Greetings, all. Ambush Bug here with another special AICN HORROR: ZOMBIES & SHARKS Interview. This is our third interview to celebrate the release of THEATRE BIZARRE, a horror anthology I reviewed here. This time I speak with actor Udo Kier, who stars as the puppet host of this anthology which homages the Grand Guignol style of entertainment of old. Kier has an impressive resume of starring in scores and scores of genre films. I got to speak to him about THEATRE BIZARRE, the upcoming Nazis in Space epic IRON SKIES, and some of his favorite horror films. Here’s what Mr. Kier had to say…
AMBUSH BUG (BUG): Thanks for taking the time out to talk with me today. It’s really a pleasure to speak with you. I’ve been a fan of your work for ages and we are talking about THEATER BIZARRE today and your role in that film. You play as the narrator or the one that ties the whole film together. Can you talk a little bit about your role? UDO KIER (UK): Well, it started with…Buddy Giovinazzo was one of the directors who I worked with very successfully with in Germany for German TV. He called me and he said that there was this project which was almost finished with six films and if I could work a couple of hours downtown at the Million Dollar Theater, which is a beautiful place. I said “Okay. I don’t want to see any of the films, because I want to give the right attention to all of them,” because if I had seen them maybe before maybe I’d like one more than the other and that would have maybe reflected in my playing the part of the puppet. I liked it because to be a puppet, like playing a puppet, was kind of interesting, because you have invisible strings and you have different movements and it was this kind of bridging from one movie to the other. I liked the idea and I talked to the director and also I liked the idea of looking like this kind of clay puppet. I like that idea and I went downtown after I spoke to the director and producer and I did the movie.
BUG: Very cool. How long did it take you to make your appearances in the film? Was that just a day’s shoot or a couple of days?
UK: Yeah, it was only one day for a couple of hours, because I prepared myself very well with the text and the director Jeremy, who directed me, is a precise man and he had it all worked out before, so it was very well prepared and everybody from costume to makeup, everybody was very professional and it was very…I had a great time doing it. It’s good to do films and there should be more films with multiple stories, because you always get from the audience a new energy coming up. It’s a new story and then at the end there will be people who say, “This and that one were my favorites.” You keep the audience awake with always a new story and that case was six stories of densely concentrated and led into something totally real. BUG: So do you have a favorite story?
UK: I wouldn’t tell you.
BUG: (Laughs) Okay, you’re being fair to everybody. That’s understandable.
UK: That was the whole thing…that’s why I didn’t want to see any of them before, because then I would have had a thematic integration with “Which film is coming next?” or “Which film did we just do?” It was where I’m going to be in between and it would have been confusing, so that’s why. I had fun doing it and with the girl imagining me from her past and coming to the theater and also on stage I like the setting with all of the mechanical moving people out of the grave. I liked that very much, then of course I had a lot of respect because I was standing on the stage of one of the most beautiful places in Los Angeles.
BUG: You’re no stranger to special effects and you did quite a few special effects in this film. Was there anything that was kind of out of the ordinary for this or is this just a regular day for you? UK: The thing was, because of the time frame we had to shoot backwards, which means I started with all the mud and then less and less and less makeup. Normally you start with a little makeup and do more and more, so we went the other way around, but that was fun. I mean I’ve never played a puppet without strings before, but it is kind of a mind thing to get ready to more your body mechanically and kind of very abrupt. I had a lot of fun doing it. I have a lot of experience in horror films and I’m very happy that my newest film, which was shot in Australia called IRON SKY, is a hit in Germany and on the internet several million people clicked on to the trailer, which is quit a lot, seven million and it’s playing in 27 countries. It’s a big hit. Next week I’m flying to Moscow. They are showing it in Moscow and I’m invited to be there. So it’s always different. I mean here I’m a puppet, there I’m a nazi leader on the moon and you know, that’s a great thing. I like all of the short films, like the six short films I just finished with Guy Madden in Paris. We are making a project called 100 SHORT FILMS or 100 LOST FILMS and we did in Paris already 15 and I that was also interesting and very similar to the six films. We are doing 100 which is financed by this non for profit in Paris and now we are doing…to go to set to be every day a different person, that was quite a challenge for me. So I like interesting projects and THEATER BIZARRE is definitely an interesting project for me and you know, I like to change different things so it doesn’t get boring.
BUG: Yeah, well looking through your list of films that you have been in, it’s amazing. Do any one of them stand out as your favorite experience?
UK: Well, films that stand out for an actor is not how good the film was, it’s what it changed in your life, films that changed your life and Andy Warhol’s FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN definitely changed my life.
