Crawlspace

Plot synopsis:
A young woman walks through the hallways of an apartment building, looking for "Mr. Gunther". She walks into a room in the attic and the door closes and locks behind her. Inside the room, she finds rats in cages, as well as a woman (Sally Brown) in cage. Karl Gunther (Klaus Kinski) appears and says of the caged woman: "She can't talk. I cut her tongue off." Karl presses a button and a blade is shoved through the woman's back and sticks out of her chest, killing her. Karl smears some of the dead woman's blood from his finger into an inscribed bullet and loads it into a revolver. He points the gun to his head and the gun clicks. He puts the gun down and says: "So be it."Sometime later, Sophie Fisher (Tané) is in her apartment in the building, which is located in "a big city" somewhere in the USA. A man watches Sophie from her outside window on the ground floor, and Karl is seen also spying on her from behind an air vent. The man crawls through the window and surprises her, but it is only her boyfriend Hank (David Abbott), whom has come to visit her. Hank and Sophie kiss and spend time on her bed as they begin to have sex while Karl continues to watch them.The next day, a man comes to Karl's door of his apartment where he inquires about a vacant apartment advertised in the local newspaper. Karl takes one look at the man and tells him that it has been rented. But seconds after the man leaves, Lori Bancroft (Talia Balsam) enters the small urban apartment building and when she inquires about the vacant apartment, Karl hospitably takes her to it and shows her around the room. Karl introduces himself as the landlord and superintendent of the building and that the apartment was recently vacated by a young woman who disappeared without paying her rent. Karl explains about the building, the neighborhood and of the monthly rent. As Lori looks around the kitchen, Karl turns on the stove and puts his hand over the blue flame while Lori is not looking. Hiding his pain, Karl asks if she will take the apartment. Lori says yes, which prompts Karl to pull his hand away from the flame and shakes her hand with his other one. Later, Karl is back in his secret room in the attic writing in his diary and says that he is addicted to killing for it makes him feel alive. Martha, the tongueless woman in the cage, gives him a note saying: "Please kill me". Karl tells Martha that he cannot because he would have no one to talk to.The following day, Harriet Watkins (Barbara Whinnery), another resident of the apartment complex, arrives at her apartment with some groceries. Karl appears in the hallway and helps her with her bags. Seeing the bandage on his right hand, Harriet is about to ask him what happened and Karl tells her that he accidentally burned himself. Harriet talks to him about "vices" but he seems reluctant to discuss it.Later, all of the women of the building have a get-together to welcome Lori while Karl spies on them from the air vents. He pushes a few buttons on a remote control device and a small door opens in the room and a rat comes out. The women scream and jump up on furniture, but Lori just sits and laughs at it all.Back in her apartment, Lori hears clicking sounds and goes to Karl's front door. She tells him about the sounds, and he says that its probably just rats. In his diary, Karl writes of once being a doctor, practicing euthanasia ("mercy killing") and being ashamed at himself when learning, after reading his father's secret diary, that the Nazis used the same word when killing Jews. Karl plays Russian roulette with his gun hoping to someday kill himself to end his killing spree with what little morality he has left.A little later, Sophie is in her apartment playing her piano and singing, while Karl watches her from outside her window. He ducks away when he sees Hank. Hank notices Karl nearby and correctly assuming that he is also spying on Sophie, he moves in with a switchblade, while Karl pulls out a switchblade knife of his own. Later, Karl is back in his apartment where he puts two eyeballs into a jar of formaldehyde. He goes to his back room, points the gun at his head and pulls the trigger and it clicks. He tries the gun again and gets another click. "So be it," says Karl.A few days later, Josef Steiner (Kenneth Robert Shippy) arrives at the building and goes to Karl's front door. When Karl answers, Steiner claims that he has been searing for Karl for almost three years. Karl reluctantly lets him inside, and Steiner calls