I happened upon Andreas Krennmair’s post that talks about the possessed German actor and internationally recognized eccentric Klaus Kinski. I’ve been a fan of Kinski ever since 1986 when I stumbled upon his first US film (I think I am right with this) Crawlspace in which he plays–that’s right– “a crazed maniac who is obsessed with trapping young women and then slowly torturing them to death.” A number of years after this his body of work seemed a bit richer to me as I saw films like Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre, the Wrath of God–this is when I finally got myself educated).
I am currently preparing myself for Fernando Di Leo’s
Slaughter Hotel (this is how I go about my de-education) starring Kinski as the presiding doctor of a mad house. (As an aside, just finished Di Leo’s Mister Scarface and Loaded Guns which are 1970s gangster spoofs, and they were terrible, in a bad way 
) I stumbled upon two scenes from Werner Herzog’s My Best Fiend, a great documentary that chronicles the brilliant madness of Kinski without shying away from what a nightmare of a man he was.
The first clip shows a scene from Fitzcarraldo as played by Jason Robards & Mick Jagger (hack!) and then by Kinski. Seems that Robards was originally intended to play the lead, what a different movie it would have been despite my respect for Robards as an actor (he ruled in Parenthood).
This clip (”Kinski as Christ”) is the opening scene of My Best Fiend, and gives you an idea of how deeply disturbed, insanely confrontational, and unbelievably controversial Kinski was during his lifetime.
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The juxtaposition of the Fitzcarraldo and Robards/Jagger bit is priceless — I don’t need to watch them at the moment, “I want my opera house” is burned into my frontal lobe.
I’ll see if I can track down a copy of Slaughter Hotel as well…
Don’t forget Crawlspace
I’ll ruin you yet!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24j_wfkX5AU
I got turned on to Herzog by watching him go on about the power of images and the need for “real war” in “Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ymyiRXCszc
That’s a short version, torrent of full version here: http://www.greylodge.org/gpc/?p=325
Wow, that is a great clip Brian, I had seen the eating the shoe part before (and heard the story even before that) but never saw the doc. BitTorrent here I come.
I am searching for some docs I saw by Herzog in the early 90s about Gospel singing in African American Baptist churches, it was wild, but I am flaking on the name and IMDB isn’t jarring my memory. Thanks for the awesome links, as usual websurfing Godfather! Another thing, one of the people who I am toally bummed is not blogging his own crazy ideas is Mikhail, he’s a kindred spirit and you two would be sure to hit it off.