Editorials
In Memoriam: The 10 Most Memorable Udo Kier Horror Roles
Actor and cult icon Udo Kier frequently stole scenes, no matter the role. Whether that was delivering iconic lines like “The blood of these whores is killing me,” in Andy Warhol‘s take on Dracula lore, or making exposition seem effortless in his brief Suspiria scene, Kier always makes for a welcome sight in the genre space.
Having appeared in over 100 films, the German-born actor didn’t shy away from the quirky or strange roles, especially in horror. The frequent Lars von Trier collaborator has worked with no shortage of talent over the decades, too, from Dario Argento to John Carpenter.
While that means Kier’s horror credits leave plenty to celebrate, here are 10 of Udo Kier’s most memorable roles in horror.
Mark of the Devil – Count Christian von Meruh
Meant to cash in on 1968’s Witchfinder General, this witchsploitation follows a super young Kier as a witch hunter apprentice to Lord Cumberland in 18th-century Austria. Brutal, violent, and depressing, Kier’s performance is great as the vulnerable Christian grappling with morality. Graphic torture, massive bloodshed, and the rape of nuns make this one not for the faint of heart- but Kier’s vulnerable Christian, as horribly dubbed as he is, helps ground the emotional story.
Flesh for Frankenstein – Baron Frankenstein
Somehow, despite the premise that features Baron Frankenstein creating a male and female zombie to mate for the sake of creating a master race, people were still surprised upon release just how outrageously offensive and over-the-top Paul Morrissey’s film would be. It’s hilarious, extremely gory, and what solidified Kier’s reputation for camp. His intentionally hammy acting is what really makes this worth seeking out. The best part is that Morrissey cast Kier in the role after a chance meeting on an airplane.
Blood for Dracula – Count Dracula
Directed by Paul Morrissey and produced by Andy Warhol, as a companion piece to Flesh for Frankenstein, Kier stars as Count Dracula, the ailing vampire who travels from Transylvania to Italy in search of virgin blood. In all the cinematic iterations of the famous vampire, Kier’s amazing performance is often overlooked. Tragically weak and sickly from lack of proper virgin blood, Kier manages to make you pity the sometimes sensitive Count. Just as quickly, he flips from sensitive to comically over the top as the parasitic vampire delivering memorably eccentric lines like, “The blood of these whores is killing me!”
Trauma – Paul Martin
Also known as House on Straw Hill, this twisted psychological horror sees Kier as a struggling writer suffering from writer’s block. His agent arranges for a typist to come assist, but there’s something sinister about her. Filled with sex, violence, and a ton of suspense, Kier ooze sleaze in this role. His character’s descent into madness and his lack of innocence in the first place are a large part of what makes this film work. The only thing missing is his accent- Trauma features terrible dubbed-over dialogue.
Suspiria – Dr. Frank Mandel
Udo Kier’s role was rather small in this Dario Argento classic, so why make the cut? Because the serious, more toned-down nature of his character was indicative of his wide range, making him much more than just an eccentric horror villain. Dr. Frank Mandel was also important to the plot, giving Suzy Bannion and the audience important exposition on the dance academy and its witchy founder, Helena Markos. Suspiria proves what a chameleon Kier could be.
The Kingdom – Aage Krüger
If there’s one thing we can count on from Udo Kier, it’s that he can nail sinister time and time again. So it’s no surprise that his character, a demon responsible for fathering little ghost Mary, is ominous and evil. What is surprising is that Aage also fathered another baby in this Lars von Trier series, this one born with a baby’s body and a man’s head- Kier’s head. Yes, you read that correctly. Kier plays both the evil demon Aage and the feeble baby. It’s every bit as strange as it sounds, but Kier’s fearlessness in embracing both roles proves why he’s so great.
Blade – Gitano Dragonetti
Blade’s main opponent may have been the human turned vampire Deacon Frost, but Deacon had to earn his way to becoming a worthy enemy. Step one: bite the woman who winds up birthing the half-vampire hero. Step two: mutiny against a powerful elder of the vampire clan. How do you really sell step two? By casting an actor who instantly invokes power and pride, Udo Kier.
Shadow of the Vampire – Albin Grau
A meta-horror twist with this fictionalized making of Nosferatu biopic, Kier plays Albin Grau, producer of the film within the film. Based on the actual Albin Grau, who was an occultist, producer, art director, and costume designer, Kier plays his character as the stressed producer, suspicious of the method acting by their film’s lead star, Max Schreck, a scene-chewing Willem Dafoe as the iconic vampire. Dafoe may have rightfully earned praise for his performance, but it wouldn’t have been quite as comical, or as conversely creepy, without supporting roles like Kier’s to feed off.
Masters of Horror: “Cigarette Burns” – Bellinger
This episode, directed by John Carpenter, sees Kier as a wealthy man in search of the only existing print of a film known to drive its viewers to homicidal insanity. It’s a great episode in terms of Carpenter’s directing and the clever writing, but where the episode really shines is in Kier’s casting. Mr. Bellinger is funny, but there’s a menacing feel of danger lurking beneath the surface. Where Mr. Bellinger’s character arc ends is even more satisfying.
The Theatre Bizarre – Peg Poett
Udo Kier is front and center in this horror anthology, featured in the wraparound that ties all segments together as Peg Poett, a marionette host of an abandoned theatre. Poett introduces each of the six stories within the framework, and with each new introduction, he grows more human as his audience becomes more puppet-like. There’s not much to the character, a malevolent host that taunts his guest and makes way for the next segment, but Kier’s larger-than-life presence elevates the simple role far beyond what’s on paper. Poett is unnerving as a living marionette, and it’s hard to imagine anyone else could be so effective.
