Alfred Reginald Natzler was born in Vienna on 4 September 1907 and later adopted the stage name Reggie Nalder. He came from Jewish acting stock; his father Siegmund Natzler was an actor and cabaret performer, his mother Ida Natzler appeared on stage and in silent films, and his uncle Leopold Natzler co‑founded the Grand‑Guignol‑sounding basement cabaret ‘Die Hölle’ at the Theater an der Wien. Even his cousins Grete Natzler and Lizzi Natzler, who later emigrated to America, became singers and actresses. It was a family where performance was not a calling but a condition of existence.
What rounds out this picture is how much graft he put in before anyone knew his name. In the 1920s, he painted scenery, wrote as a journalist, and performed under yet another alias, ‘Reggie Riffler’, at Viennese theatres, including the family cabaret. For a time, he and his brother toured a dance act called the Nalder Brothers, a detail that feels almost too perfect given the physical precision he later brought to screen roles. He was trying everything, testing every doorway into the world he had been born among, building a physical vocabulary long before the camera ever caught the contours of his face.
In 1930, he moved to Paris, where he worked in theatre and cabaret and took acting lessons from Louis Jouvet, one of the great character mimes of the era. This is the kind of detail that makes the later career snap into focus. The stillness, the control, the way he could let a single gesture carry a scene; you can see Jouvet’s imprint everywhere, even when Nalder is buried under layers of make-up.
Back in Vienna, he made a tiny screen appearance in the Austro-Hungarian musical football farce ‘3:1 a szerelem javára’, later shown in German as ‘Roxy und das Wunderteam’. It is the sort of debut that would be forgotten entirely if the man in question had not gone on to become one of the most distinctive faces in mid-century cinema.
Then the world changed. After the Anschluss in 1938, Nalder left Austria for France and spent the occupation years in hiding. Some accounts record that it was during this period that he suffered a severe facial injury, possibly from acid or fire. Nalder himself offered different explanations over the years, and no definitive medical record has settled the matter. What matters is that he endured it, survived it, and later turned it into a tool of his craft rather than a limitation. It is impossible not to feel a kind of admiration for the way he carried that difference, never exploiting it, never sentimentalising it, simply folding it into the work.
By the late 1940s, he had remade himself again, now under the name Reggie Nalder, working first in French films and then as a speaker for the German service of the BBC. That broadcasting work becomes the hinge between his European stage life and the international film career that followed, another example of his ability to adapt, to keep moving, to find a way through.
As early pictures show, Reggie had a fairly arresting visage at this time, but nothing to prompt any running in the aisles. His facial scarring can be pinpointed neither by date nor cause. He was unwilling to discuss the burns to the lower part of his face throughout his career, offering several reasons over the years, none of which are likely to add anything to the story. It was not until after the War that Nalder made the transition into films. Later archival work has fixed the uncertainty that once surrounded his birth year and has confirmed that after the war, he spent a period working for the German language service of the BBC before moving fully into film and television.
Even his early roles thrust him among the elite of his contemporaries. He was directed in ‘Impasse Des Deux Anges’ by Maurice Tourneur, appeared in ‘Le Signal Rouge’ alongside Erich Von Stroheim, and took an early role created for an English-speaking audience in ‘Adventures of Captain Fabian’, also starring Errol Flynn and Vincent Price. These were relatively insignificant roles, though he was certainly mingling among the right company. His appearance in a slew of swashbuckling movies brought him to the attention of Alfred Hitchcock, who duly cast him in the role of Rien, the assassin, in the remake of his own ‘The Man Who Knew Too Much’.