him a murderer. He says that in the five years that Karl was the chief resident at a hospital in Buenos Aires, Argentina, 67 people under his care (all with routine illnesses) died, one of them being Steiner's brother. Steiner shows a photograph of Karl's father to him, dressed in a Nazi SS uniform, and some papers where Karl's father described instruments of torture for concentration camps and was executed over 30 years ago for "crimes against humanity". Karl tells Steiner to leave, and the man brings out a photograph of a young Karl, saluting in a Nazi uniform. When he is alone, Karl weeps.Later, Karl writes more in his diary about accidentally killing a healthy patient when he was a resident at a hospital in Nazi Germany in the early 1940s, and feeling no remorse. He began to understand the feelings that his equally sociopath father wrote about: it was god-like to the able to give life and then take it away.In his crawlspace by the vent, Karl spies on Jessica Marlow (Carl Francis), a local soap opera actress, who arrives back at her apartment with her boyfriend Alfred Lassiter (Jack Hiller). Karl begins to make clicking sounds in the vent by hitting his knife on a steel ball, and continues doing so after Jessica and Alfred are in bed having sex. Karl hears a sudden, sharp scream and he quickly crawls away and back into his apartment only to see that a pet cat of his had inadvertently set off one of his traps, leaving only a detached tail behind. "Sorry, kitty", says Karl.Back in Jessica's apartment, Alfred becomes irritated by the clicking sounds and leaves. He hears something outside the hall and goes into Karl's room. A little later, Karl is seen putting a severed finger (with Alfred's class ring on it) into another jar of formaldehyde.As Lori is preparing to take a bath, she hears clicks, and a large rat jumps out at her from the vent in the bathroom. She goes to Karl's front door and knocks but there is no answer. In his room, Karl crawls back and is setting up another trap, pushing a button on the arm of a chair and a spear shoots up from the seat.Another few days later, Steiner goes to Lori's apartment and tries getting information from her about Karl and how much she knows about him. Karl overhears them from his crawlspace behind the air vent and loads a dart gun and prepares to use it to shoot Steiner, but he changes his mind (surmising that it would not be painful enough). Lori asks the nosy Steiner to leave. He then heads up to Karl's door which is open and lets himself inside. Steiner sees swinging steel balls hanging from the ceiling. He sits in a chair and reads from Karl's diary. Karl appears in the room asking what he is doing. Steiner sees him, turns, and accidentally sets off the chair trap. Looking distraught, Karl runs to his back room, loads a single bullet into the revolver, spins it, and pulls the trigger three times only to get three clicks. "So be it," says Karl. He then goes up to his secret room in the attic and runs a film projector showing a movie of Hitler and the Nazis at a political rally. Karl proclaims: "I am my own god, my own jury, and my own executioner". He puts on an old SS uniform with a Nazi cap, looks at himself in a mirror and salutes: "Hail, Gunther!" He decides that now is the time to kill everyone who knows about him before the police show up looking for Steiner and the other murder victims.Later that same night, Lori returns home to her apartment and finds live rats in her refrigerator. Just then, Karl phones her where he tells her to look in her bathtub. Lori enters her bathroom and finds a dead Steiner floating in the blood-stained water with a swastika carved on his forehead. Lori runs out and sees Karl standing outside her window, wearing his Nazi uniform, with his face decorated up looking pasty white complete with blood red lipstick. He is hitting a small steel ball with a knife. Lori tries to run, but steel bars come down before her in the hallway, preventing her from running out of the building. Lori knocks on Sophie's door, forces it open, and finds Sophie dead, sitting at her piano having set off one of Karl's traps. Lori also finds Harriet dead in her apartment too from another one of Karl's traps.Lori runs upstairs to the secret room in the attic and looks for a place to hide. She finds Martha in her cage who points Lori to a hanging key. Lori tries to unlock the cage, but the two women hear Karl coming towards the front door. Martha points Lori to one of the crawlspace entrances in the