R.I.P.: Udo Kier, Part I: 1966-72

 

14 October 1944 – 23 November 2025

 

The German cult actor Udo Kier passed on to the movie studio in the sky last November.

"Kier was born in Cologne on 14 October 1944, towards the end of World War II. The hospital where he was born was bombed by the Allies of World War II moments after his birth, and he and his mother had to be dug out of the rubble. Kier grew up without a father. In his youth, he was an altar boy and cantor. [Wikipedia]"

He has long been a gay icon, but longer than that he has been a memorable presence in numerous movies, with a colorful career of ups and downs that spans from exploitation and arthouse classics to mainstream Hollywood product to D2V trash to television series. His presence will be missed.
Although he is in some of our favorite films — the original Suspiria (1977 / trailer) and Mark of the Devil (1970 / trailer) and Flesh of Frankenstein (1973 / trailer) and Blood for Dracula (1974 / trailer) and Iron Sky (2012 / trailer) — only two films that we have reviewed here at a wasted life feature him: Blade (1998) and Iron Sky: The Coming Race (2019).
Below, the first entry of a Career Review began last year that we might finish within the year of 2026... Then again, we might not.

"I never wanted to be an actor. I just wanted to learn languages and travel and see the world." 
Udo Kier

Road to Saint Tropez

(1966, writ & dir. Michael Sarne)

Sometime before 1966, the legend goes, Udo Kier left Frankfurt (Germany), his factory job, his side job as male hustler, and his friend Rainer Werner Fassbinder (31 May 1945 – 10 Jun 1982) for London, where one day, in the best of Lana Turner fashion, he got discovered in a coffee shop and was cast as a gigolo in Michael Sarne's short film and acknowledged directorial debut, Road to St. Tropez. The short was shown as the support film for Stanley Donen's 1967 romantic dramady, Two for the Road. 

Trailer to

Two for the Road:

Plot of Road to Saint Tropez: "[...] An 'anti-travelogue' starring Udo Kier, Melissa Stribling, and Gabriella Lucidi. The stylishly shot film tells of a woman who has a brief amorous liaison while on a trip along the South of France to Saint Tropez, but returns disillusioned. [BFI]" 

"Road to St. Tropez is a light and not all that impressive 1966 short film [...]. It's very documentary-esque, as a narrator follows a couple of hustlers as they travel through the French Riviera. Very much only worth it for being Udo Kier's screen debut, who looks absolutely stunning here at age 22! [Nicolò Grasso @ Letterboxd]" 

"Kier [is] little more than a pretty boy diversion for the female lead in [this] 30-minute vignette, but the actor's almost delicate male model features were not really ideal for romantic leading men because of his eyes. They are piercing and lack warmth, but are perfect for characters who are menacing, decadent or emotionally detached. [Cinema Sojourns]" 

Has nothing to do with the film —

Delia Derbyshire Appreciation Society's St. Tropez 1966:

Of the two other names on the poster to Road to St. Tropez: The Scottish actress Melissa Stribling (7 Nov 1926 – 22 Mar 1992), who was married to Basil Deardon (the director of Sapphire [1959], among many), is also found in the Hammer classic Horror of Dracula (1958 / trailer, with Michael Gough), Val Guest's not-so-classic Confessions of a Window Cleaner (1974 / trailer below), and the fun Crucible of Terror (1971 / full movie). 

Trailer to

Confessions of a Window Cleaner: 

Gabriella Licudi (14 Sept 1941 – 18 Sept 2022) is possibly remembered for Unearthly Stranger (1963 / trailer) and the arty Herostratus (1967), but she was generally but one of many pretty faces with lines in films like The Liquidator (1965 / trailer) and Casino Royale (1967 / trailer); her film career was pretty much over by the time she showed up in the obscure Bette Davis TV embarrassment that is David Greene's Madame Sin (1972 / full film). 

Helen Mirren is also in

Herostratus: 

As for the director, does the name Michael Sarne ring a bell? It should: a musician, artist, actor, writer, director and sexist jerk,* Sarne became a critic's darling after Road to St. Tropez with his feature-film debut Joana (1968 / full movie) and then utterly destroyed his directorial career with one of the great films of the late 1960s, the critical and commercial bomb and a wasted life fave, Myra Breckinridge (1970 / trailer), a film considered by many to be one of the worst films ever made.** (It isn't — no film in which Raquel Welch [5 Sep 1940 – 15 Feb 2023], as Myra, pegs a man like Roger Herren [27 Sep 1945 – 22 Sep 2014], as the doofus Rusty, could ever be as bad as this film is said to be... which isn't to say it isn't fabulously terrible.) 

* Regarding the South African singer and actress Geneviève Joyce Waïte (13 Feb 1948 – 18 May 2019), the lead actress in Joanna with whom Sarne was having a fling, he "didn't punch her around as corrective punishment. Only when she annoyed me" [Wikipedia]. 
** Criticism of the day: "Myra Breckinridge is about as funny as a child molester. It is an insult to intelligence, an affront to sensibility and an abomination to the eye."

Pre-Tropez Michael Sarne (with Wendy Richard) singing his 1962 chart hit Come Outside:

Her Private Hell

(1968, dir. Norman J. Warren)

The one that got away! How do we know? The extras of the BFI DVD release of Her Private Hell include Udo Kier's unsuccessful screen test for the movie. He didn't get the part, but he surely would have been great in what is basically a true slice of late-'60s, English-language sexploitation. 

