“Do you know what happens to an eyeball when it is punctured?” asks Rutger Hauer in The Hitcher (1985), sliding a switchblade up to The Kid’s eye, catching a tear on the glistening blade and watching it twinkle in the passing highway lights. This was not in the script.
Co-star C. Thomas Howell had to contemplate the fact that the intense and bear-like Dutch actor might actually show him. The fear was real. This manic intensity, this reliance on gut instinct and total bloody-minded commitment to character saw Hauer become one of Hollywood’s favourite psychos in the 1980s. Roles in The Hitcher, Blade Runner (1982), Flesh and Blood (1985) and Nighthawks (1981) cemented his reputation as an unhinged cinematic killer - “a one-man slaughterhouse,” as one critic labelled him.
He is fearless and when it comes to acting insists on fucking with his audience and co-stars expectations as much as possible. After all, he’s the guy who put the blade to Howell’s eye because it felt right, the man who wanted to put on his dead lovers clothes in the climax of Blade Runner and do the final battle in drag. He’s the replicant who kissed his maker on the mouth in the same movie and has admitted in interviews that onscreen:
“I like to touch males. It makes it more personal. And scarier.”
It’s this kind of behaviour that makes straight-laced mainstream moviegoers squirm. Hauer has a potent sexuality, penetrative blue eyes and a knowing smirk that creeps out of the corner of his mouth. It suggests that there is nothing in this world that he hasn’t already seen, or done, before. He was born in Breukelen, Holland in 1944 during the Nazi occupation. In his adult life he’s been a carpenter, a welder and a poet. He joined the Dutch Navy but hated the experience and desperate to escape faked insanity. As a result he spent time on a psychiatric ward.
“I guess you could say that was my first acting role,” he later commented.
His acting career began (officially) by studying drama in Amsterdam and he soon worked his way to becoming one of the countries most interesting leading men. In the 1970s he worked frequently with Paul Verhoeven (later the notorious director of Basic Instinct (1992) and Showgirls (1995) a move that bought them both international attention. Together they made the erotic Oscar nominated drama Turkish Delight (1973) and later the epic war movie Soldier of Orange (1977).
The film tells of a group of affluent Dutch friends torn apart by the events of World War II. Some become members of the student resistance, another joins the Walfen SS and one remains impassive. Hauer’s character Erik is initially naïve to the brutality of war, “a spot of war would be quite exciting,” he tells a friend at a high society dance, but later watches behind owl like glasses as his country falls into fascism. He decides to fight for liberation at all costs. Hauer made a rousing and believable hero and his good looks, wavy blond hair and natural charisma drew attention in what was essentially an ensemble piece. It didn’t take long for Hollywood to come calling.
He made his US debut in the Sylvester Stallone vehicle Nighthawks (1981) before being signed up for Ridley Scott’s seminal cult masterpiece Blade Runner in 1982. Based on a novel by Philip K. Dick, the film is a polluted and neon-lit cyber noir set in the year 2019 when androids (replicants) have been made illegal on Earth. With a built in life span of 5 years, a group of Nexus 6 droids return to earth looking for more life. Harrison Ford is Deckard, a bounty killer hired to track them down - Hauer is his reptilian alter ego, the replicant Roy Batty. His glassy European coldness and perfect plastic body personified man made humanity. Batty is lethal and other worldly with bleached blond hair and an androgynous beauty. He’s like a punk rock Ken doll gone berserk.
Perhaps most memorable was Batty in the film’s conclusion as he saves Deckard from death – an act which shows this machine to be more human than the genuine humanity that surrounds him. With his built in life span running out, the original script called for Batty to recount an epic dying monologue to his nemesis, but Hauer, ignorant of an actor’s usual egotism and demand for screen time, decided to cut it down to just 27 words. The result is an iconic moment in cinema history:
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tanhauser Gate.”
To cap it off, Hauer added a bit of his own poetry:
“All these moments will be lost in time. Like tears in rain. Time to Die.”
