To me, this movie is perfection.

Some things I liked some I did not.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

What this movie actually does is to pose the very controversial question as to whether a person's evil nature (in this case a Nazi war criminal) can be transmitted to their offspring. The answer to this question as far as the makers of the film are concerned, is given clear resolution, and of course this makes it far more disturbing than the usual serial killer fare. For some, this movie is probably too evocative of a past era which I am sure they would wish to forget.

Amusing film about an apartment with solely female tenants that suffers from an infestation of rats and pint sized Germans. Dr. Karl Gunther, the son of a Mengele-type Nazi doctor, is the superintendent of this complex with a predilection for renting only to women so he can of course spy on them via his completely dust-free airvent system all the while harassing them with his various rats-in-the-wall contraptions. I guess simply watching them in various states of undress was too lowbrow for this movie. Anyway, when a nosy tenant is dispatched by one of his rather creative but not too efficient killing devices it opens up a room for rent for another victim of the terror from tiny town. Enter Lori Bancroft whom the Dr. becomes instantly smitten with. After becoming acquainted with her fellow housemates (did I mention Tane!) she begins to hear strange noises from the airvents and becomes increasingly distressed. When Lori is visited by Josef Steiner, who by the way comes off less grieving brother and more creepy jerk, she is informed that Dr. Gunther was implicated in a series of multiple deaths while he was a doctor in South America with Josef's brother being one of them. This bombshell revelation leads Lori to investigate what's inside Dr. Gunther's apartment exposing his twisted reality. Woman in a cage with tongue cut out. Check. Nazi memorabilia. Check. Torture devices. Check. Backissues of Cat Fancy. None, though that would of been hilarious.Crawlspace needs to be categorized with movies like Chucky, Troll, and Puppet Master as films whose villains you must suspend belief in in order to watch. Klaus Kinski knows his limitations and doesn't try to play counter to that but the notion of this little man with his bizarre facial contortions as he speaks his lines as menacing to humans five feet or taller is laughable. Young children maybe but adults, come on! The concept of Dr. Gunther spying on the ladies is the kind of sleazy titillation that would of enhanced the watchability of this film since it is such a major component of the storyline yet it does no such thing. We get one topless scene by Tane McClure (see I knew there was a reason she was in this!) and that's it. Weak. Sauce. I did enjoy his bizarre killing techniques especially the chair with the built-in surprise as well as his sickening relationship with a woman he keeps in a cage. The final encounter with Lori and a lipstick smeared Dr. Gunther in full Nazi uniform is awfully silly, even for trashy films, and makes me wonder why the first forty minutes was so tame. Talia Balsam as the lead Lori Bancroft with her unflattering wardrobe is not a bad looking woman by any means (she was married to George Clooney) just not the perfect choice for this film. The lovely Tane! would have made a better object of desire. I guess Klaus couldn't see that high. Music is done by Pino Donaggio but really folks how many times have you left a movie and said "That movie really sucked but that score rocked!". That would be none. Tane!

I saw this one back to back with "Cobra Verde" and, surprisingly, actually liked it better. It's an inexpensive little serial killer film, rather low on violence on the contemporary "Saw" scale, but with excellent camera-work and music (composer Pino Donaggio worked with Brian de Palma and Dario Argento, and cinematographer Sergio Salvati shot some of Lucio Fulci's best movies). Kinski gives a very beautiful performance here: He's in almost every scene, and his characterization of the evil nazi/doctor/landlord is restrained, faceted and balanced, meandering between the light-hearted and ugly. I didn't know that his acting in the mid-eighties still had such quality. If you get a chance, watch director David Schmoeller's (he wrote all the Puppet Master movies and directed the first one) hilarious short movie about his collaboration with Kinski, aptly titled "Please kill Mr. Kinski" (1999). Making the movie must have been hell for the poor guy, but the result is quite rewarding.

"Crawlspace" is a somewhat odd, short and righteously forgotten 80's horror quickie that features cult-icon Klaus Kinski in his umpteenth role as deranged German psychopath. He plays former doctor Karl Gunther who now owns an apartment building in America. He exclusively rents out the rooms to beautiful young girls so that he can spy on them through the ventilation system and eventually kill them in his laboratory attic. Dr. Gunther has even more issues, since he's a Nazi by inheritance and also plays Russian roulette games in an empty room. Unless if I totally missed the point of "Crawlspace" being a biting satire on voyeurism, there's very little to recommend about this film. The story is mainly dull and predictable, the murder sequences are painfully tame and Kinski is only a shadow of the actor he was during the 70's and early 80's. But, considering the quality of the screenplays he was offered during his final years, I can hardly blame him. Many story lines that are rich on potential remain entirely unexplained, like caged girl up in the attic or Karl Gunther's surgeon years in Buenos Aires where he fled to after WWII. The music is rather creepy and Dr. Gunther surely has some interesting torture devices standing in his attic (but they're not fully used). I personally expected a lot more from this, because director David Schmoeller previously made the minor cult-classic "Tourist Trap", which happens to be one of my all-time favorite suspense flicks.