The role he auditioned for, that of the character Matt, went to French actor Daniel Ollier, whose accent was so thick that his lines ended up being dubbed by an unknown actor and whose career went nowhere.

All GIFs of Udo Kier seen here are from his screen test... 

Her Private Hell is the feature-film directorial debut of English exploitation director Norman J. Warren (25 Jun 1942 – 11 Mar 2021), and "the first British sex film to tell a story". As Norman J. Warren explained in 2009, "There were other sex films around of course, coming from Sweden, France and Germany, but there were no homegrown sex dramas. The British sex films tended to be made at holiday camps with naked young ladies playing volleyball, etc. So, that's why Her Private Hell is written about as being the first British sex film. It was the first sex drama to be made in the UK. [imdb]" He, of course, totally fails to take into consideration Robert Hartford Davis's earlier double whammy of That Kind of Girl (1963 / full movie) and The Yellow Teddy Bears (1963 / full movie) — though, admittedly, they didn't exactly show skin. 

Trailer to

Her Private Hell:

But then, the skin shown in Her Private Hell, apparently, was also only shown in the US release of the movie: "As a sex film, [Her Private Hell] seems tame even for the time — there's only a smattering of nudity and even less sex, while the moralising tone and air of seediness make it seem like a bland version of the 'roughies' coming out of America at the time. This version [on the BFI DVD] had most of what little nudity there was (a few tame topless scenes, included here as an extra) cut by the censors, hypocritical and out of touch as ever (they'd passed pubic hair in 'serious' Swinging London movie Blow Up [1966 / trailer] a year earlier, but were still butchering allegedly less important films for showing far less). So as erotic cinema, it's a non-starter, and the claim that it was Britain's first narrative sex film seems dubious given the existence of earlier melodramas like The Yellow Teddybears, which surely qualify for that title just as much as this. [Desperate Living]" 

After Her Private Hell, Warren made one more sexploitation flick* — Loving Feeling (1968 / 5 minutes), the film debut of Françoise Pascal, who went on to a much better films, like The Iron Rose (1973) — before moving on to specialize in horror. Norman J. Warren's more-familiar horror movies include Satan's Slaves (1976 / trailer, with Michael Gough), the oddly lez-phobic Prey (1977), the anti-classic that is Inseminoid (1981 / trailer below), and the film that made him decide to stop making feature films, Bloody New Year (1987 / trailer). Warren once claimed that his relatively forgotten and somewhat different horror flick Terror (1978 / trailer), one of his favorite films, was influenced/inspired by Suspiria (1977, with Udo Kier). 

* He did eventually return to the genre once to make the oddly quaint, breast-heavy sex comedy Spaced Out a.k.a. Outer Touch (1979 / trailer)... 

Trailer to Norman J. Warren's

anti-classic Inseminoid:

Though they share the title, the movie Her Private Hell, which was written by Glynn Christian, "a New Zealand immigrant who based his screenplay on his own experiences as a foreigner living in the swinging London of the 60s [B&S About Movies]", was not inspired by the 1963 lezzy sleaze paperback Her Private Hell, cover below, which was written March Hastings (Sally Singer) and is about "women living in a world without men". (The fab cover art, btw, was done by the talented but forgotten artist Paul Rader [1906 – 1986].)

"The public alarm over the smut business resulted in plenty of fuel for American exploitation movies in the early to mid-1960s [...]. It took a little longer for England to catch up to the same premise for a full-on softcore film [...]. Her Private Hell turned out to be both controversial and profitable, providing enough T&A to annoy the censors, while opening in America in an even spicier version. [...] The premise here is one already familiar to audiences of the time, though it's imbued with enough go-go pop art flavor to still feel fresh. Italian actress Lucia Mondungo (who had bit parts in Mario Bava's Evil Eye [1963 / trailer] and Danger: Diabolik [1968 / trailer]) stars as Marisa, a pretty dense aspiring model who moves to London and hooks up with a shady agency run by a goateed, bossy creep named Neville (Robert Crewdson [20 Jan 1927 – 7 Feb 2023]) and a brittle battle axe, Margaret (Pearl Catlin [22 Sept 1929 – 18 Apr 2024]). She agrees to be taken under the wing of photographer Bernie (Terence Skelton [1 Mar 1932 – 8 Oct 2005]) and live at his pad where, in a sequence bordering on gothic horror, she's startled by another shutterbug in the attic, Matt (Daniel Ollier), along with another pair of ill-tempered models. She winds up dallying with both Bernie and Matt but is horrified when a nudie picture of her goes public just as her 'career' starts to take off. Will she get pulled deep into the world of the skin trade and wild parties, or can she escape? [Mondo Digital]"

 

"Lucia Modugno doesn't "offer the impression of being up to portraying someone going through a terrible turmoil anyway, though she does get convincingly angry at times. However, she wasn't hired for her acting ability, but for her willingness to shed her clothes for the camera, which she does a few times but nothing tremendously explicitly. It appears Warren was keen to keep this classy, not something that would trouble him in the following years, so there's a respectful distance to the more revealing shots, which are often filmed in tasteful shadow: Peter Jessop's black and white cinematography is quite pleasing for a work of this meagre budget. [...] Not exactly a riveting melodrama, then, and at this stage in movie history not much for the sex angle either, as it was all very tentative and hinged around Marisa getting taken advantage of as she is offered a place to live in a stately home [...]. Matt takes a few snaps of her undressed which end up in a girly magazine, leaving her humiliated, which presumably is what passes for the private hell, although if anything it's a public hell. There's a sort of happy resolution to this, and a twist in the last line, but it's fairly unexciting otherwise. [Spinning Image]" 