BUG: Definitely. What was it like filming that with the whole cast and crew? I’ve seen FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN and Andy Warhol’s BLOOD FOR DRACULA and both of them are such phenomenal films. What was that like for you at that time? UK: For me, first of all FRANKENSTEIN was shot in Rome and next door was Fellini shooting and so I met all of the actors in the canteen and I was Dr. Frankenstein and the great thing is we made FRANKENSTEIN in 3D in three weeks for 300,000 dollars, which I mean today you cannot make a film for under two million dollars unless it’s like a BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. The thing is it was a lot of fun. I had a contract to be Frankenstein and Dracula was supposed to be somebody else, but it was always planned to shoot both shows back to back and at the end I went to the canteen being a little sad, because those were three weeks of fame and then they came to the canteen and said “I guess we will have a German Dracula” and I said, “Oh?” “But you have to lose about 20 pounds in one week” and so from that moment I didn’t eat anymore and that was the reason why as Dracula I sit in a wheelchair, because I really had no strength at the beginning to stand up and that was a wonderful thing, because I always, before and even now I collect modern art and I was very much aware of who Andy Warhol was and at that time he was, especially in Germany, he was very well received. His movies were very “underground” and I mean we are talking about dogma films, which was invented by my friend Lars Von Trier, but Paul Morrissey is actually the grandfather of dogma films, because he made films…I mean not DRACULA and FRANKENSTEIN, but earlier films that were made on weekends where you could see the lighting and was kind of what ended up being called a “dogma film,” but back to DRACULA and FRANKENSTEIN of course it changed my life, because being in films which are shown at the Oscar night in America and being shown everywhere, because of FRANKENSTEIN in 3D, that changed things. At the same time when I made the most erotic film in Paris in 1975 just after DRACULA and FRANKENSTEIN that was the result, people wanted me to be playing the lead in THE STORY OF O, so that changed things again. So things are always changing and the internet knows more about filmmaking that I do and it says that I’ve made over 200 films. I can tell you 100 are bad, 50 are okay, and maybe 30 or 40 are brilliant. So if you look back at your life and you can say in your life “I’ve made 30 brilliant films,” that’s wonderful.
BUG: One of the things you seem to be revisiting a lot is vampires and Dracula and things like that. Is there something that attracts you to that or is it just that people think of you immediately when they think of vampires? UK: Well the thing is to be the Devil, you have to be an angel and the Devil was a fallen angel anyway, so I think when I started my career and anyone would have said “You will be playing Dracula,” I would have said “You must be joking,” but the thing is in films or plays or my friend Lars Von Trier working together for 25 years in all his brilliant movies, it’s a lot of bad guys there too, but because in my private life I’m totally the opposite of what I am on screen. I like gardening. I like to cook for very good friends and then when I get a script for a film I have fun with it. That is the important thing. If you are an evil looking person and you’re evil, you can never play evil, it never works since it becomes disgusting. If you are…I don’t think I could kill even a chicken like how people grab the head and kill it to eat it. (Laughs) I like chicken to eat, but I wouldn’t kill one, but the thing is as I said before to you, I’m the opposite and when I go out…I just made a horror film, a Mexican film they offered me and I just finished reading the script and it’s a priest in church, an evil priest, and it’s the end of the world in 2012 and I don’t know. When you become, in my age, an experience of working more than 45 years in this industry you realize that the most important thing is time and I don’t want to have a bad time. I only want to have a good time, so I only choose my films at the moment if I think I can have a lot of fun or it’s a lot of money where I can buy new property somewhere like 20 acres in the desert. So that’s my way of thinking at the moment, but people obviously chose me for like Dracula or Frankenstein or now for the puppet in a horror story. I’m totally a different person and I have fun with what I’m doing.
BUG: Can you talk a tiny bit about IRON SKY?
UK: It was a film which was a Finnish-German-Australian coproduction and they contacted me years ago and it was on the IMDB for a long time, for three years and then I said to my agent one day, which was one and a half years ago, I said “Well, we should take it off. What ever happened to that film?” They said, “No, no the film is going to be made now.” So I met the director and talked to the director on the phone, because I knew the script. It’s a kind of a Nazi film story, but it’s not the typical Nazi film where they are showing people like we are used to seeing Nazis in movie, which I can’t see anymore. I think SCHINDLER’S LIST was the ending of it. It was such a wonderful film and it should stop there, but because it was such an evil and horrible time that they make movies about it again and again anyways, but IRON SKY is a group of Nazis and I’m their leader and we live on the moon and we want to attack one day the earth. That is the whole story and the film is very…I saw it at Berlin this year. I was invited for the opening at the festival and it was the number one hit, because everybody was laughing so much, including myself, and the film just got an award in Brussels at the Fantasia Festival. It got “Best Film” and “Audience Award,” so it got double the awards and wherever it’s playing in Germany…it’s got 700,00 people in two weeks and Australia it was a hit and sold in 27 countries, so I’m happy with that film, because it doesn’t do any harm. It’s just a comedy with some crazy people, some crazy Nazis who hid in 1945 on the moon and that is the whole story. The special effects, which were done in Finland, are so perfect that it’s not anywhere under Steven Spielberg or George Lucas. The effects are so perfectly done and I had fun doing it and we had a great time. We shot in Frankfurt, because it looked very much like Washington in a way, because of all of the high rises and then we shot inside…because it was an Australian co-production we shot in a big studio in Briston in Australia, but everything was green. I mean my car was driving onto the set, but all of it was green and put in later the special effects and I’m very, very happy for all of the crew and the director especially, because these people worked for years and years to get it finally off the ground and it’s one of the first films which is co-financed by the internet. 