What’s your favorite Udo Kier role?
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this article was initially published on October 14, 2017.
Steven Spielberg has always been conversant in the cinematic language of the horror genre, despite relatively few credits in the genre. His contributions as a writer and producer on things like Poltergeist are legendary, and films like Duel and Jaws certainly wield the horror genre in remarkable, often chilling ways. He may not be a horror filmmaker, but he knows when he needs to scare us, and he has the tools to make that happen.
I didn’t go into Disclosure Day, Spielberg’s alien epic, expecting outright horror, and indeed the film leans much more into thrilling than frightening. This is not a horror film, but for a few minutes in the middle, much to my surprise, it became one.
Spielberg has filmed more than his fair share of scary scenes over the years, but with Disclosure Day, he directed a new contender for the scariest scene of his entire career.
SPOILERS AHEAD for Disclosure Day!
Josh O’Connor in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
Among the various alien secrets laced throughout Disclosure Day are a trio of palm-sized rods, the color of pencil graphite. These rods, originating from another planet, can be used for a number of things, but for the purposes of this scene, the most important is “diving,” gripping the rod in one bare hand and using its power to “dive” into the mind of another person.
The person holding the rod in this scene is Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), head of shadowy cybersecurity firm Wordex, who is hellbent on keeping human knowledge of extraterrestrials secret from the general public. Scanlon’s trying to find whistleblower Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), who’s got all of those alien secrets tucked in a backpack while he’s on the run, and while Daniel’s more experienced mind is protected from diving, his girlfriend Jane’s (Eve Hewson) is not. So, monitored by medical personnel at Wordex headquarters (diving is dangerous), Scanlon pushes his way into Jane’s mind to find the location of Daniel’s safe house.
A telepathic invasion is scary enough on its own, but Spielberg doesn’t stop there. When Scanlon dives into Eve’s mind, he appears to her to be sitting across the kitchen table, like he’s in the room. Her bright blue eyes turn Scanlon’s dark brown, and she loses much of her control over her own body, not to mention her mind. Moments before, Daniel finally shared with her the secrets in his backpack, so Jane is shocked, conflicted, deeply vulnerable when Scanlon slips inside her head. This is not just telepathy. This is possession.
Spielberg underscores this not just through the visual language of the scene, as Jane breaks out in a sweat and struggles to sit upright as Scanlon invades her mind, but through Jane’s background. As she revealed to Daniel earlier in the film, Jane is a former novitiate nun who left her convent when she began to question her calling. She still believes firmly in God and, more importantly, believes that perhaps proof of alien life should be kept secret from the public because, in her eyes, it would upset the entire balance of faith in the world. God is a defining factor for humankind, Jane argues, and showing humanity proof of creatures from the stars would undercut that in dangerous ways.
This context, combined with the crucifix necklace Jane’s holding in her hand at the time of the dive, makes this scene the closest thing Spielberg will ever shoot to something out of The Exorcist. It’s not just a battle of wills, but a battle of faith. As an amoral technocrat worms his way into her memories, her beliefs, her faith, Jane turns the crucifix into a weapon, squeezing it until her hand bleeds when she discovers that a pain response can momentarily push Scanlon out of her head.
Of course, when you put a crucifix and a bloody hand together, it conjures images of stigmata. Screenwriter David Koepp pushes the allusion further by having Scanlon quote Christ on the cross to Jane by way of convincing her that she must be the one to stop Daniel by any means necessary.
It’s easy to see why this is scary, right?
On a very basic level, you have a powerful, wealthy man subduing and assaulting an innocent young woman, which is frightening enough. Then, the layers of the scene kick in. Scanlon doesn’t just assault Jane, but possesses her, seizes her memories, her knowledge, and finally her own free will, all while Jane literally clings to her faith in an effort to fight back. Disclosure Day is, among other things, a story about who has a right to the truth, and Scanlon believes that he should be the arbiter of that truth. Not just the truth as he sees it, but the truth as Jane sees it as well. If they don’t see eye to eye, he’ll make her.
But the possession, as it turns out, cuts both ways. Using the rod to dive is, for a normal human being, an intensely strenuous process. Scanlon admits that previous attempts almost killed him, and for some members of his time, so much as touching the rod results in a near-death experience. Even accessing an unprepared mind like Jane’s takes a lot of Scanlon, and when she kicks him out by squeezing the crucifix – again, so much meaning embedded in the details here – his team holds him back and tries to offer medical intervention. But Scanlon persists, pushing them away, and keeps diving back in.
This means that Jane can’t escape him because he just won’t stop pushing back through her defenses, but it also means that each time Scanlon enters her mind, and thus the safe house, he looks more monstrous. By the end, through a combination of lighting and makeup, Firth barely looks human, conjuring up images of the possessed Father Karras at the end of The Exorcist.
Colin Firth (center, standing) in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
On a pure, visceral craft level, all of this is quite frightening, but the real trick to making this scene into Spielberg’s most terrifying lies in the more existential horror surrounding all of this. Disclosure Day is a film about the battle for the truth over extraterrestrials, but it’s also about a fight against an impossibly powerful surveillance state, the devaluing of human and alien lives in favor of some nebulous collection of assets, and the value of the individual in a world that increasingly lumps people into demographic boxes and writes them off.
In this scene, the surveillance state becomes supernatural, a human life is worth less than a piece of information, and an extragovernmental technocrat would rather sacrifice his own humanity than see reason. In 2026, few things could be more terrifying than that. Spielberg knows this and wields it mightily, proving once again that, while he’s not a strictly horror filmmaker, he can direct horror with the best of them.
Disclosure Day is in theaters now.
Eve Hewson (second from left) in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
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