"The director, crew and cast really nailed the look and feel of the 60s and for this reason alone it a worthwhile watch. Compared with modern movies it's a very innocent piece, but sex at the time was a very sensitive subject where you were expected to confirm to the old Windmill Theatre rule where if you appeared naked you could not move (see The Look of Love [2013 / trailer]). Actually during the filming, which took place in a converted cinema, a member of the public caught a glimpse of naked flesh and called the vice squad and consequently the film set was raided which added to its notoriety. [Movie Ramble]" 

The "goateed, bossy creep named Neville", otherwise unknown as the bit-part actor Robert Crewdson, is also found in Freddie Francis's Trog (1970 / trailer, with Michael Gough) and The Psychopath (1966 / trailer), John Gilling's Blood Beast from Outer Space (1965 / full movie) and Peeping Tom (1960 / trailer)...

When first released in 1968, Her Private Hell was often paired with the 1963 French comedy Les vierges, otherwise known as The Virgins.

The full film —

Les vierges:

 

 

Schamlos

(1968, dir. Eddy Saller)

So, instead of following up Road to St. Tropez with an English-language sexploitation film, Kier's first project after his cinema debut was in an Austrian, German-language sexploitation film! 

Trailer to

Shamlos:

The mostly forgotten Austrian Eduard "Eddy" Saller (12 Feb 1930 – 15 May 2003) was an Austrian director of industry, educational and advertisement films during the '50s and '60s who, between 1965 and 1972, directed five once obscure exploitation films; this one, Schamlos ("Shameless"), was his second trash film.

Somewhere along the way, the Austrian newspaper Der Standard eventually called Saller "a virtuoso of trashy German-language film" and the Munich Abendzeitung christened him "the Austrian Russ Meyer", but while Saller did like to show breast in his undeniably trashy movies, the love pillows he showed seldom reached the extreme of those shown by Russ Meyer (21 Mar 1922 – 18 Sept 2004). 

Saller's once obscure exploitation films, particularly his early two, were ripped apart by the contemporary critics of his day. Since then, they have enjoyed reevaluation as "nonpareil anomalies" in post-WWII Austrian cinema. 

A scene from

Schamlos:

In this "sex and crime film from Austria with shamelessly primitive dialogue [Filmdienst]", Udo Kier, in his first feature film, plays the lead, the ruthless criminal — pimp? — Alexander Pohlmann. 

A scene from

Schamlos:

The plot, loosely translated and abbreviated and changed from the German text found at KinoTageBuch: "On the other side of '68: the young whippersnapper Alexander Pohlmann (sexy: Udo Kier) against the old sack Richard Kowalski (great: Rolf Eden). With a great sense of rhythm and visual verve, the movie offers a less coherent than volatile gangster colportage set in labyrinthine cellar bars, middle-class villas, greasy trailer brothels, overcrowded junkyards, neon-shining streets, and at a happening of the Viennese Actionists (by and with Otto Muehl*). At the center of the abrasive narrative is Annabella (Marina Paal, in her only credited film role**): desired by everyone, loved by one, she prefers to work independently — which is her undoing. The investigation of the murder leaves behind a mountain of corpses. Who survives need not be revealed. It's not even necessary. In the end, the establishment always wins anyway." 

* Otto Muehl (16 June 1925 – 26 May 2013), one of the co-founders as well as a main participants of Viennese Actionism, founded the "far left" Aktionsanalytische Organisation (AAO) — otherwise known as the Friedrichshof Commune — outside of Vienna in 1972. Later called an "authoritarian" and/or "psycho" sect by detractors, the AAO, partially inspired by the ideas of Wilhelm Reich (24 Mar 1897 – 3 Nov 1957) — and, surely, Muehl's alpha personality and dick — was devoted to breaking down and counteracting established social habits and norms. It fell apart in the 1990s when, in 1991, Muehl was convicted of drug offenses and the sexual abuse of minors living in the commune and sentenced to seven years in prison. Released after 6.5 years, he moved to Portugal and set up a new commune. The happening in Shamlos is a flashback sequence occuring when Johnny (Thomas Astor in his only known film appearance), one of the murder suspects, tells of how he met Annabella. Basically, "She is the main ingredient in a monster pancake created by the notorious avant-garde artist Otto Muehl. Along with other volunteers, Annabella is coated in raw eggs, various liquids, flour, and pillow stuffings before fleeing the room like a tarred and feathered victim. [Cinema Sojourns]" 

** Marina Paal appeared in one other film, uncredited: the 1968 German nudie crime flick, Zieh dich aus, Puppe! (literally: "Take off Your Clothes, Doll!"), directed by the man who brought us Cave of the Living Dead (1964), Ákos Ráthonyi (26 Mar 1908 – 6 Jan 1969).

