FrogGlace In other words,this film is a surreal ride.

Humbersi The first must-see film of the year.

Kayden This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Delight Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

Scott LeBrun Meet Karl Gunther (played by legendary eccentric Klaus Kinski). He's the demented son of a notorious Nazi war criminal and a former doctor with his own shady past. He's now the landlord of an apartment building that strictly caters to young females. He regularly spies on the ladies from the buildings' hidden crawlspace area, and kills them as well. He even keeps a woman named Martha (Sally Brown) enclosed in a too-small cage. He keeps a diary of his thoughts and activities, to provide us with some exposition and insight into his character. After he brings in a new tenant, university student Lori Bancroft (played by Talia Balsam, the daughter of actor Martin Balsam), he begins to be visited by a Nazi hunter named Josef Steiner (Kenneth Robert Shippy).Kinskis' performance essentially IS the movie. Overall, this brief bit of nutty mayhem, written and directed by David Schmoeller ("Tourist Trap", "Puppetmaster"), is mildly amusing but quite forgettable. Kinski, of course, is anything but, and he does seem to relish portraying this character (although he did make life miserable for Schmoeller and crew). There are a bunch of rats in this thing, some entertaining makeup effects gags (but not very much blood), excellent production design (by Giovanni Natalucci) and music (by the great Pino Donaggio), and a very nondescript (if attractive) supporting cast, including Tane McClure, the daughter of Doug McClure. Balsam is a reasonably personable heroine, but Shippy is boring and unintimidating in his part. Schmoellers' direction lacks style, and his dialogue, for the most part, ain't so hot. (He does admit that the movie isn't particularly good.)Kinskis' presence and performance raise the rating by a point.Future "Tremors" director Ron Underwood was the associate producer here. Schmoeller has a cameo as a rejected tenant.Six out of 10.

Paul Andrews Crawlspace starts as college student Lori Bancroft (Talia Balsam) replies to an advert in a local paper for a an apartment to rent, Lori speaks to the buildings owner Dr. Karl Gunther (Klaus Kinski) & decides to take the apartment. Strangely all of the other tenants in the building are also young & attractive female women but Lori takes little notice of it, soon after moving in Lori hears scratching in the vents & learns that the building has a Rat problem which Lori blames for the odd noises she hear. However what Lori doesn't know is that Gunther is a sick Nazi who is addicted to torturing & killing people as well as spying on his young tenants using a crawlspace to move around. When a man named Josef Steiner (Kenneth Robert Shippy) the brother of one of Gunther's victim's turns up asking questions & bringing up the past Gunther loses it completely as his depraved secrets unravel & he kills everyone until only Lori is left...Written & directed by David Schmoeller who also has a small uncredited role as the bloke looking to rent the room that Kinski lies to & says the apartment is already gone, made by Empire Pictures which was one of Charles Band's early production companies (before Full Moon) while he was still interested in making good films Crawlspace is a film that I quite liked although not that much actually happens. I guess it's the twisted somewhat demented script that I like, from Kinski playing Russian Roulette to his torture devices & traps to his German background to Kinski spying on young women to putting Rats in their apartments to even keeping a girl caged in his room with her tongue cut out so he has someone to talk to. There are a few monologues as Kinski narrates his feelings & thoughts as he puts them down in his diary, from admitting he is addicted to torture & murder to his own bleak past Crawlspace is a sleazy film without much in the way of uplifting moments. At only 80 minutes including opening & closing credits the pace is good although there is a sudden shift from Kinski being a cunning but clever murderer & voyeur to an all out lunatic where he kills everyone in the building that just sort of happens for no reason. The character's are paper thin, even Lori is just there to scream & be ogled, only Kinski's character gets any sort of time to develop but even then it's fairly broad stuff so don't expect the depth of say Peeping Tom (1960) which has a similar sort of story & similar themes.A lot of the film is Kinski in the crawlspace looking at his tenants so what we actually end up with are lots of scenes of us watching Kinski watching young girls in various states of undress. The ending is also too abrupt, after a lot of crawling around in the crawlspace Kinski doesn't even get an on-screen death. The entire film takes place in or around the apartment building, I suppose that kept the budget down if nothing else. There's some gore but all the death's are either off-screen (Hank the boyfriend, that rich bloke & the Kitten) or are completely bloodless (Josef). Having said that there's a couple of scooped out eyeballs, a severed tongue, a finger & a bit of blood splatter. There's one sex scene at the start but it's not that graphic although there is some nudity.Filmed in Rome in Italy at the Empire Pictures studio the production values are pretty good & it's a fairly handsome looking film to be fair. The acting is alright, obviously the difficult to work with Klaus Kinski gives an over the top performance but that's how we like him. Leading lady Talia Balsam actually ended up married to George Clooney.Crawlspace is a film with not that much to it, Kinski watches various young women & then kills them at the end, but it has enough depravity & sick charm to make me like it. Not the goriest or the most exciting or the scariest but an unusual film that I found quite enjoyably twisted. If you did like Crawlspace then the sister piece Please Kill Mr. Kinski (1999) by director Schmoeller is well worth watching as he bemoans how difficult Kinski was on set while making Crawlspace.