BUG: Yeah, I remember seeing the preview to it a while back and I’m really excited to see it. UK: You have to go now and see all of the trailers. There’s a lot of good trailers on it. I was in Berlin, which was amazing. At the end of the movie you see the credits of all of the producers, because anybody who gave a thousand dollars would become a producer, so there was over a million dollars just from the internet from people and then at the end they are all named. (Laughs) It’s just amazing. So the thing is, everywhere the film screens it’s number one. Not only is it a funny film, but it’s an example that people from the internet can co-finance movies.
BUG: Very cool. So what’s next for you? What are you working on at the moment?
UK: I’m working…I bought a new property in Yucca Valley, which is just 45 minutes away from Palm Springs. I am in Palm Springs at the moment and at the moment I’m working on my properties. I’m a handyman at the moment. I had a little incident and I have eight stitches in my finger.
BUG: Gosh, I hope you feel better.
UK: It’s just stitches. I mean I’m not a hand model and they’ll take the stitches out. It all happened a week ago and they will take it out after tomorrow. So that’s what I’m up to. Now I have these quiet places and I’m the happiest person. I’m the happiest when I’m on my little ranch and I only see wild animals and there is no sound of course. There is no sound at all, only nature and I am so happy there and then like I’m flying to Moscow for the opening of the film in June and I might…I’m not sure yet, but I might do the film in Mexico and then I go from Moscow where I’m on the jury at the film festival in Munich in Germany and then I will make a film, because I’m very interested in art, I will go from Denmark to all over Germany and talk about art.
BUG: Oh, great.
UK: And then they just did a documentary on my life for a channel in France and Germany, which just ran last week. So let’s say it’s never boring and I’m in a wonderful situation where I get a lot of people who want to work with me and you know, you choose the movies you want to do and then I get out of my quiet environment with wild animals and just go get in a plane and be somewhere as a vampire or a priest…I just played the pope in the TV show THE BORGIAS. BUG: Oh? Very cool.
UK: I was the pope and that was interesting. It shot in Prague, then I played a part in Budapest, but you see in my life something always happens, from playing a composer to the pope to play a doctor in KEYHOLE, which is opening now. That was directed by Guy Madden, one of my best friends and I have only a few and there you have it. It’s not going to be boring, but now when I finish my conversation with you I will go to Lowe’s, my favorite hardware store and I will order wood and things like that. They all know me there, so I’ll order my things and be a handyman.
BUG: That sounds great. Well, good luck in your carpentry and your handyman work today and I hope your hand feels better.
UK: It’s good sometimes when that happens, because it makes you realize you have one. [Both laugh]
BUG: Yes, very true. Well thank you so much. I can’t wait to see IRON SKY and I’ve seen THEATER BIZARRE and it was a fantastic film. Thanks so much for your time!
UK: Okay. Good luck.
BUG: You too, thanks. Bye.
UK: Bye.
BUG: THEATRE BIZARRE is available on DVD and BluRay now!
See ya Friday with a new AICN HORROR Column, folks!
Ambush Bug is Mark L. Miller, original @$$Hole/wordslinger/reviewer/co-editor of AICN Comics for over ten years. He has written comics such as MUSCLES & FIGHTS, MUSCLES & FRIGHTS, VINCENT PRICE PRESENTS TINGLERS & WITCHFINDER GENERAL, THE DEATHSPORT GAMES, WONDERLAND ANNUAL 2010 & NANNY & HANK (soon to be made into a feature film from Uptown 6 Films). He is also a regular writer for FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND & has co-written their first ever comic book LUNA: ORDER OF THE WEREWOLF (to be released in October 2012 as an 100-pg original graphic novel). Mark has just announced his new comic book miniseries GRIMM FAIRY TALES PRESENTS THE JUNGLE BOOK from Zenescope Entertainment to be released in March 2012.
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