The theme to

Schamlos, by Gerhard Heinz:

Rolf Eden (6 Feb 1930 – 11 Aug 2022), the low-budget film actor who plays Richard Kowalski, Alexander Pohlmann's nemesis in Shamlos, went on to become a swinging Berliner playboy and city personality; the owner of diverse Berliner nightclubs, his last being the legendary Berliner disco Big Eden, he went through untold facelifts and was usually on the town with stereotypically beautiful babes more than half his age at each elbow. In many of his clubs, the women worked topless. (Ah, pre-Maurfall West Berlin, how we miss you.)

Rolf Eden featured in

P.R. Kantate's video to Görli Görli (2003):

(Spoilers!) "Shameless was the director's second film after his debut feature, Torment of the Flesh (German title, Geissel des Fleisches, 1965 [full film]), a tale about a serial killer who preys on showgirls. Both films were dismissed as trash by most mainstream critics at the time but are now recognized as significant examples of the new post-war cinema that was emerging in Austria in the late 60s. Shameless, in particular, has an angry pre-punk tone and depicts an angst-ridden generation grappling with alienation, despair and amorality in the wake of Hitler's defeat. At the same time, Shameless wallows in sensationalism and decadence but this is an exploitation film that is made with considerable skill and verve. It also functions as a morality tale about the consequences of criminal activities while serving up generous doses of nudity, sex and violence. [...] In the end, the film becomes a tough, uncompromising noir in which many of the main characters wind up dead except for the most loathsome one of all. There is also a disturbing late act revelation of incest which accents the nihilistic mood of the film. [Cinema Sojourns]" 

From Schamlos —

Gerhard Heinz's All You Need Is the Beat:

 

 

Season of the Senses

(1969, dir. Massimo Franciosa)

 

And after his grindhouse debut, on his way to eventual arthouse movies, Kier dipped his toes into semi-arty trash.

Original Italian title: La stagione dei sensi (full film in Italian). Four people worked on the script: Barbara Alberti, Dario Argento, Franco Ferrari & Peter Kintzel, based on a story by occasional scriptwriter Amedeo Pagani, who is more active as a producer — for example, the breast-heavy horror, Senki / Shadows (2007 / trailer). Ennio Morricone (10 Nov 1928 – 6 Jul 2020) wrote the score, with three songs sung by Patrick Samson (lyrics by Audrey Nohra

Badly dubbed scene from

La stagione dei sensi: 

To loosely translate the German plot description found at Italo Cinema: "During a wild beach party, six teenagers — Monica (Laura Belli), Michele (Eva Thulin), Marina (Susanne von Sass), Claudia (Edda Di Benedetto), Marco (Ugo Adinolfi [1 Apr 1943 – 26 Apr 2016]) and Peter (Gaspare Zola) — have sudden glorious idea of taking a night-time motorboat excursion, but they quickly run out of gas and are forced to go ashore a nearby island. Fortunately, there is a castle-like estate on the picturesque island area, which is inhabited by the mysterious and Adonis-like Luca (Udo Kier). After the stranded partygoers have made themselves comfortable in the estate of the handsome lord of the castle — without being asked — the six simply decide to stay at the estate of the completely apathetic Luca for the next few days. But by the next morning, both Peter and Marco have disappeared without a sound, leaving the four ladies alone with the sinister Luca on the lonely island. But Luca harbors some deep, dark secrets, and has a psychic ability to manipulate people. The mysterious lord of the castle exudes an irresistible attraction to the ladies. Considerable emotional chaos follows, and hidden longings and deep-seated primal fears get exposed. The five women slowly fall victim of their sexual and deep down desires, which ultimately turns them into weak-willed puppets in the hands of their oppressor. [...]" 

Music to the film —

Ennio Morricone's Gloria:

In his book Daria Argento, author James Gracey reduces all that to: "After murdering his overbearing mistress, a wealthy recluse engages in a series of humiliating, psychologically charged and sexually explicit games with several young women in his secluded island home." 

Music to the film —

Ennio Morricone's Tell Me Tell Me:

Over at Letterboxd, someone named Tay sees the film as even less noteworthy than Gracey: "Thin and pathetic at almost every aspect, this film is too self-involved in its own shallow thoughts to be worth watching."

Two-Headed Dog, however, makes the film sound interesting: "La stagione dei sensi [...] a 1969 film directed by Massimo Franciosa, [is a] perfect son its time: a pop-coloured cauldron [...] which mixes mystery, sensuality, eroticism and morbid atmospheres in an exotic and fascinating context, inside of a castle on an island in the middle of the sea. [...]" 

Music to the film —

Ennio Morricone's Laila Laila:

Italian novelist, screenwriter and occasional director Massimo Franciosa (23 Jul 1924 – 30 Mar 1998) was nominated for an Oscar in 1964 for his work on the screenplay to The Four Days of Naples (1962 / trailer), but here at a wasted life we remember him for helping to script Armando Crispino's psychotronic (as in truly terrible) comedy Frankenstein all'italiana / Frankenstein: Italian Style (1975 / trailer) and Umberto Lenzi's Spasmo (1974 / trailer). 

Ennio Morricone —

In Tre Quarti (La Stagione Dei Sensi):

Of the four Babes of Yesteryear featured in Season of the Senses, the Swede Eva Thulin's mega-short film career includes a very nude three-way lesbian scene with the Italo-legends Edwige Fenech and Rosalba Neri (of Lady Frankenstein [1971], among many great films) in The Seducers (1969). Laura Belli's career was somewhat more substantial, and includes the nunsploiter La monaca di Monza / Lady of Monza (1969 / Italian trailer). 

