Crawlspace (1986)

 I used to HATE director Schmoeller's Crawlspace (1987), a film I always felt had 15 or so minutes missing from it, perhaps because Klaus Kinski was incredibly difficult work with. But even if I consider Crawlspace a difficult film to like, Kinski is compelling to watch. There is his first scene in the film with Talia Balsam looking for a room to rent as Kinski clearly undresses her with his eyes. Its all in his eyes and the creepo movement of his lips, although Balsam fails to really see it. Later, when Kinski is popping this steel ball in his hand with a switchblade knife within the crawlspace (which is more or less a crawl-labyrinth), Balsam retreats from her room to ask him about noises she's hearing in the apartment...again, Kinski barely responds to her concerns, instead asking if she'd like to come in to his apartment. She obviously senses he is coming onto her and would just rather not deal with his creepy shit...not before he tells her not to worry, "they're just rats." Tane McClure -- who I know from Cinemax After Dark, contributing plenty to that time slot in 90s -- is one of the tenants in the apartment complex, as an "entertainer", with a visiting boyfriend pretending to be an intruder as part of their sex kink. Barbara Whinnery is another tenant with a sweet tooth actually willing to play around with Kinski, while Carol Francis is the soap opera actress left sexually frustrated when her date (Jack Heller, a distinguished gentleman with a cane whose age difference might be a bit glaring) just can't tolerate Kinski's crawlspace steel ball knife-clicking routine. But the worse victim of the film doesn't even die: Sally Brown is kept in an animal cage, with her tongue cut out (and left doused in fluid in a jar for preservation), fed milk, in raggedy clothes as her skin withers absent a bath! Her only company is a beetle while Kinski writes in his diary about life and death and the addiction to killing he likes so much.

This is the Kinski show. If you are absolutely fascinated with him, seeing the madness behind those blue eyes, curious as to what happened to his character in his past, this film might just work for you. He does have a clear star power that can't be denied. The man was in one of the greatest films ever made💍, and starred in others directed by Herzog many consider important and relevant to this very day. The Nazi content involving Kinski in Crawlspace gave him enough backstory to explain why he is such a psychopathic weirdo itching to set off blade devices and prison traps to keep his female tenants inside the complex, soon to be numbers in no telling the body count.

The film, product of Charles Band's Empire (with the apartment complex of "Troll" reused for Crawlspace), doesn't have a lot of graphic violence, more or less showing Kinski preparing his blade traps (one protrudes from a chair thanks to a button on the handle, another set off when a foot crosses the plane of his entrance to the myriad crawlspace to every apartment in the building, a third swinging down at Kinski's control), with certain dead bodies found by Balsam when she is trying to get out of the building. Screws all the way through bodies bolting victims to a piano bench and door startle Balsam, while a dull Nazi hunter (Kenneth Robert Shippy), looking to get even with Kinski for killing his brother -- Kinski was a doctor responsible for the deaths of over 60 patients he was cleverly able to disguise as natural deaths -- fails miserably. Kinski and the Hitler stuff is plenty uncomfortable as intended. There is a scene where Kinski simply stares into a mirror while applying (and smearing) makeup that is enough to describe the madness seething inside. That wild hair and stare from behind windows, as Balsam goes room to room, doing whatever it takes to get the hell out of the building further illustrates Kinski's abilities to leave an imprint despite saying very little. It really is all in his movements, expressions, face, and presence...he's the right creeper for any horror film. But the film doesn't do a damn thing to develop the tenants in the apartment complex...they are just playthings to Kinski. 

The film does best when it covers Kinski's antics such as applying blood to a bullet and playing Russian Roulette, preparing to shoot a poisoned dart into the Nazi hunter, see the picture of himself as a boy in his Nazi uniform, standing in front of Hitler recordings while getting all wrapped up in the furor...it really does emphasize how lost barely on the edge he is. There never is theatrics, though. He is a quiet crazy. 2/5

💍Aguirre, The Wrath of God (1972)

MGM titles are set to leave Tubi in two weeks, and I found Crawlspace as a selection. I wanted to revisit it because my last viewing left me quite hating it. This time I see that Kinski is perfect for the role he was hired to portray, although his bad behavior on set for Schmoeller must have been a real pain.