Crawlspace (1986) - Archive

|May 3/2006|

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The film is just limp. You may desire more of an introduction than that when first reading someone's response after seeing a hunk of trash such as "Crawlspace", but it's my only accurate description. It seems to go nowhere and feels like two hours when it is only around 20 minutes long. The ending feels rather hackneyed as if many deaths were cut out in support of time constraints. One thing I felt the film lacked was any kind of real thrills. It's all anti-climactic. The film is simple in it's grotesque nature, but really doesn't shock as it does bore you to tears. Kinski plays the owner of an apartment complex who spies on women through a crawlspace which leads to each room via ventilation shafts. He eyes a particular young college women played by Talia Balsam. The film isn't really that violent so even that can't help give this film any momentum. It's simply a lifeless exercise with Kinski doing all he can with his sicko doctor whose father was a nazi. He loves to kill as he explains, but director Schmoeller never allows us to see much violence. It's sleaze without much sleaziness. The film is just not worth the time unless you're a Kinski die-hard.

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