Watch Crawlspace For Free

Purely Joyful Movie!

Memorable, crazy movie

From my favorite movies..

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

From director David Schmoeller, who gave us the enjoyably offbeat slasher Tourist Trap, Crawlspace is an equally bizarre horror starring the inimitable Klaus Kinski as Karl Gunther, a mentally unhinged landlord who has developed an addiction to killing, satisfying his urges by luring his tenants into his deadly, booby trapped apartment. When he's not in a murdering mood, Gunther can be found crawling through the air ducts of his building to spy on the women who live there, writing about killing in his diary, playing Russian roulette, or wearing Nazi regalia while watching footage of Hitler (Gunther's father was a Nazi surgeon).For an '80s horror film, Crawlspace is fairly light on the gore and scares, but with its star in full on demented mode, the film cannot fail to entertain: whether it be carefully preparing a chair with a spring-loaded spike in the seat (nasty!), crushing rats with his bare hands, travelling at speed through the air ducts on a wheeled toboggan, smearing his face with make-up, or simply chatting to the tongue-less woman that he keeps caged in his room, Kinski's crazed performance is a delight to behold.6.5 out of 10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.

Responding to a vacant apartment ad, a woman moves in and meets her tenants who suddenly start to disappear around the building, and when he is finally uncovered resorts to torture to keep his secret the remaining tenants are forced to stay alive to survive the experiments.There's really only a few good things about this film. Among the greatest here is undoubtedly the main villain of the film as there's little doubt that Kinski does a great job in here at being creepy. There's something a little off about him from the start with a hint of mystery thrown in, and it works marvelously to build suspense. All the little traits throughout here, from the captive in the apartment to the constant tapping with the knife, his voyeuristic tendencies and the gun-gags alone in his basement, are nicely used to make him a little off. The film's best is the end with a really creepy and protracted chase through the apartment, starting from the lower floors, up into the attic, through the crawlspaces that are hidden throughout the building and finally concluding inside a secret room filled with leftover artifacts and other things stored away. There's a nice flow to it, never really slowing down and with some surprises along the way add to the creepiness of it and makes the movie end on a really high note. It's got a nice sleazy tone from the start that's all well and fine, but these aren't enough to save this as there are a couple of problems with the film. The film's biggest problem is that it's incredibly slow since hardly anything happens and most of the film's time is spent with listening to voice-over ramblings of his diary. The rest of the time is spent spying on the tenants that aren't uneventful since most of it is simply unleashing rats into the room or making strange tapping noises through the air ducts. It's not scary in the slightest, and really only serves as an excuse for voyeurism. Add to the fact that it also plays out in such a slow pace makes it all the more hard to digest since there's such a long time between events and it simply takes that much time to get to it. What hurts the film all the more so is that its attempts at being chilling all fall flat by being incredibly uninvolving. The main thing here is being built around the constant use of putting a gun to his head and attempting to take his life, which is handled the wrong way. It's a foregone conclusion that he's needed to end the film, but by always using that to build suspense it pads out the movie. The film also seems a bit odd when it concerns it's horror set-pieces at the end. Even the film's best chances at suspense, the find-the-bodies sequence, is easily spotted and doesn't register at all, and the fact that those deaths all occur off-screen is even more of a disappointment seeing as how there were no deaths or gore until that point anyway. It really only serves the fact that there's a psycho wandering around, and that isn't all that creepy as it could've been. There's a lot of ways it could've been better, and they're all pretty easily spotted as such, and is what hurts this the most.Rated R: Graphic Language, Violence, Nudity and a sex scene.

It was just coincidence that I had just finished watching Puppet Master, also written and directed by David Schmoeller. Klaus Kinski stars as the crazy son of a crazy Nazi, who comes out of hiding to run an apartment house that only rents to women. It was one of Kinski's last films before he died. Kinski made several films (Nosferatu the Vampyre, Fitzcarraldo, Aguirre: The Wrath of God) with director Werner Herzog before they had a falling out during Cobra Verde.He is immediately attracted to a new renter played by Talia Balsam (No Strings Attached, "Without a Trace", "Mad Men"). He saves her for last after he kills everyone else.The music really adds to the suspense and terror. Kinski is magnificent, and Balsam is excellent.

Klaus Kinski plays Gunther, an apparently retired doctor who is the landlord of an apartment block. His appearance is effete, certainly he gives off the impression of being very withdrawn. It becomes apparent that his father was a Nazi genocide employed by the SS and the family minus dad flew to Argentina after the war. Little Gunther became Doctor Gunther and started to "euthanise" dozens of patients suffering from minor ailments. I suppose in 1986 this would have seemed fanciful, however in the UK, and after the revealed murders of Dr Harold Shipman, it is somewhat less so now.Gunther has however got bored with these less graphic murders and has now taken to polishing off his all female tenants who he spies on through vents connected by a network of crawlspaces.One of the most disturbing things about this movie is that Gunther keeps a young lady in a cage in his room. He's cut her tongue out and cut most of her hair off, who knows what else, she looks very sallow. Her position is that she is there as someone for Gunther to talk to. She appears not to be frightened that Gunther will torture her any more. Rather she is simply suffering from seeing the terrible things he does to others, she passes him a note at one point begging him to kill her.Her character is seemingly a perverse reference to Maria Falconetti's performance as Joan of Arc in the silent movie The Passion Of Joan Of Arc. Like in the silent movie she is voiceless and expressing deep sorrow and anguish solely via facial movements. One thing that I love to see in movies is excellent interior design. Rooms can have extremely potent psychological effect if done right. The interior design of an apartment can reveal a lot about the personality of the character living there if it's done properly, and can be an excellent short cut in setting up character development. The apartments in this movie are done very well. Gunther seems to enjoy draping everything, cutting out the straight edges, even a cage of rats is draped in tasselled velvet. He seems fastidious and prissy, a coolly observant psychopath.Gunther almost seems to see himself as a scientist, he has no real vendetta against women, and he writes a journal exploring his addiction. It's a calm movie at points, even though he's turned his apartment into a trap complete with models of torture devices and a mutilated woman in a cage.My favourite spectacle in the movie though is a chocolate party that a bunch of the female tenants have. Chocolate and tequila milkshakes chocolate, chocolate cakes, chocolate biscuits, basically they turn the apartment into a chocolate bordello. How great for all us male voyeurs to see such a bizarrely grotesque feminine ritual!The big thing the movie has though is Klaus Kinski's acting, it's rare that a director will focus on an actor's face closeup for any substantial amount of time and let an actor show their talent. We see Klaus Kinski play Russian Roulette, seated on a chair on a chequerboard floor, the facial nuance is brilliant.