floor, but that it is booby trapped. Lori takes off one of her sneakers and puts it in the entrance frame on the floor where a sensor activated blade slices off the top of the sneaker. With the trap sprung, Lori is able to enter the crawlspace and begins searching for a way to escape.Karl enters the room and releases a cage of rats into the crawlspace. Lori crawls around to evade the rats and goes to another crawlspace exit only to find herself in Jessica's apartment with a dead Jessica hanging from the ceiling after being caught in another of Karl's booby traps. Karl gets inside the crawlspace and begins crawling after Lori, and eventually speeds after her with a wheeled grate kept in the crawlspace. Lori manages to make it back to Karl's room again and gets Martha out of her cage with the key. Karl crawls out of the crawlspace and hides. Just then, Lori and Martha hear a reaction from Karl. They find Karl with a blade sticking from his chest before he collapses. Lori and Martha run out of the room. Karl's eyes begin to move, and he removes the "blade" from his chest. (This act was staged by Karl apparently to try to lure Lori or Martha close enough so he could kill them... which did not work.)Lori and Martha enter Karl's apartment where they see a phone. When Lori picks up the phone to call the police, she and Martha notice Karl standing in the doorway with a knife. As he approaches the two women, Lori sees the revolver that Karl plays Russian roulette with and grabs it. She points it at him and the gun clicks several times until finally there is a gunshot."So be it," says Karl.

Tags: violence

Review:
No one with a German accent is.He plays the Dr. Karl Gunther, son of a Nazi war criminal, who's escaped to America from Argentina and becomes an apartment manager.
There's also a woman he holds captive in an animal cage up in the attic, who he keeps as company after he's cut out her tongue.Then innocent Lori Bancroft (Talia Balsam) moves in and  Kinski takes a lot of interest in her before going on one final murder spree towards the end.Also notable for being filmed on the same apartment building set as TROLL (1986), with all the action taking place indoors and in the heater ducts.
It's a small film.Like I said, I enjoyed it and would recommend it mainly for Kinski's performance, but don't expect any extras on the MGM DVD because they're aren't any.7 out of 10.
Crazy old landlord, and former Nazi, preys upon the lady tenants of his building via a system of passages.Being directed by David Schmoeller (maker of 1979's excellent Tourist Trap) I expected a better-than-average horror film and was sadly disappointed.
After he brings in a new tenant, university student Lori Bancroft (played by Talia Balsam, the daughter of actor Martin Balsam), he begins to be visited by a Nazi hunter named Josef Steiner (Kenneth Robert Shippy).Kinskis' performance essentially IS the movie.
There are a bunch of rats in this thing, some entertaining makeup effects gags (but not very much blood), excellent production design (by Giovanni Natalucci) and music (by the great Pino Donaggio), and a very nondescript (if attractive) supporting cast, including Tane McClure, the daughter of Doug McClure.
(He does admit that the movie isn't particularly good.)Kinskis' presence and performance raise the rating by a point.Future "Tremors" director Ron Underwood was the associate producer here.
But that isn't to say the notion of a creepy ex-Nazi landlord crawling around in the ceiling and spying on and killing pretty college girls isn't a good one for horror ...just that if somebody else had tried to pull it off, it would never have been so much fun.
He watches a lot of Hitler's filmed speeches on a screen in his attic, even saluting once in awhile--that is, when he isn't busy slithering around the crawlspace to watch his pretty tenants through the vents or distract them with noises they might attribute to mice or rats.His fondness for being a voyeur takes up most of the running time of this brief thriller and the payoff is only a few scenes of real horror in between long stretches of minimal suspense.
A scene involving a man seated on a special kind of chair has a certain stabbing effect, but most of the killings occur off screen and only the results are shown in brief shots.Fans of KLAUS KINSKI will probably want to see this.
Crawlspace (1986) ** (out of 4) Klaus Kinski plays the son of a Nazi who rents out his apartment rooms to pretty women so that he can spy on them and then kill them.
