Rutger Hauer Tribute: A One-Man Slaughterhouse
He's seen things you wouldn't believe.
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 and co-star C. Thomas Howell may have had to contemplate the fact that this bear-like Dutch actor might actually show him. After all, with his manic intensity, reliance on gut instinct and bloody-minded commitment to character Hauer had become one of Hollywood's favourite psychos.
Roles in Blade Runner (1982) and Flesh and Blood (1985) had cemented his reputation as an unhinged cinematic killer, a "one-man slaughterhouse", as one critic labelled him.
In the 1980s Hauer seemed fearless. Onscreen he was intense and regularly insisted on f**king with his audience (and co-stars) expectations. He claims he put the blade to Howell's eye because it, "felt right," and in 1982's Blade Runner, eagerly kissed Joe Turkel on the mouth to give the scene between replicant and creator a more ambiguous danger:
"I like to touch males. It makes it more personal. And scarier."
Hauer had 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 he hasn't already seen, or done. He was born in Breukelen, Holland in 1944 - during the Nazi occupation - and in his adult life he'd been a carpenter, a welder and a poet. For a time he was in the Dutch Navy but he hated the experience and faked insanity to get out. As a result he spent time on a psychiatric ward. "I guess you could say that was my first acting role" he later commented.
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