Trailer to

The Seducers:

 

 

 Mark of the Devil

(1970, dirs. Michael Armstrong & Adrian Hoven [uncredited])

"Mark Of The Devil ain't no Cannibal Holocaust (1980) or August Underground (2001 / trailer), but it makes up for the lack of animal cruelty or pseudo-snuff with a real plot, incredible sets, an impressive cast, and most importantly, a bunch of frauleins in medieval garb getting stripped and tortured all in the name of God. [WIP Films]" 

Original German title: Hexen bis aufs Blut gequält ("Witches Tortured until Bloody"). A dubbed Udo Kier stars in his first true exploitation classic, one of the best and most-depressing exploiters to come out of continental Europe. Okay, it definitely rides on the wave of the far better and affective Witchfinder General a.k.a. The Conquering Worm (1968),* but this wonderfully tasteless slab of cheesy and cheap and violent exploitation is an absolutely great film — say, in the way that movies like Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks (1976) are a great film, only with less breastage. 

* Armstrong's impression, when he read Hoven's initial script to what was to become Mark of the Devil, then titled The Witch-Hunt of Dr Dracula, was that it was "as if [Hoven] had seen Witchfinder General on Monday, Dracula on Tuesday and stuck the two together with a non-stop confection of hard-core porn, sexual sadism straight out of de Sade, and what read to me like a Nuremberg rally speech at the end! [Michael Armstrong]" 

"A garish violent cult exploitation horror pic [...]. It's most repulsive scene shows a beautiful woman about to get her tongue pulled off by its roots. The pic lacks the substance that made Michael Reeves' The Conqueror Worm a horror classic, as it too easily settles in to be solely a shocker torture-porn flick. The West German trashy import [...] set a precedent for Euro-trash films. [Denis Schwartz]" 

Udo Kier is the lead "good guy", Count Christian von Meruh, the apprentice witch hunter under über-witch hunter Lord Cumberland (Herbert Lom) in early 18th-century Austria, who's bad but not as bad as the local abuser-of-power, Albino (Reggie Nalder [4 Sept 1907 – 19 Nov 1991]). Kier was cast by Armstrong, who wrote the role specifically for him.

The script is credited to Sergio Casstner (a.k.a. Michael Armstrong) and Percy Parker (a.k.a. Adrian Hoven, star of Night of the Vampires / Cave of the Living Dead [1964] and much, much more). The two had a contentious working relationship throughout the movie, with Armstrong pretty much giving up on the project once he finished shooting, leaving the post-production to Hoven. Armstrong's supernatural (and now lost) ending, in which the dead rise from the grave to claim Count Christian von Meruh, was jettisoned for the more prosaic ending Hoven filmed. Per Armstrong, "I gather they had no idea of its meaning in the film or what to do with it. Even my PA who had been overseeing the cut had no idea how I'd planned to incorporate the footage, so they simply didn't use it. It's a pity." 

Famously: "The notorious Mark of the Devil [...] had audience members fainting, cinemas employing medical staff and was, infamously, marketed in the US with accompanying vomit bags. Smashing box office records wherever it played, it was one of the highest grossing films of the year despite it being either banned outright or heavily cut for decades in many countries including the UK. It is now acknowledged as a genre masterpiece. [Michael Armstrong]" 

Trailer to

Mark of the Devil: 

 

"We must never weaken in performing God's work. For those who turn against our Savior, no punishment is sufficient." 
Lord Cumberland (Herbert Lom) 

We've taken a quick look at Mark of the Devil before, for example in our entry They Died in September 2012, Part VII: Herbert Lom, where we sort of wrote "Herbert Lom (11 Sept 1917 – 27 Sept 2012), as Lord Cumberland (bad guy), shares the screen with a still-attractive Udo Kier, as Count Christian von Meruh (good guy by default) in this notorious and smashing classic of Eurotrash exploitation a.k.a. Hexen bis aufs Blut gequält. The sadly forgotten co-director Adrian Hoven (born Wilhelm Arpad Peter Hofkirchner) left the film business by dying of a heart attack on 8 May 1981; he started his long career in 'serious' films but by the mid-50s he was a regular headliner of low budget 'schund' films such as Liane, die weiße Sklavin / Jungle Girl and the Slaver (1957 / full film) or the hilariously bad Die Insel der Amazonen / Seven Daring Girls (1960 / scene). By the time he appeared in Franco's Succubus (1968, with Janine Reynaud), he was firmly established (as actor, writer, director and producer) in Eurotrash and cult films. Michael Armstrong, on the other hand, despite a promising start in Eurotrash and horror, disappeared from films after Screamtime (1985 / trailer) — though the tale he did in that compilation film was fleshed out into a feature-length film in 2010, Psychosis (trailer). Over at imdb, Humberto Amador supplies the details to Mark of the Devil: 'Udo Kier is a witch hunter apprentice to Herbert Lom. He believes strongly in his mentor and the ways of the church but loses faith when he catches Lom strangling Reggie Nalder to death for calling him impotent.* Kier begins to see for himself that the witch trials are nothing but a scam of the church to rob people of their land, money, and other personal belongings of value and seduce beautiful big-breasted women. [...] This film contains very strong graphic torture including a women's tongue being ripped out of her head, nuns being raped (in the opening credits), and lots of beatings.' Followed by Adrian Hoven's Mark of the Devil II / Hexen geschändet und zu Tode gequält (1973 / trailer), starring Erika Blanc and Anton Diffring (of, among many great and not-so-great films, The Beast Must Die [1974], Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye [1973] and The Swiss Conspiracy [1976])."

