Meadhall of the Comitatus

As everyone knows, on this site we watch an awful lot of slasher flicks, and for the most part they are in fact an awful lot. I mean the formula’s straightforward as it gets: some crazy killer runs around all night shanking comely young women. Enjoyable as it is, I gotta say at times it gets quite tired. No longer satisfied merely to do another lap around Crystal Lake or Haddonfield, this year I give you a horror film with a bit of a twist: this one’s got a slasher…who’s also a fuggin’ Nazi.

Yep. Nazi slasher. And I’m talking about the absolute scariest kind of Nazi, the creepy old neighbor Nazi. If you’re a pretty girl and you live in his building, then face it, you’re bumping into this guy at least three, four times a week.

Before I’d even hit ‘Play’ to stream this sucker on Netflix (note: my sloppy screencaps reflect this) I was heavily entertained by just the title, dreaming up different ways to promo it: “CRAWLSPACE! Where you won’t even have ROOM to CRAWL! Ok you WOULD, because it was DESIGNED for that!”

Premise (not plot!): 3/5

This feeling you've got now? Here's a whole movie built on it!

I can’t believe this movie. I love everything about it! I can only start from the start: A couple minutes in (after our first murder of course) we see a gloomy German guy cut himself with a scalpel, rub blood all over a bullet with his name literally on it, and then resignedly play a round of Russian Roulette, finishing after the empty click with “…So be it.” Cut to black, cue sensational music. Now I ask you, is there any more awesome way to start your movie than that? No? Damn right!

Crawlspace is wholly intended–with casual ease–to make you say ‘Oh my God,’ so many times that it becomes downright impressive. And believe me, even crazyass man H.H. Holmes has nothing on this dude. I mean I could spend whole weekends happily deathmatching in this crawlspace.

Cast 3/5 (GO KLAUS!!):

Before there were entire institutions packed full of crazy people, there was just one man with an idea. Klaus Kinski is very probably the reason this movie exists, since it’s difficult to imagine another actor willing to cross the line this hard, nor to cross it with such perfectly blase’ style. Crawlspace is the first movie of his I’ve seen, and I’m ready for more.

!!

Here Kinski plays sadomasochistic serial killer Dr. Karl Gunther. Kinski has this amazing gaze perfectly suited to the role, at once animalistic and Germanically pensive, like Einstein just back from der crackhaus. Just from the man’s eyes you get the sense that he’s playing a complicated character, incredibly tormented yet serene in his insanity. He’s also got a nasty habit of ogling women at pelvis level while he’s talking to them. Always dressed like a 70s bon vivant, this incredibly creepy guy starts macking all over his most recent tenant straight away. Throughout the movie, even as he gets progressively more loathsome, he remains lovable at the same time, with lines like “You have to laugh…makes life much easier,” and “I can’t kill YOU! Who would I have to talk to?” and “I am intrigued by my special relationship with Death.” Wow.

As for Crawlspace‘s threadbare plot, Gunther’s a retired doctor and self-diagnosed death addict who once accidentally euthanized a healthy man and it gave him the ‘fix’ he’d been looking for. Other than that bit of exposition, our only clue as to what’s going on inside this guy’s head is a stray rebuke to the resident vixen’s advances: “…I HAD a woman once…..it didn’t work out.” Fun fact, Kinski also played Nosferatu in the late 70s, and arguably he’s even more emaciated here. He was also the inspiration for the Jack-the-Ripper hookhand puppet in director David Schmoeller’s other horror movie, the old classic Puppet Master, so he gets around.

Sadly, almost everyone else in the movie content themselves with playing a horrible caricature. We’ve got the Greaser Sexhound, the arrogant Rich Tycoon, the man-hungry Southern Belle (Barbara Whinnery, who’s not bad but gets almost no screentime),  and the compulsory Ditzy Actress. So the building’s pretty unpopulated. Lori Bancroft (Talia Balsam), a student in her mid-twenties, has just moved in and the Doc already takes a real shine to her…she’s ok, better than most of your cast, but like so many B movie actresses, she remains woefully unexpressive in the midst of whatever the killer throws at her. She’s been moved in for only a couple days of weirdness when brown-clad Josef Steiner (Kenneth Robert Shippy) visits her. Dr. Gunther covertly euthanized his brother 3 years ago, so Steiner’s paying a little visit to…bug him until he somehow screws up and incriminates himself. Oh the pathos. Now it would have been great if we had a tense battle of wits between a totally badass Nazi hunter (think Salem’s Lot) and crazyass Dr. Gunther, but neither Shippy nor the script have their heart in it, so all we get is this weakass door-to-door sales dynamic. Still, Kinski needed someone at least attempting to act as his foil, and the script hamstrings Lori so she can’t do anything but run and/or crawl in the opposite direction, so I’m grateful to Shippy for being Kinski’s wingman, which is really the best any of this cast could have hoped for. For example, during a scene when Steiner outs Gunther as the son of a Nazi surgeon, Kinski lets fly with this horribly prolonged stare of such purely miserable hatred blazing both ways that I was just in awe. Keep forgetting Uwe Bolle–Kinski is the only REAL fucking genius!

