Konterr Brilliant and touching

Borserie it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Hattie I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

BA_Harrison 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.

GL84 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.

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.

Robert J. Maxwell 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?