Fou à tuer

Karl Gunther is the superintendent f an apartment complex. His discerning tastes lead him to rent to only the choicest of tenants….female and beautiful. Does his leaning to the fairer sex have a more sinister reasoning or is he just a supreme pimp-daddy. Klaus Kinski is by far what makes this movie fun. There are a lot of good things happening in this movie but it would only be half the film without him. This film is producer by Empire Pictures, a now defunct Charles Band headed studio that was responsible for a lot of cool mid-80's genre films (Troll, Ghoulies and Eliminators come to mind). The direction has flare and the script is decent. The music by Pino Donaggio is excellent. It's fun but the script should have had more. I wanted to know more about the character, in particular the Gunther characters past.

The Lesson Learned: That said it wouldn't make a high brow top ten list for that year but it would make a genre fan happy. I enjoyed it and you might too. So be it.

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.

Klaus Kinski was one of the great underrated actors of our time. Perhaps because he was too wild, uncompromising and tragically self-destructive to play the Hollywood game. Sure, CRAWLSPACE is low-budget, and he did it for quick cash. But his performance as the tortured, enigmatic, and totally twisted Dr. Gunther corruscates with understated brilliance.

Scenes from this film will always stay with me: Kinski playing Russian roulette with himself after he kills each victim and announcing "So be it!" when fate spares him and he can keep on killing. Kinski's deadpan voiceover as he writes his demented philosophical musings into his madman's diary. Kinski's almost touching monologues to the woman who's tongue he has cut out and whom he keeps in a cage to ward off loneliness. Kinski holding his hand over the gas burner as he waits for a prospective tenant/victim to take the apartment. Kinksi with lipstick and makeup in full SS drag, saluting "Heil Gunter!"

I could go on, but then again I'm a diehard Kinski fan. Even though this movie is low-budget, I think it is well-written, well-acted, and successful on many levels. It's one of my sentimental favorites, which I have seen more than once. Deserves to be redone!!!

Crawlspace (1986)

** (out of 4)

Klaus Kinski plays the son of a Nazi who rents out his apartment rooms to pretty women so that he can spy on them and then kill them. This could have been a rather interesting film but absolutely nothing happens here. I mean zero, zilch, absolutely nothing. I'm really not sure what the point of the film was, although it's clear the director was trying to get into the mind of a killer yet we never know what the hell Kinski is thinking or why he's doing what he is. Kinski is quite amusing in this role but it's a wasted opportunity.

In real life Klaus Kinski was more of a nutter than most of the characters he played - read his demented autobiography Kinski Uncut if you need proof of that! (it reads more like a porno than a star memoir) - and on the set of this film he seemingly started six fistfights by day three of shooting, leading to the producer looking into having him murdered for the insurance money! Anyway, despite his deranged personality, Kinski is always a great actor to watch and here he plays a twisted landlord who rents out rooms to young women who he then watches from a series of crawlspaces he has built into the house. Add to that, he has a Nazi fixation, home-made death traps and an emaciated victim imprisoned in a cage. It all adds up to a pretty effective thriller/horror.