Rien is thoroughly evil in what is actually rather limited screen time. His face is quite concealed with make-up though the camera lingers on him with a mixture of disdain and curiosity. In the cliff-hanging final sequence in the Albert Hall where Rien is to carry out his killing, only two faces stand out from the hundreds in the auditorium: Nalder’s and Doris Day’s, as if to highlight the evil ugliness of Nalder with the clean-cut beauty of the lead actress. Nalder’s angular face hangs portrait-like in the frame, as much the genius of Hitchcock’s direction as the self-awareness of the actor’s arresting power to capture the audience’s attention. His slow movements and insect-like twitching are both disgusting yet impossible to turn away from. Rien is rumbled by James Stewart and dies tumbling like the Fallen Angel from his perch, having the good fortune to miss Day singing ‘Que Sera, Sera’ at the film’s conclusion, but not before becoming one of the most memorable villains of film at this time.
This was inevitably the breakthrough Reggie needed to get to Hollywood. Naturally, the touch of Hitchcock did the same for any actor. He appeared in numerous television shows in the early 1960s, from ‘Peter Gunn’ to ’77 Sunset Strip’ and in two memorable episodes of Boris Karloff’s ‘Thriller’. The first of these, ‘The Return of Andrew Bentley’, written by Richard Matheson, features a little too much Scooby Doo cape wafting by Nalder to really strike fear into mortal hearts as he plays a ghost intent on revenge. There is, however, something disconcerting about this episode as he appears without warning with his lantern-headed familiar; the suspense is purely down to his appearance as the part is silent throughout.
His second appearance in ‘Thriller’ in the same year as a graveyard caretaker in ‘Terror in Teakwood’ is a more interesting story concerning the massive hands of a dead pianist becoming hot property as an impossible-to-play piano recital is required. Nalder again is demonised as a social outcast only by moonlight, who can only make his presence felt through blackmail. Also appearing in this episode was Hazel Court, as we have seen, not the first time Nalder played opposite a beautiful female to accentuate his features.
Appearing opposite Rock Hudson in ‘Spiral Road’ will not have hurt, playing a witch doctor this time, but it was almost certainly his appearance in ‘The Man Who Knew Too Much’ that brought him to the attention of Frank Sinatra. The blessing of Sinatra was the most mixed of all possible blessings. If you were Sammy Davis Jr it meant that Frank and his pals could take the piss out of you, but no one else. It was in any case not an approach that would have been sensible to turn down, and lo, Nalder appeared in a silent role as a Russian spymaster in ‘The Manchurian Candidate’. Although this now meant Nalder’s CV was enviable by any standards, it was maybe time to accept there were only ever going to be certain roles for Nalder.
His appearance as the ambassador Shras in the ‘Journey to Babel’ episode of ‘Star Trek’ features him painted blue with antennae. Despite pig-like characters in the ensemble trying to throw you off the scent as to who the baddie might be, it is obvious, even from only looking at the cast, who the mischief-maker is going to be. A gift for the programme makers, elaborate make-up was utterly unnecessary to create the required feeling of unease.
Hitchcock’s most devoted disciple, Dario Argento, was keen not to miss a trick and cast him once more as an inept assassin in his breakout film ‘The Bird with the Crystal Plumage’. Clad in yellow, one of the motifs of the film, Nalder has really hit his stride at this point. Imperious in front of the lens, he was never afraid to stare the camera out. The futility of Tony Musante’s predicament in the lead is accentuated by the fact that he somehow manages to lose Nalder’s character in a crowd.
Nalder’s next role was pivotal. It made him famous in exploitation cinema forever, but also meant he could never achieve the mainstream heights he longed for. Adrian Hoven’s ‘Hexen Bis Aufs Blut Gequäl’, known in English as ‘Mark of the Devil’, is an insane film. It delivers scenes of revulsion and mayhem that are often promised in marketing and build up but fall flat or are simply untrue. Once again appearing alongside exalted company such as Herbert Lom and Udo Kier, the film is very much the evil twin of ‘Witchfinder General’.
There is an almost mondo feel to proceedings. The language and the real moments are akin to the effect Ruggero Deodato later achieved with ‘Cannibal Holocaust’. A couple of points labour the obvious a little too obviously. The hero Kier’s character is called Christian; Nalder’s witchfinder without portfolio is called Albino, at once the outcast. Unusually, Nalder’s character is equally at home in silent mode, staring impassively as innocents burn at the stake, as in full-on chatterbox, accusing any nubile wench in striking distance of sorcery.