sol **SPOILERS** With his old man, a Nazi concentration camp doctor, being executed after the war for crimes against humanity junior or Doctor Karl Gunther(Klaus Kinski), now in his fifties, had become fascinated with the German Third Reich. Watching in his attic hours of newsreels of Hitler's Germany at the zenith of it's power when it was both both feared and envied all over the world. Gunther is also fascinated with young women whom he rents out apartments in his rooming house and loves to watch them in all states of dress and undress. From the safety of the crawlspace that leads from his dumpy attic apartment throughout all the apartments in his building.You can see right away that actor Klaus Kinski is just itching to break out of his restrained role as the meek and soft spoken Dr. Gunther. As he's given a chance later in the movie by director David Schmoeller, who does an Alfred Hitchcock cameo early in the film. When Kinski finally strut his stuff he leaves absolutely nothing to chance. Going so out of his skull that for a moment you think that he's not really acting at all but just being his own wild crazy and creepy self.Collecting body parts of his many victims Gunther also keeps this woman mute Martha White(Sally Brown), who's tongue he cut out, in a cage in his attic. Just to have someone to talk to and at the same time not give him any arguments over what he's talking about. Gunther also has a number of young women living in his building whom he constantly spies on and whenever they have their boyfriends come up to see and have sex with them. Gunther end up not only murdering the gentlemen but also cutting out some of their body parts, two eyes and a ring finger, and putting them in jars of alcohol as souvenirs.The movie takes a turn for the worst, for crazy Karl, when his past finally catches with him in the person of young Josef Steiner, Kenneth Robert Shippy, who's been tracking him down for over three years. It turns out that during his five year tenure as the top surgeon at the National Hospital in Buenos Aires Argentina 67 patients who were under his care died mysteriously, one of them being Josef Steiner's brother.Gunther has this obsession with death that he picked up from reading his late fathers lurid writings about concentration camp life. That soon has him going completely wacko with Gunther constantly trying to blow his brains out,by playing Russian Roulette. As well as trying to murder, with much success, his female tenants. Later by letting rats loose all over the apartment building Gunthers has his tenants, all four of them, go into hysterics. At the same time he murderously finishes most of them off for being, what I think, late with the rent.Leaving no stone, or body, unturned Gunther making sure that nobody can finger him as the killer has him also knock off, with a poison arrow, Steiner when he got too close to the truth about his murdered brother. That as well as the other 66 victims that Gunther left behind, at the National Hospital, back in Argentina. With only one of his tenants still alive the plucky Lori Bancroft, Talia Balsam, Gunther chases her all throughout the crawlspace with an army of hungry rats. Only in the end to get himself blasted by Lori with the last remaining bullet of his .44 magnum that he played Russian Roulette with himself.This is an all star Klaus Kinski movie with him being the only reason to really watch it. Going from hot to cold as well as being dressed in normal mens clothes or in drag, with lipstick smeared all over his face. Kinski is the glue that keeps the movie together and makes it both weird and entertaining at the same time. The violence in the film "Crawlspace" was more or less standard in movies like itself but its star, the late and off-the-wall Klaus Kinski, gave what amounted to a unique one of a kind performance. That of an out of control nut-job who goes off the deep deep end in an utterly mind boggling performance that only the great Kinski could, and did, successfully pull off.

Coventry "Crawlspace" is a somewhat odd, short and righteously forgotten 80's horror quickie that features cult-icon Klaus Kinski in his umpteenth role as deranged German psychopath. He plays former doctor Karl Gunther who now owns an apartment building in America. He exclusively rents out the rooms to beautiful young girls so that he can spy on them through the ventilation system and eventually kill them in his laboratory attic. Dr. Gunther has even more issues, since he's a Nazi by inheritance and also plays Russian roulette games in an empty room. Unless if I totally missed the point of "Crawlspace" being a biting satire on voyeurism, there's very little to recommend about this film. The story is mainly dull and predictable, the murder sequences are painfully tame and Kinski is only a shadow of the actor he was during the 70's and early 80's. But, considering the quality of the screenplays he was offered during his final years, I can hardly blame him. Many story lines that are rich on potential remain entirely unexplained, like caged girl up in the attic or Karl Gunther's surgeon years in Buenos Aires where he fled to after WWII. The music is rather creepy and Dr. Gunther surely has some interesting torture devices standing in his attic (but they're not fully used). I personally expected a lot more from this, because director David Schmoeller previously made the minor cult-classic "Tourist Trap", which happens to be one of my all-time favorite suspense flicks.