I'm really not sure what the point of the film was, although it's clear the director was trying to get into the mind of a killer yet we never know what the hell Kinski is thinking or why he's doing what he is.
The cast is very weak - Talia Balsam (Martin's daughter and George Clooney's ex-wife!!) is something of a novelty in that she is hardly attractive enough to be the leading lady for this kind of film - and it's only the sight of Klaus Kinski crawling from one apartment to the other to do his peeping - not to mention his limb-laden room where he keeps narrating the entries in his diary - that holds any interest at all for the viewer; some of the killings are grisly enough perhaps but nothing sufficiently memorable..
But his performance as the tortured, enigmatic, and totally twisted Dr. Gunther corruscates with understated brilliance.Scenes from this film will always stay with me:  Kinski playing Russian roulette with himself after he kills each victim and announcing "So be it!" when fate spares him and he can keep on killing.
Klaus Kinski plays Gunther, an apparently retired doctor who is the landlord of an apartment block.
I suppose in 1986 this would have seemed fanciful, however in the UK, and after the revealed murders of Dr Harold Shipman, it is somewhat less so now.Gunther has however got bored with these less graphic murders and has now taken to polishing off his all female tenants who he spies on through vents connected by a network of crawlspaces.One of the most disturbing things about this movie is that Gunther keeps a young lady in a cage in his room.
How great for all us male voyeurs to see such a bizarrely grotesque feminine ritual!The big thing the movie has though is Klaus Kinski's acting, it's rare that a director will focus on an actor's face closeup for any substantial amount of time and let an actor show their talent.
From director David Schmoeller, who gave us the enjoyably offbeat slasher Tourist Trap, Crawlspace is an equally bizarre horror starring the inimitable Klaus Kinski as Karl Gunther, a mentally unhinged landlord who has developed an addiction to killing, satisfying his urges by luring his tenants into his deadly, booby trapped apartment.
When he's not in a murdering mood, Gunther can be found crawling through the air ducts of his building to spy on the women who live there, writing about killing in his diary, playing Russian roulette, or wearing Nazi regalia while watching footage of Hitler (Gunther's father was a Nazi surgeon).For an '80s horror film, Crawlspace is fairly light on the gore and scares, but with its star in full on demented mode, the film cannot fail to entertain: whether it be carefully preparing a chair with a spring-loaded spike in the seat (nasty!), crushing rats with his bare hands, travelling at speed through the air ducts on a wheeled toboggan, smearing his face with make-up, or simply chatting to the tongue-less woman that he keeps caged in his room, Kinski's crazed performance is a delight to behold.6.5 out of 10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb..
Responding to a vacant apartment ad, a woman moves in and meets her tenants who suddenly start to disappear around the building, and when he is finally uncovered resorts to torture to keep his secret the remaining tenants are forced to stay alive to survive the experiments.There's really only a few good things about this film.
The film's best is the end with a really creepy and protracted chase through the apartment, starting from the lower floors, up into the attic, through the crawlspaces that are hidden throughout the building and finally concluding inside a secret room filled with leftover artifacts and other things stored away.
Crawlspace is one of the creepiest films you'll ever see; largely thanks to Kinski's portrayal of Gunther, the son of a Nazi war criminal- and seasoned serial killer- who runs a boarding house for women.
And few actors possess the natural creep factor that Kinski exudes.After fleeing from Argentina- where he was a doctor, practicing his trade by, killing off all his patients- Gunther would settle in America; where he would build a mansion that would make Holmes proud: complete with a crawlspace for voyeurism; and all manner of booby traps- to prevent anyone who might discover his secrets from escaping.Gunther keeps one of his former tenants, hostage in a cage, as a pet.
