OMG Horror.com

My underrated selection for the month of April goes to David Schmoeller's (Puppet Master, Tourist Trap) 1986 film, Crawlspace. Starring the brilliantly menacing Klaus Kinski as Karl Gunther; the son of a Nazi surgeon and superintendent of a tattered apartment building which seems to inhabit only women, the film is a legitimate low budget chiller. You see, he not only rents exclusively to young pretty girls, Gunther has festooned his complex with a batch of odd booby traps and hidden passage ways that all connect to the tunneling inside the heating shafts, or crawlspaces. He worms his way through, voyeuristically leering through tightly slatted peek-holes and narrow vent shafts at his female tenants. He likes to watch them undress. He likes to watch them live. Oh, and of course he likes to watch them die!

Gunther's one seriously twisted, sadistic fuck! He likes to thumb through his father's concentration camp diaries, fervently watching old Hitler propaganda reels while smearing deep red lip stick over his kisser. He's soul devoid, playing Russian roulette quotidian as if akin to brushing his teeth. He keeps a female human captive in a cage, dismembering her tongue and feeding gruel scraps and pencil shavings. He friggin' lurks in the walls, planning his next course of predatory pleasure, all the while frightening his female occupants with a nest of rats he unleashes through the apartments. He dwells in the dark shadows of his lowly attic room, spouting philosophical non-sequiturs at Martha, his mute hostage. He collects eye balls and fingers in formaldehyde-filled mason jars. Homeboy's out there!

Then one day, responding to a vacancy ad, Lori Bancroft (Talia Balsam) decides to take residence in Gunther's disguised hell-house. As soon as she arrives, Gunther takes immediate interest, gives her a little stalk-and-spy treatment before setting out to kill the poor girl. I don't want to give away too much here, so I'll just say Lori has other plans. A subplot develops surrounding a disgruntled brother (Josef Steiner, played by Kenneth Robert Shippy) of one of Gunther's past victims (he disposed of 67 or so bodies while working as a doctor himself in Argentina, back a few years). As Steiner gets closer to Gunther, the sick and psychotic landlord goes postal. He goes berserk. A tight, exciting crescendo culminates with a unique twist on the all too familiar penultimate chase sequence that is seen in damn near every horror film.

The film's deft direction and photography, nuanced pacing, the dark comedy and overall, Klaus Kinski's hypnotic performance is really what makes this flick underrated. It's not a great film, by any measurement. Whether it's even good is debatable (you know where I stand). However, Kinski's work here is irrefutably solid and has a dirty, sleazed-out misogynistic quality that will no doubt stay with you after you've seen it. His soft spoken mannerisms, his lifeless eyes and facial expressions, his eerie line deliveries and slouched physical posturing...it all works!

Top 3 Parts

- A haunting score by highly-esteemed composer Pino Donaggio.

- A disturbing Russian roulette scene where Kinski coats a lone bullet with his own blood.

-The taut, high-paced finale where a lengthy chase takes place through the web of ventilated ducts and crawlspaces. Peep the trailer below!

That's it for me this month, so go find Crawlspace and witness the '80s cheesed out malice of Klaus "the killer" Kinski. Oh, and be sure to check in next month for more underrated horror.

Be sure to also check out Frog Baby's previous underrated picks of the month:
MARCH: Vice Squad
FEBRUARY: Street Trash

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