‘Mark of the Devil’ also contains perhaps the most cutting remark in any of Nalder’s films. After an attempted ravaging of Olivera Vučo by his character has been rumbled, the victim cries out, ‘Look at his face. He is the Devil. Look at his face.’ Nothing has been done by the make-up department to prompt this outburst. What we see on the screen is literally that: Nalder’s face. Whilst recognising that events are based on fact, even in the fairytale world of the movies, this is beyond damning. One can only wonder how the actor felt, the payoff being the huge financial success the film enjoyed. Nalder’s visage also made it to the front of one of the most famous of all exploitation marketing techniques, the vomit bag, which was given to attendees of screenings in America by Hallmark Releasing.
Riding the crest of a wave of some kind, he followed this role with ‘Hexen geschändet und zu Tode gequält’, known as ‘Mark of the Devil 2’, also from Adrian Hoven. The film is more of the same but with greater emphasis on tampering with nuns and shocking without really concentrating on the storyline. Only Nalder returns from the cast, and even he, understandably given the demise of Albino in the original, is playing a different character. The film never makes the impact of the original in any respect.
Nalder starred as a zombie in Curtis Harrington’s TV movie ‘The Dead Don’t Die’. Harrington recalled that Nalder’s face was like something out of a nightmare and compared him to the Phantom of the Opera. Harrington said he felt sorry for him, though, because Nalder once asked why he could not play a leading man. Nalder was perfectly self-aware but knew that although his looks made him in demand for certain roles, he would not have got half the work if he had been a lousy actor. Secondly, there was one more important reason Nalder never got leading roles: his accent. He carried his heavy East European accent throughout his career, and though it obviously was not a problem for the European market, in America it limited him in speaking roles to Communist protagonists and soundbite-spouting mentalists.
This can be seen in Albert Band’s ‘Zoltan, Hound of Dracula’, where, playing the servant, Nalder is all pithy ‘Yes, Master’ and no substance beyond his understanding of how to portray himself physically.
It is slightly ironic that it is for the role in which he is most heavily made up that he is most recognisable to people. Starring as Barlow the vampire in Tobe Hooper’s ‘Salem’s Lot’, he is possibly the most hideous vision of a vampire since Max Schrek’s Nosferatu in F. W. Murnau’s film of the same name… despite appearing for only one minute and 13 seconds in a three-hour runtime.
This was in every sense to be the twilight of Nalder’s career. By now, he had almost certainly accepted the kinds of roles he was going to receive and willingly accepted all of those he was able to take. His career is bookended quite remarkably. From his earliest days performing in raunchy shows with his girlfriend, two of his final roles brought him almost full circle. Appearing under pseudonyms Detlef Van Berg and Detlas Van Burg, Nalder appeared in ‘Dracula Sucks’ and ‘Blue Ice’. Nalder was unembarrassed by these parts; he was, of course, no more exploited here than he was throughout his career. In fact, for once, he received less attention in terms of appearance.
Let it be a mark of the man that he is equally famous for describing Bill Cosby as rude, arrogant and incredibly untalented after appearing with him in the crushingly awful ‘The Devil and Max Devlin’.
Nalder died in Santa Monica on 19 November 1991, succumbing to bone cancer. He left behind a filmography that ranges from prestige pictures to cult horror and exploitation, and a reputation among directors and fans as an actor who could hold a frame and make stillness speak. Had he defeated the exploitation of his looks by becoming the exploiter? In his own mind, he had, and that is what counts. To him, his face was what opened doors, first to America and then to appear in so many films and television programmes. What kept him there was his uncanny ability to hold the audience in the palm of his hand, to hypnotise in a way perhaps only Klaus Kinski has ever bettered. Truly an artist, Nalder reminded us what acting was and could ever be.
Daz Lawrence
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