 

* During pre-production, "Lom was in England filming [...] Dorian Gray (1970 / trailer) with Helmut Berger [and Maria Rohm]. Meeting on set, Lom's only request for changes involved the character's implied homosexuality. Bowing to the star's sensitivities, Armstrong found Lom was happier to be impotent rather than a closet gay and he agreed to make the appropriate adjustments. Lom's only other request was to have a 'nose'. He felt the character needed a larger nose than his own. [Michael Armstrong]"

Trailer to

Mark of the Devil II*:

* "Despite certain listings where the pseudonym Sergio Casstner appears as one of the screenwriters, Armstrong had nothing to do with Mark of the Devil II at any stage. When approached, Armstrong refused even to discuss it. As a consequence, Hoven, now making creative and directorial claims for the original film's success, was able to achieve, with the sequel, what he'd wanted to do with the original film. He wrote, directed and produced Mark of the Devil II himself. Alongside Anton Diffring and Reginald Nalder, he again, cast himself and his son, Percy in lead roles. [Michael Armstrong]"

"A perfect example of how showmanship can make or break a film is Mark of the Devil, one of the clearest demonstrations that the gloves were coming off for horror films in the 1970s. Kept in heavy rotation for years, this one earned a mint with its outrageous campaign offering vomit bags to patrons and advertising a rating of 'V' for violence, which left the MPAA distinctly unamused. Fortunately the film itself delivered exactly what it promised, a shocking catalog of atrocities mounted against a lush, antiquated Austrian setting with a storyline that upped the sex and violence factor of the already harsh Witchfinder General tenfold. [...] Oddly enough, the film's most divisive aspect among horror fans is actually its aggressive music score by pop composer Michael Holm, which alternates a sugary sweet main theme with jarring, distorted horror accompaniment and rollicking folk melodies. [Mondo Digital]" 

While we here at a wasted life think the film is great, other do not, including some sites we respect, like The Bloody Pit of Horror, which says: "Mark is fairly well-produced, with solid production values, sets, costumes and locations, and benefits from a strong cast, with especially good contributions from Lom, [Reggie] Nalder* and [Herbert] Fux**. It also deserves a bonus credit for being an early exploitation shocker hit with a cleaver and successful marketing campaign. However, it's also dreary, slow-moving and just not as compelling or well-made or artful as some of the other movies it shares company with and thus pretty forgettable on the whole. The fact the director and producer weren't seeing eye to eye is also evident whenever this sidesteps into unnecessary subplots that add nothing to the film. [...] After the film proved successful, Hoven quickly churned out an official, now-hard-to-find sequel: Mark of the Devil Part II (1973), which brought back Nalder and a few of the other actors for more of the same. Other bogus 'sequels' later popped up on home video here in America but all of these were simply re-titled European horrors that had nothing to do with the original. Mark of the Devil 3 was actually the Mexican shocker Alucarda (1977 / trailer), Mark of the Devil 4 was the Paul Naschy film Horror Rises from the Tomb (1973 / trailer) and Mark of the Devil Part V was used for the original 'Blind Dead' film Tombs of the Blind Dead (1972 / trailer)."

* Reggie Nalder (4 Sept 1907 – 19 Nov 1991). Jewish by birth, Alfred Reginald Natzick was born in Vienna, Austria, and the year of his birth has been a matter of speculation. Little is known about his early years. A handsome apache dancer and cabaret actor in Vienna and Paris the 1920s and 1930s, he looked nothing like the scarred character actor extraordinary he became. His most famous roles are arguably that of the assassin in Hitchcock's 1956 remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much (trailer) and his uncredited turn as the vampire Barlow in Tobe Hooper's TV mini-series Salem's Lot (1976); other noteworthy roles, among many, include his non-porn roles in the horror porn Dracula Sucks (1978 / trailer), its equally pornographic comic recut/remake Dracula's Brides (1980), the porn oddity that is Blue Ice (1985), and the oddly underappreciated Curtis Harrington TV horror The Dead Don't Die (1985 / full film, with Yvette Vickers), among many.

** Herbert Fux (25 Mar 1927 – 13 Mar 2007) died at the age of 79 with the help of the Swiss euthanasia association Dignitas in Zürich, Switzerland; as an actor, he appeared in almost 150 movies, from B-movies to westerns to Bavarian softcore porn comedies, and almost as many TV productions. Our faves, among many, include Lady Dracula (1977, with Walter Giller), Franco's Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun (1977 / trailer) and Jack the Ripper (1975 / trailer, with Lina Romay), Lady Frankenstein (1971), and House of 1,000 Dolls (1967 / trailer, with Maria Rohm). We would see his nadir appearance as that in the Erwin C. Dietrich's softcore remake Der Teufel in Miss Jonas a.k.a. The Devil in Miss Jones (1974)... 

German trailer to

Lady Dracula (1977):

Dr Gore rates Mark of the Devil "2.5 out of 4 devil-marked women": "Mark of the Devil is a competently made B-flick with a large helping of torture. It's gruesome, sick, exploitative, etc. You know, all that good stuff. One girl really gets the snot kicked out of her."

