Crawlspace

Year: 1986 Directed by: David Schmoeller Cast: Klaus Kinski (Venom, Schizoid) Talia Balsam (The Kindred, All The King's Men) Barbara Whinnery (Sunset Beach) Carole Francis

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The son of a Nazi war criminal, inherits his father's
desire to murder and begin to kill off the female
boards and their boyfriends in the house he owns.

Pretty awful psycho killer flick (read: slasher-wannabe)
begins promising with a great, creepy opening scene
(featuring the only gory onscreen killing). Then, after
we have had the fact that our psycho is truly disturbing
(he keeps a woman in a cage, saves his victims' body
parts in bottles, plays with a gun to his head, etc.)
not much more happens.

We are introduced to a couple of stereotypical characters
who mostly work as fodder. Even the heroine's scenes
mostly seems to be another way to show off how crazy
our psycho killer is as he spies on her and the other
female characters through the ventilator shaft (thus
the title). And of course the characters are all
not-too-bright, to put it mildly. One character, who's
the only one who know about the psycho's murderous
ways, actually walks up to his room anyway. Guess what
happens to him?

So this movie is, if it hasn't been cleared out yet,
pretty stupid. It's a typical 80s sleaze job, where
you put a tired veteran actor (in this case Klaus Kinski)
and a couple of good-looking babes in a big house and
work out some pointless plot about a crazed Nazi with a
fascination for death. This film wants to be like
"Peeping Tom" but is really more like "Psycho III"
at best...

Though it has a couple of things going for it. For a
Charles Band production (yeah, not a good sign) it
looks very professional with nice colours and set design.
Kinski is also good even though his character isn't
really developed and seems more bizarre than scary
(his climatic rampage comes from out-of-nowhere). Also
there's a really good score and some funny though
goofy dialogue.

Except for the opening murder and some severed body
parts it's all gore-free.

Great suspense score from the one and only Pino Donaggio.

Starts out good but turns into typical stupid 80s
slasher-wannabe that never gets anywhere. Klaus Kinski
is good though, and the film looks very professional.

Review By: Slicer-Dicer