157) Crawlspace (1986)

"So be it." 

Director
David Schmoeller

Cast
Klaus Kinski - Dr. Karl Gunther
Talia Balsam - Lori Bancroft
Barbara Whinnery - Harriet Watkins
Carole Francis - Jessica Marlow
Tane McClure - Sophie Fisher
Kenneth Robert Shippy - Josef Steiner
Sally Brown - Martha White

I found a copy of the 1986 American slasher flick "Crawlspace" packaged with another horror movie called "The Attic" (1980 which, as you can tell by the title, takes place in a different part of the house. Both films are completely unrelated. The two-movie set is packaged as "Midnight Movie Double Feature" from MGM. By the way, you might be able to guess what film my next post will be about. If you're thinking it'll be "Cocaine Bear," you're right. "The Attic" will probably be after that! 

I found this double feature at a new and used collectible toy shop in Lawrence, Kansas called 1313 Mockingbird Lane (not a sponsor). The proprietor is clearly a horror fan as he has a nice selection of horror movies for sale, most of which lean more towards the obscure. There's also a large stock of horror collectibles and nostalgic movie merch as well. It's my kind of shop. So, I grabbed these movies as part of a trade-in. 

Anyways, "Crawlspace" takes place within an apartment complex inhabited by young beautiful women who are unaware that their landlord isn't as harmless and innocent as he seems to be. 

College student, Lori Bancroft (Talia Balsam) moves into a vacant apartment. The landlord, Karl Gunther (Klaus Kinski) gives her a tour of the complex, telling her the previous woman who lived there disappeared without paying rent. 

While he has a calm and gentle demeanor, Bancroft doesn't know that Gunther is a sadistic, psychopathic murderer. His evil ways stem from his past as a Nazi. 

While she's impressed with the apartment and agrees to rent, he holds his hand over the gas stove as part of some masochistic ritual while Bancroft isn't looking. The film gets much more graphic than that. 

In the building's attic, Gunther keeps his former female tenant locked in a cage. Though he previously cut her tongue out and saves it in a jar of formaldehyde, he keeps her alive "to have someone to talk to." He also keeps several rats up there as well, using them to scare his tenants by secretly letting them loose in their apartments and then watching their reactions from a crawlspace. 

Bancroft becomes another unaware victim of Gunther as he spies on her, and the other women, through the air vent which he silently crawls through. These vents are reinforced so as to muffle the sounds of his movements. 

Every time Gunther murders one of the tenants, he sits at his table and plays Russian roulette with a handgun loaded with one bullet pointed to his temple. He pulls the trigger and if it doesn't cause his brains to splatter across the kitchen, he whispers a phrase to himself - "So be it."   

Later, a guy named Josef Steiner (Kenneth Robert Shippy) visits Gunther after searching for him for three years.

Gunther turns out to be a doctor and was chief resident at a hospital in Buenos Aires.   

Klaus Kinski as Dr. Karl Gunther in "Crawlspace."

Steiner claims 67 patients, including his brother, died under Gunther's care.
He also tells Gunther that he knows about his history with the Nazis. He even shows Gunther a picture he found of him as a child in a Hitler Youth uniform. Gunther doesn't seem too scared, though.

He continues spying on his female tenants regardless. The more he engages in his cruelty without getting caught, the more he starts seeing himself as some sort of God-like figure. He tells himself he can both give life and take it away.

Steiner returns to Gunther's apartment in an attempt to kill him, but those plans don't quite work out as Gunther set up a deadly trap for him.

Soon after, Gunther goes full-on crazy as he dresses as an SS soldier in the attic while watching movie reels of Hitler while posing as the Nazi he is in front of a mirror. 

He paints his face in women's makeup, and then pursues Bancroft as his next victim.

When she returns home one evening, Bancroft finds several rats in her refrigerator. Scared, she then finds Steiner's body submerged under water in her bathtub with a swastika cut into his forehead. 

Gunther is standing behind her in the apartment watching her freak out.

She tries to flee, but the doctor rigs the entire building with various devices to trap her inside.

So, she tries getting her neighbors to help, but finds they've all been brutally murdered. 

The only place left for her to go is the attic, and then into Gunther's crawlspace. 

As far as shock value and uneasiness goes, I'd pair "Crawlspace" with other movies such as "Tourist Trap," and "Alice, Sweet Alice." 

In fact, director David Schmoeller directed "Tourist Trap" as well as the horror movie "Puppet Master" (1989). He has a talent for making movies with uncomfortable and creepy (in the truest meaning of the word) situations, images, and scenarios. Schmoeller can create a horror scene that stays in your mind for years, which your memory will reluctantly comeback to again and again.

Kinski's performance carries all the horror in this film. As hard as it is to believe, despite the subject matter of this slasher flick, it does hold back a lot as far as shock value goes. Some scenes are more gruesome than others, but a lot of the horror depicted is the aftermath of Gunther's heinous actions. 

It's more of a cringe psychological horror than an actual slasher, though it does have its share of gore. 

Even with the sleazy and uncomfortable setting, the story has potential to be a one of those thrillers that audiences would have talked about for decades.

Kinski creates a completely distasteful character, which is what Gunther is supposed to be. Kinski brings the uneasiness that wafts around Gunther immediately. He never relents. 

It brings Anthony Hopkin's character "Hannibal Lecter" to mind. Hopkins somehow manages to present Lecter, a sick and twisted homicidal cannibal murderer, to the audience with a touch of likeability. 

Maybe it's his calm demeanor, or his intelligence, or his sophistication that make audiences want to like him. That's the scary part of Lecter.

Kinski's character also has a calm demeanor, but his background is wrapped in Nazism. He grew up hating and never bothered to get past it. Gunther let it take over for the thrill of being that powerful. 

He creates a character audiences want to hate. He has no redeeming qualities. Kinski is perfect for a role like this. But "Crawlspace" has too much of a lazy feel to it. The rest of the film, and the other performances, are underwhelming and completely predictable. The poor decisions of the characters, such as Steiner walking into Gunther's apartment when he thinks he's not around, give "Crawlspace" its obvious outcomes. How do all these murders take place without any suspicion or police investigation?

Why didn't Bancroft ever call the police when the opportunity presented itself? She didn't seem to try very hard to take him down. 

This is where I'm torn about the movie. Kinski portrays a horrific killer character impressively well. Dr. Gunther's psychological issues and general scariness is on par with other sadistic psychopathic doctors like Dr. Lector or Dr. Josef Heiter (Dieter Laser) from "The Human Centipede" (2009). 

On the other hand, the movie is another typical maniac slasher versus naive damsels in distress kind of kind of movie. These were common in the 1970s and carried on heavily into the 1980s. Some were mindless. Others were strong in their depictions of female protagonists who were anything but weak and naive. Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) from "Halloween" (1978) comes to mind right away. I'm not surprised this character has endured in the mainstream for more than 40 years. 

Even though Bancroft takes down her insane and sick adversary, Dr. Gunther, she does so not through strength, wit, and determination to fight back, but by luck. She manages to elude him for a short while, but when he catches up, she just continues to run until she can't anymore. 

Somewhere hidden in the story is nothing but an attempt to titillate the lower passions of the audience - at least the sickos in the audience, and their sick fantasies. 

Kinski's character, and the psychological issues going on upstairs in his mind, is the only interesting part of this flick. The rest isn't worth the film it's printed on. 

I'm including horror movie trivia into my posts now! That's fun, right? Either way, there it is. The answer will be in my next post...

Which horror film character was born at 6 a.m. on the 6th day of the 6th month? 

*Answer to the question from my last post, "The Boogeyman" = "I Spit on Your Grave."