 

 

  

Proklisis

(1971, dir. Omiros Efstratiadis)

Udo Kier's already rather international career subsequently took him to Greece, where he made this, Proklisis (a.k.a. Provocation and Love Above All) his first of two rather obscure softcore sexy-time movies for the Greek (exploitation) film and (trash) television director Omiros Efstratiadis. The extremely prolific director (currently with around 50 video and 60 movies to his name) is known for his erotic films of the '70s, his comedies of thereafter, and trashy television shows. Although Efstratiadis was (and in a ways still is) an exploitation-film powerhouse, his "fame" has unjustly never really transcended his own country. Some of his later "erotic" movies are known to exist in hardcore versions: "It is not clear whether the explicit parts are close-up shots of stand-ins or the actual actors. It was a common practice of the time for such films to have a softcore version for Greece and a hardcore-inserts version for distribution in other countries. [Scoopy]" 

Tribute to Provocation,

set to Alexander Rybak's 2009 song Fairytale:

Proklisis is so obscure that little can be found online about it. WIP Films has a plot description in mangled English, which is slightly improved and fattened here: "The woman Angelos (Udo Kier) loves, Eirini (Elena Nathanail [31 Jan 1941 – 4 Mar 2008] of Wälsungenblut [1965 / trailer]), has married someone else so there's nothing left to keep him on the island of Hydra, in Greece. He buys a ticket to Austria but before he can leave he meets someone new, the beautiful heiress Isavella (Anna Fonsou), the daughter of the wealthy shipowner, Rosie Roubesi (Ketty Panou [28 Aug 1927 – 16 May 2008]). But then he finds out that Irini has been killed, and he decides to solve that murder even while trying to restart his own life..." 

From the film —

Giannis Parios sings Mana den fytepsame:

The beautiful Elena Nathanail's career was pretty much over by the time she died of lung cancer. Anna Fonsou is still occasionally active today, and enjoys some cult popularity in her home country for the exploitation films she made in the '70s, which also include this film here and three more she made with Omiros Efstratiadis: Pio thermi kai ap' ton ilio / The Two Faces of Love (1972 / theme), Image of Love / Kynigimenoi erastes (1972 / opening credits), and Her Private Life / Idiotiki mou zoi (1971 / opening credits). That's Anna Fonsou below with Udo Kier in Provocation.

Over at Letterboxd, Nikola Gocic found the film intriguing: "[...] Schmaltz, camp and erotica blend surprisingly well into a romantic melodrama including a murder subplot and bits of social commentary, all handsomely captured by cinematographer Stamatis Tripos, with stylistic flourishes, such as a kaleidoscope effect, distorted angles and hyperkinetic montages, elevating the pulpy material. And by virtue of Efstratiadis's penchant for traditional music, a few sequences see Udo Kier Hellenized into a hasapiko trance."

On the other hand, over at imdb, gridoon2025 found the film less entertaining: "Udo Kier must have had fun making this movie: he got to travel to Greece (Athens and the island of Hydra) and make out with one beautiful woman after another after another — and got paid for his 'troubles'. The audience is not likely to enjoy the experience quite as much, though. It's a terrible soft-core time-waster, amateurishly made on all levels, with laughably dated hippie stereotypes and a persistently annoying — or is that annoyingly persistent? — score; there is more background music than dialogue in this movie, probably to save on the dubbing costs for the non-Greek actors. 0.5 out of 4." 

From the film —

Giannis Parios sings Kokkino Gliko Mou Stoma:

Scriptwriter Giannis Tziotis, like Omiros Efstratiadis an exploitation film specialist, wrote a number of Efstratiadis's fine titles: Erotismos kai pathos / Girl of Passion (1974), Diamonds on Her Naked Flesh / Diamantia sto gymno sou soma (1972 / full movie), Image of Love / Kynigimenoi erastes (1972 / opening credits), Her Private Life / Idiotiki mou zoi (1971 / opening credits), and...

Oi erotomaneis

(1971, dir. Omiros Efstratiadis)

Giannis Poulopoulos's 

Osa den pire o anemos: 

Udu Kier stayed in Greece for another movie directed by the unsung Greek exploitation film auteur Omiros Efstratiadis (and written by Giannis Tziotis). Here, Kier plays the morphine addict Tonis Theodorou in an "erotic thriller" a.k.a. Conflict of Emotions. The literal translation of the Greek title Oi erotomaneis, however, would be closer to "The Sex Maniacs". 

Scene from

Oi erotomaneis:

The plot of Conflict of Emotions, grammar corrected, as found at YouTube: "A young drug addict (Udo Kier) comes to one of the Greek islands to buy some drugs and finds himself embroiled in a dirty story connected to the death of a local drug dealer. He is actually not guilty, but is wanted by the police. Another drug dealer decides to blackmail him, trying to force him to kill a young woman, a painter (Betty Arvaniti). Tormented by withdrawal, he agrees, but is unable to do it. Instead of killing the woman, he befriends and falls in love with her. Learning the truth, she decides to help him. Now the drug dealer is after both of them, but they end up killing him before he can kill them. The woman and the young man, who still suffers from painful withdrawal, escape by car, but on the way to the airport they are detained by the police. The end." 