When I saw Klaus Kinski's name shown first as the 'star' of the film I knew it would be BAD because I like everyone else instinctively know that certain actors CANNOT carry a film on their own.You could see most of what was going to happen about 10 minutes before the scene arrived.Kinski to me seemed as if he was trying to speak like the late Peter Lorre but he is neither as good or exciting!Talia Balsam was much better in her role as Lori, one of several boarders in the large house belonging to Dr.Gunther, son of a Nazi who became more insane as the movie progressed.Other parts were played by actors I'd never heard of - either before or since and the budget was probably less than $10K, at least that's what it seemed like..
Klaus Kinski stars as the crazy son of a crazy Nazi, who comes out of hiding to run an apartment house that only rents to women.
Kinski made several films (Nosferatu the Vampyre, Fitzcarraldo, Aguirre: The Wrath of God) with director Werner Herzog before they had a falling out during Cobra Verde.He is immediately attracted to a new renter played by Talia Balsam (No Strings Attached, "Without a Trace", "Mad Men").
A retired doctor (Klaus Kinski), who is also the son of a Nazi surgeon, rents out apartments to young women so he can crawl through the air ducts and spy on them.
This is absolutely true: while the film could have starred anyone, Kinski's look, voice and mannerisms really give him the rich, creepy feeling the character of Dr. Gunther needs.
All else is background to his presence, making him something of an anti-hero.Director David Schmoeller really gets in there with angles, and shows us just how tight those crawlspaces are that Gunther worms his way into.
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.
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.
I think that this is overall a good movie, Klaus Kinski is perfect for the part of Dr. Gunther and the whole Idea of the movie is great.
He plays former doctor Karl Gunther who now owns an apartment building in America.
people suddenly died, and you didn't even get to see it happen, then one gets 'trapped' in the crawlspace kinski uses to spy on other people (which he doesn't do too well), but its like kinski dont even care and just carries on watching one of his old films.
An ugly, mean-spirited horror movie, directed in a detached, hallucinatory style, like "Phantasm."  Klaus Kinski is repugnant as the sadist;  his performance is garbage, but can you blame him?
I always wanted to see this film,because the director of it was David Schmoeller responsible for a huge personal favourite "Tourist Trap" as well as the pretty nifty "Puppet Master".The story revolves around a deranged escaped Nazi torturer Dr.Gunther played by Klaus Kinski who has somehow managed to settle in a suburb in California where he own property and rents out apartments to nubile young women so that he can gawk at them through the special crawlspace he has purpose built.
Gawking is not all he is interested in however-his twisted desires very much include torture and murder."Crawlspace" is a pretty average horror film.The score by Pino Donaggio is quite good and intriguing,unfortunately the lack of tension and atmosphere is especially hard to forgive.The gore is also on the tame side with most deaths taking place off screen.Give it a look,only if have enough time to waste.6 out of 10..
I love Klaus Kinski so I enjoyed every minute he was on screen in 'Crawlspace'.
But, having seen a fair few of these, I'd like to recommend this one if only because old Klaus does have a lot of fun hamming it up with the nutzoid old Nazi role and, despite myself, I really enjoy a cheesy schlock horror when it sets out to entertain, as this most certainly does.
**SPOILERS** With his old man, a Nazi concentration camp doctor, being executed after the war for crimes against humanity junior or Doctor Karl Gunther(Klaus Kinski), now in his fifties, had become fascinated with the German Third Reich.
Gunther is also fascinated with young women whom he rents out apartments in his rooming house and loves to watch them in all states of dress and undress.
From the safety of the crawlspace that leads from his dumpy attic apartment throughout all the apartments in his building.You can see right away that actor Klaus Kinski is just itching to break out of his restrained role as the meek and soft spoken Dr. Gunther.
Going so out of his skull that for a moment you think that he's not really acting at all but just being his own wild crazy and creepy self.Collecting body parts of his many victims Gunther also keeps this woman mute Martha White(Sally Brown), who's tongue he cut out, in a cage in his attic.