He is so perfect, so extraordinary and so forceful in this picture that he would struggle to shake his bad guy persona for the rest of his career. Yet he would do his best to try. He was the all-American (?) hero in Sam Peckinpah’s final film The Osterman Weekend (1983) and starred in 1985s underrated fantasy Ladyhawk. By day Isabeau (Michelle Pfeiffer) transforms in a hawk and by night her true love Captain Navarre is a wolf - two lovers separated by a magical curse.
Director Richard Donner typically eyed Hauer up for the villain, but the actor refused, holding out instead for the heroic lead. It was a good fit. Navarre is a dark and troubled anti-hero, a black-clad knight out for bitter revenge against the satanic Bishop who cast the spell. Hauer makes for a convincing, if tormented, romantic lead. He is passionate and displays a desperate hurt at losing his beloved – his longing for Isabeau apparent in those fiery blue eyes. “Wouldn’t it be nice,” he tells comedy sidekick Phillipe. “If I could call her by name and pretend we met before.”
Blind Fury (1989) was a fun action comic book based on the Japanese Zatochi series. Hauer plays Nick Parker, a man blinded in Vietnam but rescued by local villagers and taught to become a master swordsman using his other senses. Returning to the US (with a samurai sword concealed in his wooden cane) Parker set out to help an old army buddy, and rescue his son from Nevada gangsters. He moves with razor sharp precision, his sword a lethal extension of his own body. He has no problem slicing up a small army of heavily armed rednecks with just his blade – despite being blind as a bat.
The character is softly spoken and when not fighting is bumbling and goofy, tripping over bags and prat-falling in the street. He has a sweet natured bond with the boy he’s protecting and as he teaches him to be a man Hauer shows a convincing parental warmth. Yet critics and audiences have struggled to accept Hauer as anything less than the personification of evil. Blind Fury proved he can be the everyman, but it is true that he seems more at home in lunatic roles.
In The Hitcher the part of the psychotic John Ryder was more extreme, more malevolent and more brutal than anything the actor had done before. The film sees a kid being drawn into a vicious and fatal cat-and-mouse game with a deranged hitchhiker. The movie has its share of sticky violence as Ryder slices cops’ throats and ties a girl between a truck and its stationary load and then tears her in half. It could easily have been just another lazy 80s slice ‘n’ dice junk movie, but Hauer and director Robert Harmon instilled a fascinating subtext to the narrative that raises it above average.
In the films opening sequence, when the kid picks up Ryder (ie the knife to the eyeball scene) we see a man sickened by his own monstrousness. “What do you want?” asks the terrified Kid. “I want you to stop me,” Hauer replies. When the Kid manages to overpower him and toss him from the moving car, Ryder knows he has found the one he’s been looking for – a boy who can match him and give him the death he so desperately seeks. But the Kid is still young and first Ryder must make him a man in the only way be knows how; by drenching the Arizona deserts with blood and showing the boy how to kill.
In the 90s Hauer settled into becoming a dependable working character actor, appearing in TV, television movies and supporting parts. Roles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992), Surviving the Game (1994) and Hallmark’s Merlin (1998) showed skill, but lacked conviction. In recent years Hauer has been picked up for more bad guy roles in high profile movies. He showed a human greed in Christopher Nolan’s definitive Batman Begins (2005) and along with Mickey Rourke was the most interesting thing in the insipid (yet technically stunning) Sin City (2005). As the perverse and cannibalistic Cardinal Roark, Hauer reminded us just how creepy and unhinged he could be.
He continues to work eagerly and with passion. In the last 10 years he has appeared in almost 50 films and even managed to direct two. He’s lost none of his mischievous audacity and it’s good to know that no matter how predictable mainstream cinema gets, there’s still a demented Dutchman out there ready to fuck with our expectations.
Tom Fallows is a well respected writer and soon to be published author when the pocket essential guide to George A. Romero’s work hits newstands in October.
This article is the third in the marvellous Cult Actors Series…
Cult Actors #2– Adrienne Barbeau
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