Scene from

Oi erotomaneis:

Over at Letterboxd, Ian M says: "This is precise, eccentric exploitation cinema; there's barely any nudity or eroticism, just this uplifting feeling of cinematic grandeur. It's an atmospheric hell ride where love is always the catalyst for everything involved, perfectly refined and slow in all the right avenues. [...] From the first minute, it's clear something's off, and we're ready for the ride he's taking us on. The performances are delivered with a vulnerable sensibility, creating a remarkably sad film where the ending builds up to a drug addict realizing he can't keep running and must accept his dire fate. Every emotional moment here is determined through silent, understated looks of grandeur, and it's such a subtly dictated piece of cinema. Watching something where performances remain perfectly natural is wondrous. A simple crime plot evolves into a love story, then into a disturbed drama — a perfectly gift-wrapped box of everything I love in cinema. The script dictates this through its rightful slowness and proper character build-up. There are only one or two action scenes, and they aren't even the exciting kind. It's determined to be as weird and low-budget as possible. [...]" 

Scene from

Oi erotomaneis:

Also at Letterboxd, someone named svenfeliks seems to have seen a different cut of this "strange early Udo Kier film": "The plot is very convoluted, and there's a new sex scene every five minutes, often for no real reason. At the same time, there are also some interesting creative choices that occasionally elevate it, with some creative cinematography and playing around with different tints. Combined with the beautiful setting and a young Udo in a good performance, it somewhat makes up for the overall messy story, making it at least an interesting watch, even if it never really becomes much more than a curiosity." 

From the film —

Giannis Poulopoulos's Ta kelaidismata:

The main woman of the movie is of course Betty Arvaniti as Olga, the unwanted gangster wife whose husband wants her dead. One of the leading actresses in Greece of the '60s and '70s, she still shows up in an occasional production today. Eleni Anousaki, whom some might know from Zorba the Greek (1964 / trailer), shows up to sing the song below... 

From the film —

Eleni Anousaki sings Mi mou zitas:

 

 
 

The Salzburg Connection

(1972, dir. Lee H. Katzin)

After six more-or-less lead roles, for his first appearance in an American production — from 20th Century Fox — Udo Kier is reduced to a tertiary but visible part (with no poster credit) as one of two young neo-Nazi killers, Anton. The true leads of The Salzburg Connection, a confusing and not all that involving thriller directed by Lee H. Katzin (12 Apr 1935 – 30 Oct 2002) that is based on Helen MacInnes's eponymous novel from 1968, are Barry Newman (7 Nov 1930 – 11 May 2023) and Anna Karina (22 Sept 1940 – 14 Dec 2019) — but Klaus Maria Brandauer has a major role in what is his feature film debut.

The confusing movie is more fun now, thanks to its age, then when it came out — we know that from experience. The music is credited to Bronislaw Kaper (5 Feb 1902 – 26 Apr 1983), a four-time Oscar nominee and one-time winner (for Lili [1954 / trailer]), but what is theoretically his last feature-film score was rejected and replaced completely by stock music...

 

"There are three dead bodies already and I don't intend to be the fourth. You see, I'm on vacation."
Bill Mathison (Barry Newman)

 

Trailer to

The Salzburg Connection:

The plot, as found at Quota Quickie: "William Mathison (Barry Newman) is an American in Austria investigating missing payments for a publisher, though really he is working for the CIA. After various people have gone missing, Mathison is drawn into a complicated and deadly plot involving lost Nazi secrets and competing secret service departments. He is helped by the wife widow of one of the lost men, Anna Bryant (Anna Karina), whose annoying brother knows where the secrets are. Perky KGB agent Elissa (Karen Jensen) is also hunting for the plans..." 

The general consensus about the movie is well put by Cinecaps Digest: "Mind-numbingly tedious espionage thriller, not for being too talky or sterile, but for being too limp and confusing to bother investing the interest in keeping track of who is who or why this is how (such is the bad bargain in adapting a complex novel into a ninety-minute feature). Overplotted intrigue involves the usual bevy of secrets, betrayals, shadowy figures, mystery Macguffins, all set in European locations that offers up ready-made atmosphere and scenery. Despite playing someone whose motivations and goals are so hard to grasp, Brandauer is always compelling onscreen, and [Karen] Jensen (of Out of Sight [1966 / trailer]) is a fresh-faced beauty, but Newman makes for an unlikely hero in the worst sort of way, and director Katzin fails to generate a single tingle of suspense amid all the indecipherable goings-on."

The Salzburg Connection —

the full movie:

Why 20th Century-Fox chose Lee H. Katzin to direct their second major film ever to be set in Salzburg — the first was The Sound of Music (1965 / trailer) — is a bit of a headscratcher, as the man was truly of TV director calibre. His two "best" feature films are probably the hagspoitation horror What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice (1969 / trailer) and the cheesy post-apocalypse neo-western World Gone Wild (1988), but he truly dropped the bucket with The Salzburg Connection — though perhaps the true blame on the film's failure lies on the confusing script and bad casting. Bland lead man Barry Newman may have been oddly effective in The Vanishing Point (1971 / trailer), but here he is simply, well, bland. As is, oddly enough, 60s' icon Anna Karina. Try not to grown too loudly at the final scene.

Trailer to a "better" Lee H. Katzin film,

World Gone Wild (1988):

 

 

Part II (1973-75) to come...

eventually.

 

 

A wasted life public service announcement: