Klaus Kinski is a creepy ugly dude, with a giant head. That should have been the tag line for this movie. Seeing as how there isn’t one, it’s the best I could come up with on short notice.
Crawlspace stars Klaus Kinski in a role he is probably pretty used to, crazy German dude. He plays a landlord. This building is interesting for several reasons. One, he only rents to hot (relatively speaking) women. Two, it’s got a rather large and intricate air duct system, and three… it’s full of booby-traps and secret passageways. Klaus as Dr. Gunter (original) is the son of a Death Doctor from world war two, who used to euthanize Jews in concentration camps. Herr Gunter it seems didn’t fall far from the tree as he was a Dr. that used to save lives but now get more please in torture and death.
There is nothing really special about this movie in any way. It’s not exactly well written or acted in any way, and most of the time the dialog just leads from one death to another. But really, isn’t that what all horror movies are about. It’s really not even overly creepy except for the fact that it stars Klaus Kinski. In fact if the story was rewritten in a couple subtle ways, you would actually be rooting FOR Dr. Gunter… until he flips out puts on lipstick and starts watching old videos of De Fuhrer.
The only thing that redeems this movie is that you kinda get a sense of Dr. Gunter’s own torment in his addiction to death. Like many addicts he has to do more and more things to get any satisfaction from what he does. Each day ends with him playing a game of “Russian Roulette” and when the gun doesn’t kill him he simply says “So be it.” It’s as if he is giving fate the chance to kill him before he does anything else horrible. The ending of the movie is the same nod to fate. Which is why I actually ended up liking the movie. Probably not one that anyone should rush out to see, but given that it is on Netflix instant it is there if you want to check it out.
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