Crawlspace (1986)

A tightly made horror film written & directed by David Schmoeller. College student Talia Balsam rents an apartment from landlord Klaus Kinski and soon realizes that it's not just rats running around the building's crawlspaces. Kinski is absolutely demented, following in the steps of his Nazi doctor father and coming up with clever ways to kill people. He's a rancid peeping Tom who puts a gun carrying one bullet to his head, deciding it's safe to continue killing if he doesn't blow his brains out. It's a creepy movie to say the least. Balsam is pretty appealing and there's a great music score by Pino Donaggio. Director Schmoeller has an amusing cameo early in the film.

Maybe I'm having a relapse or something but I happened to catch this recently and vice versa. By God, this piece of mind-numbing garbage swept me away, partly because I was curious to see how low it could go. That wouldn't have been motive enough, agreed, but the photography was lurid and quite nicely done, all at the same time. And Klaus Kinski! First of all -- that face, unequaled in its unequability. Second, what is "Aguirre: The Wrath of God" and "Fitzcarraldo" doing in this junk? Then there is Talia Balsam, Martin's daughter, whose appearance rises just far enough above mediocrity to pass "prettiness" without achieving "glamorous." She always looks somewhat startled and frightened, regardless of what's going on around her. I like that in a woman. Her range as an actress, judging from the three films I've seen her in, is moderate but appealing. Then there is the set dresser. Now, the temptation in a bloody and insane shocker like this must be to construct a set, supposed to be a middle-class apartment building, to look like the house in "Psycho." Instead, what we see is an ordinary middle-class apartment building. Relatively speaking, anyway, since Kinski as the landlord is anything but ordinary.The musical score is by Pino Donaggio, done by the numbers, and if you've heard one Brian DePalma imitation of Hitchcock, you've heard Donaggio's score before. The plot almost defies description because it is so far beneath it. Kinski is a maniacal doctor, an ex-Nazi, who discovered by accident that he happened to love killing patients while in South American exile. For his amusement, he breeds rats, plays with a big pistol against his skull, peeks in on his few attractive tenants (no sex, so don't worry, just mutilations and blood all over). When he really wants to relax he runs newsreels of Hitler's speeches and sports a Wehrmacht officer's cap. People are killed by being nailed to furniture, impaled by a steel spike while sitting innocently in a chair (ouch), and being blasted by that hand-held cannon.It's a thought-provoking movie though. The thought it provokes is this. How can two ugly men like Klaus Kinski and Martin Balsam produce two such toothsome daughters?

I think that this is overall a good movie, Klaus Kinski is perfect for the part of Dr. Gunther and the whole Idea of the movie is great. I never want to live alone. I feel that although there have been better 80's horror films, this is at least worth watching because everyone will have a different opinion on this film. I feel that the majority of people will like it even if it scares you or not. The film could have gone into more depth about his life with maybe some flashbacks...but other than that I enjoyed it and I think other people will as well. I watched it twice on IFC and both times I was still was trying to bite my nails.

This movie is good/bad and there are two reasons why this movie is good and the two reasons are:1.The main character in this movie is called Docter Karl Gunther (Klaus Kinski) and i think that he is so dam freaky because every thing he does in this movie is so strange.2.All of the ways people die in this movie are great and the best way someone dies is how a man is sitting in a seat and he accidentally presses a button and a big metal spike comes out and kills him.Over all if u like good suspense horror movies u should watch this movie and my rating for this movie is six out of 10.