Gunther end up not only murdering the gentlemen but also cutting out some of their body parts, two eyes and a ring finger, and putting them in jars of alcohol as souvenirs.The movie takes a turn for the worst, for crazy Karl, when his past finally catches with him in the person of young Josef Steiner, Kenneth Robert Shippy, who's been tracking him down for over three years.
Only in the end to get himself blasted by Lori with the last remaining bullet of his .44 magnum that he played Russian Roulette with himself.This is an all star Klaus Kinski movie with him being the only reason to really watch it.
The violence in the film "Crawlspace" was more or less standard in movies like itself but its star, the late and off-the-wall Klaus Kinski, gave what amounted to a unique one of a kind performance.
CRAWLSPACE has an interesting idea behind it but unfortunately, like most of David Schmoeller's films (he directed the boring TOURIST TRAP), the whole thing is just too uninvolving to be memorable in any way, shape or form.
The film feels like it's missing a third of story and the way the film starts sorta echo this impression: we see a woman walking around the apartment complex and eventually discovers Kinski's horrifying background and pays for it.
Kinski plays the owner of an apartment complex who spies on women through a crawlspace which leads to each room via ventilation shafts.
To her intrusively horrific disbelief, in this eerily illuminated room, Nazi war photos adorn the walls to one side, while other side is decorated with scores of caged rats, a kitten, and a caged mute woman staring out passionately.Enter Klaus Kinski as Dr. Karl Gunther.
College student Talia Balsam rents an apartment from landlord Klaus Kinski and soon realizes that it's not just rats running around the building's crawlspaces.
Kinski is absolutely demented, following in the steps of his Nazi doctor father and coming up with clever ways to kill people.
Klaus Kinski is completely insane as an ex-Nazi doctor who killed and experimented on people during the Holocaust, and he now spies on women from the ventilation duct (hence, crawlspace) of his apartment building.
Crawlspace starts as college student Lori Bancroft (Talia Balsam) replies to an advert in a local paper for a an apartment to rent, Lori speaks to the buildings owner Dr. Karl Gunther (Klaus Kinski) & decides to take the apartment.
However what Lori doesn't know is that Gunther is a sick Nazi who is addicted to torturing & killing people as well as spying on his young tenants using a crawlspace to move around.
When a man named Josef Steiner (Kenneth Robert Shippy) the brother of one of Gunther's victim's turns up asking questions & bringing up the past Gunther loses it completely as his depraved secrets unravel & he kills everyone until only Lori is left...Written & directed by David Schmoeller who also has a small uncredited role as the bloke looking to rent the room that Kinski lies to & says the apartment is already gone, made by Empire Pictures which was one of Charles Band's early production companies (before Full Moon) while he was still interested in making good films Crawlspace is a film that I quite liked although not that much actually happens.
I guess it's the twisted somewhat demented script that I like, from Kinski playing Russian Roulette to his torture devices & traps to his German background to Kinski spying on young women to putting Rats in their apartments to even keeping a girl caged in his room with her tongue cut out so he has someone to talk to.
There are a few monologues as Kinski narrates his feelings & thoughts as he puts them down in his diary, from admitting he is addicted to torture & murder to his own bleak past Crawlspace is a sleazy film without much in the way of uplifting moments.
Leading lady Talia Balsam actually ended up married to George Clooney.Crawlspace is a film with not that much to it, Kinski watches various young women & then kills them at the end, but it has enough depravity & sick charm to make me like it.
This movie is good/bad and there are two reasons why this movie is good and the two reasons are:1.The main character in this movie is called Docter Karl Gunther (Klaus Kinski) and i think that he is so dam freaky because every thing he does in this movie is so strange.2.All of the ways people die in this movie are great and the best way someone dies is how a man is sitting in a seat and he accidentally presses a button and a big metal spike comes out and kills him.Over all if u like good suspense horror movies u should watch this movie and my rating for this movie is six out of 10..
Karl Gunther, (Klaus Kinski), has a thing for his tenants.