interchangeable. It's the fast food fashionication that always gives back diminished returns. It's not that innate charisma and unique features don't exist anymore. It's that the mainstream stopped trying a long time ago and we got used to the taste of slop.
This is all the more reason to celebrate those who were and forever are true individuals. The figures whose singular presence--physically, creatively, and aura-wise stand out as a pure, untampered essence-- deserve celebration and love. Who better to revere than the late and forever great actor, singer, and man, Udo Kier?
Udo Kier was that rarest of creatures...the charismatic. Many folks can be talented or conventionally attractive, but a true charismatic is a person whose presence alone alters the ions in the room or in the case of a film actor, the atmosphere on screen. From his early appearance in the infamous gut-churner, Mark of the Devil (1970) all the way to his chilling role in Lars von Trier's tone poem of heart-death, Breaking the Waves (1996), once you lay eyes upon Udo Kier, you will never forget him. The man could be swimming in a sea of nude cheesecake models eating hot dogs and he will STILL be the main figure that pulls your focus and heart.
His face alone forever is iconic, with sensual lips and a pair of intense eyes whose color seemed to vacillate between cerulean and arctic, lending to a type of beauty that can only be described as decadent. Anna May Wong had it. Conrad Veidt had it. Bela Lugosi had it. Gloria Swanson had it. Tura Satana had it and Udo Kier absolutely had it. But like those names before him, Kier had innate gravitas and talent. Depending on the role, he could effortlessly be light as a feather or murderous menace while consistently being artistically strong. If art is an intoxicant, then Udo Kier was that heady hit of opium minus any real-life drawbacks.
Like many a hybrid weirdo-film-lover/monster kid, my first introduction to Udo Kier was via his iconic work in Paul Morrissey's back-to-back Blood for Dracula (1974) and Flesh for Frankenstein (1973). What initially drew me to these films was the idea of an auteur who cut his filmmaking teeth working with Andy Warhol, because I was obsessed with all things Warhol and The Factory as a pre-teen and teen, tackling two of the biggest characters in the Gothic horror genre. Reading about these films and all the discussions of their over-the-top gore, florid sexuality, bad taste, and European locations only further fueled my curiosity. It took a little while to find them, since both titles had long periods of being out-of-print, but father fate smiled on me via one of the local video stores.
Around age 14, I rented and watched Blood for Dracula first, then Flesh for Frankenstein. (Okay, more accurately, my parents rented them, but I watched them. Thank the gods for having somewhat liberal parents who were fairly loose with what I could pick out and watch, as long as my grades were good and I wasn't picking out 1976's Helter Skelter or blatant smut. I had no interest in the former nor the metaphorical huevos to try to get away with the latter!)
My first crush as a child was Bela Lugosi after seeing a picture of him as Dracula in a movie book my mother had brought home from the library. Bela will forever be king, but seeing that close-up of Udo Kier's Dracula applying make-up changed my brain chemistry in so many ways, between his hypnotic beauty and presenting this version of the Count who he has to lacquer his hair, ruddy his lips, and rouge his cheeks to better move among the living. By the time the film and its over-the-top climax, not to mention the hilariously offensive dialogue peppered throughout, Blood for Dracula was a movie that changed me
But if Blood for Dracula changed me, then Flesh for Frankenstein blew my mind and presented, most bizarrely of all, an unexpected rite of teenage passage. Growing up in the United States, you are surrounded by female sexuality as an advertising tool. (This was especially true during the 1980s and 90s.) Glossy lips suggestively parting over everything from shampoo to cheeseburgers. You don't even need to see a single R-rated sex scene, much less something more explicit, to have a good idea of what feminine ecstasy supposedly looks like.
Male pleasure is, visually, a different story, since mainstream media is not only hetero normative but especially plays to the straight male gaze. Even in advertising for products aimed at women, the visuals are typically as heterosexually male adjacent as any old beer commercial. So, when adolescent me watched Flesh for Frankenstein, I was already starting to crush on Udo Kier after Blood for Dracula. (What? You think copious blood vomiting and dismemberment can dissuade the raw hormones of a teenage girl? Fool!) That said, I was not prepared for this beautifully demented and wickedly ridiculous film to further a hormonal awakening.
Midway through the film, Baron Frankenstein (Udo Kier) opens up a previously sutured incision on his beautiful female creature (Dalila di Larrazo), and then mounts her while his hand is inside the opened up wound. Typing all of that up makes me realize how gross this sounds and yes, it is gross. However, after the Baron tells his poor, beleaguered assistant, Otto (the wonderful Arno Jurging), to look away “...you filthy thing!,” things take a transgressively erotic turn, with Morrissey's camera tightly framing the Baron's orgasmic face. Udo Kier plays it softly, eschewing any hoary shouting or lead guitarist faces. Seeing this beautiful man's face experiencing erotic joy was a wild thing to see at that age and it still feels like a bit of a rare bird in what is, essentially, a horror film.
I didn't know at the time Paul Morrissey was gay but it would not have mattered. Seeing Udo Kier experience any kind of pleasure from a resurrected female corpse is something that bridges ALL people together. (Where was THAT Benetton ad?!?)
The stunning thing about Udo Kier's career is the Dracula/Frankenstein Morrissey double feature is only one of many possible gateways to the man. Udo worked with art house mavericks like Rainer Werner Fassbinder (ie. The Third Generation), Dario Argento (ie. Suspiria), Walerian Borowczyk (ie. Docteur Jekyll et les femmes), von Trier (ie. Breaking the Waves), and, of course, Paul Morrissey. He also appeared in Hollywood mainstream multiplex fare like Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994), Barb Wire (1996), Madonna's SEX book, as well as her music videos for both “Erotica” and “Deeper and Deeper.”
And all of that is a mere drop in the bucket!
Video games, cartoon voice work--including a recurring role on Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated (2010-2013), low-budget schlock, big-budget schlock, and, of course, art house in its many strange splendors...were all graced by the force of stylish nature that forever is Udo Kier.
That is not even mentioning is his brief foray into music with his sole single with 1985's “Der Adler.” No offense to Madonna, but her best music video could not touch the bizarre majesty of the one for “Der Adler.” Unless, she has one I haven't seen where she plays a married father who turns into a were-hawk, that is!
What an absolute gift for every creative thing ever graced by the man. Udo Kier made everything around him more compelling because he was, and is, eternally compelling. With his passing, current and future films are going to have to work a lot harder to make up his loss. Whatever afterlife there might be, Udo Kier is undoubtedly one of the greatest things about it. Us mere mortals will just have to make do and revel in the wholly unique body of work attached to the man whose talent and verve exquisitely altered a time in cult, genre, and art house cinema.
If you're needing more sheer Udo Kier love, then check out the great Movies from Hell podcast and their tribute episode over on their Patreon. Bradley J. Kornish and Dan Pullen consistently do fantastic work and had the great insight to have the wondrous Carmelita Valdez-McKoy, as well as myself, on as guests.
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