Udo Kier Remembered

ABOUT THE SERIES:

The American Cinematheque and Beyond Fest are joining to honor the legacy of Udo Kier, whose incomparable work on the screen expanded the horizons of both arthouse and genre filmmaking. An actor with an astonishing body of work across genres, from the mainstream to the transgressive, Udo Kier left an immortal legacy as a fearless performer and a champion of independent cinema.

Kier’s chill severity as an actor made him an unforgettable antagonist of historical horror pictures like MARK OF THE DEVIL and THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MISS OSBOURNE. His cold magnetism and facility for playing truly monstrous figures won him praise as the titular mad scientist and the classic vampire, respectively, in Paul Morrissey’s FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN and BLOOD FOR DRACULA. In addition to his film roles, Udo Kier starred in all three seasons of Lars von Trier’s THE KINGDOM, an absurdist horror miniseries set in a bizarre Danish hospital—a sort of Scandinavian cousin to TWIN PEAKS. Playing multiple parts, Kier’s performance grounds the more otherworldly aspects of von Trier’s plots with gravitas and sincerity.