I don't know what Kinski's doing here, but he's doing the HELL out of it.

As if he weren’t horrible enough, Gunther keeps Martha (Sally Brown I assume…IMDB isn’t much help here), prisoner in his hidden room of horrors. This poor woman’s been mute ever since the doctor cut her tongue out, but despite having no speaking lines, she’s still quite expressive and plays the role well.  Presumably a former tenant, she’s been kept in this tiny cage for years without the ability to even protest, and all the while Karl’s affecting a fatherly mood when he comes upstairs for some socializing. Brown’s performance is solid enough that you can see what that would do to someone right quick, even as she musters what’s left of her courage to try escaping.

So there you have it…with the sole exception of his constant companion Chatty Marty, Kinski shames this entire cast yet lands the category a 3 all by him damn self. Never having seen his work before, I had no reason whatsoever to like Kinski, but…I DID…….and definitely at the expense of the other characters, none of whom even register as unique personalities. Even though you can’t root for him, Kinski retains his heavy charisma throughout the film, even when completely covered in blood. Wow.

Cinematography/FX: 3/5
As with the later Puppet Master, I love Schmoeller’s simple clarity as director…everything is so bright and crisp. Even the scenes where we’re in the dark have their own lighting. Yeah the music’s cheesy, but here it works, not only for the time period but for the outrageous action itself. Again, as in Puppet Master, Crawlspace highlights this director’s gift for clean shots, interesting backgrounds and the necessary deadpan when all the weird stuff hits.

Right away we’re reminded of Psycho with the hotel’s familiar staircase. It’s pretty blatant, but you can’t say some of these places don’t look the same. Anyhoo, it holds up throughout with a lot of well-framed shocks and even a few genuine scares by way of Kinski’s crazy Germanity.

My man Klaus was freaking the living crap out of his audience while Heath Ledger was all of 7 years old. RESPEK KNUCKLES.

Repeated scenes of Gunther watching his lady tenants through the ventilation–the crawlspace, if you will–really ramp up the creep factor. Nothing is more ‘dyyeaauugh!!’ inducing than watching this old freak violate hell outta some pretty young thing’s privacy, making maraca-like clicking noises with his knife while they blame it all on rats. Lovely. Of course there’s also a merry and original chase through said crawlspace as they lurch around frantically much like a tortuous Nascar race, or as I call it, Nascar. And whoa can this guy crawl. He shoulda won an Oscar just for that.

Popcorn Factor: WT5 out of 5

…When all’s said and done, I really don’t know what this old dude’s beef is, but damn is it fun watching him put the whole show firmly in the pocket of his leisure suit and walk away with it. While it’s certainly disturbing to see how intensely Kinski enacts the script’s Nazi elements, you gotta admit it took balls and a whole lotta acting chops to even get in front of the camera for all this, much less pull it off. Kinski’s clearly performing for entirely different reasons than the mainstream and I can respect that.

Yeah the plot’s pretty weak–for no real reason, Gunther ups the pace from pulling pranks and occasionally murdering the cameo characters to saying hell with it and trying to wipe out the whole building, which really hurts the pacing–but Crawlspace is still suspenseful and a real blast. I never stopped saying ‘Wow’ for a minute, and when the movie took its total lack of seriousness to new lows, as when Gunther clambered onto a makeshift louge and propelled himself through the titular crawlspace, I loved it even more!

I've already printed out postcards of this scene that read: "Hey, Have a KINSKI DAY!"

I know my overall rating above is bleh, but trust me, a number just can’t capture all the raw funk in Crawlspace. This is a movie truly unafraid to whizz in the cemetery while you’re privileged enough to helplessly look on through the gate. If you, like me, prefer your villains served up with a extra side of batshit, be sure to catch this one with everything in you.