My Udo My Udo What Have Ye Done

JA from MNPP here. Have you read this phenomenally odd and delightful interview with the actor Udo Kier at The AV Club? Odd and delightful are the two words I'd always use whenever mentioning Mr. Kier, but he really brings it this time around.

Over at MNPP  I picked out my fifteen favorite quotes from the interview, but I'm so oddly delighted in this chat's wake I've got to just keep on thinking about Udo, and what better way to do that then to mercilessly pick apart the work he's done over the years with a completely frivolous list. He's worked so much in such a vast array of projects that there are dozens of his performances that I've missed (I don't know how this is possible but it appears I've never seen any of the films he's done with Fassbinder, for example), but out of the many I have seen here are my five favorite performances of his.

5 Favorites



Lee Meyers, My Son My Son What Have Ye Done - I don't think it's often that Udo gets picked to play a straight man to somebody else's nuttery, but when stacked up against a way out there Michael Shannon it's not only possible, it's enthralling.

NSFW image after the jump





Hans, My Own Private Idaho - I think he sums it up best: "Amazing to have sex with Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix!"

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Count Dracula, Andy Warhol's Dracula - It's hard choosing between his Dracula and his Dr. Frankenstein in the previous year's (superior) Andy Warhol's Frankenstein, but his sickly Drac casts an enfeebledly hypnotic spell I can't quite shake.


Aage Krüger / Little Brother, The Kingdom - You haven't truly lived until you've seen Udo's face emerge from the vital space of a birthing mother.

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Franz Hess, Grindhouse's fake trailer for "Werewolf Women of the SS" - Sure I could've picked something from his other classier works, like all the stuff he's done with Von Trier (he's Lars' most commonly used actor, ya know), but I think this one about sums it all up in a nice tight insane bow.

Runner-up: He played a character named "Wolfgang Herzog" on an episode of Nash Bridges. I haven't seen it, I don't need to see it, without knowing it demands a place upon this list.
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Seventeen Years, Several Inches

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JA from MNPP here, with a fun factoid for y'all: Seventeen years ago on this day Lorena Bobbitt took matters into her own hands... and by "matters" I mean "her husband's penis" and by "her own hands" I mean "her own hands holding a carving knife." The rest is infamous tabloid history - the throwing of the severed member out a car window, the trial, the adult film Frankenpenis... sordid, so very sordid.

But an anniversary is a time to celebrate, not to judge, so here in its dubious honor are my five favorite castration scenes - favorite is such a relative term here, by the way - from films since the Bobbitt incident happened in 1993. (Actually strangely enough all these films are from the past 5 years.) Enjoy, with or without your hands protecting your nethers (I recommend with).


Sin City - Hartigan (Bruce Willis) literally rips The Yellow Bastard (Nick Stahl)'s yellow bastard-stick off with his bare hands. Manliness!


Hard Candy - Pretty people like Ellen Page and Patrick Wilson should not partake in antics as confoundedly cruel as this exercise proves. Just be pretty, people! A peck of pickled peckers Ellen Page has picked.


Hostel: Part II - The sequel that everybody loves to hate to the original film that everybody loves to hate basically ends its female-sided saga with an explicit castration gag. You know what they say - make 'em leave the theater with a laugh! Ha ha ugh.


Teeth - It's true! Vagina dentata! Vagina dentata! Vagina dentata! (Sidenote: the wonderful character actor Josh Pais, seen there above about to utter those memorable lines, just had a birthday on Monday! Everybody wish him a long healthy manhood.)


Antichrist - A little something for the ladies! Lars Von Trier's always got a little something for the ladies. If by "something" I mean "everything awful ever thought, captured so prettily," and obviously I mean just that. Heady times...
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