Crawlspace

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<B>1986/Color/80 Min./Lightning Video & Empire Entertainment & Altar Productions, Inc./USA/Italy/ Rated R</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Director.............David Schmoeller (</B><I><B>Netherworld, The Puppetmaster</B></I><B>)</B></div> <div> <B>Screenplay.......David Schmoeller (</B><I><B>The Seduction, Tourist Trap</B></I><B>)</B></div> <div> <B>Music................Pino Donaggio</B></div> <div> <B>Producer...........Roberto Bessi</B></div> <div> <B>Executive Producer.....Charles Band (</B><I><B>The Alchemist, Meridian</B></I><B>)</B></div> <div> <B>Special Makeup Effects by John Buechler & MMI, Inc.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B><U>Dramatis Personae</U></B></div> <div> <B>Karl Gunther........Klaus Kinski (</B><I><B>Deadly Sanctuary, Nosferatu, Woyzeck</B></I><B>)</B></div> <div> <B>Lori Bancroft.......Talia Balsam (</B><I><B>Consenting Adults, The Supernaturals</B></I><B>)</B></div> <div> <B>Harriet Watkins....Barbara Whinnery</B></div> <div> <B>Jessica Marlow...Carol Francis</B></div> <div> <B>Sophie Fisher......Tane'</B></div> <div> <B>Martha White.......Sally Brown</B></div> <div> <B>Alfred Lassiter.....Jack Hiller</B></div> <div> <B>Hank Storm..........David Abbott</B></div> <div> <B>Josef Steiner........Kenneth Robert Shippy</B></div> <bR> <div> <B><U>Critique</U></B><B>: The Nazi symbols, the photo of Nietzsche (poor Nietzsche) and the symbolism of the perpetual motion machine, (started and stopped at Gunther's whim), as well as the rats, (a race for Gunther to destroy as his whimsy) work well as the trappings of dangerous ideology arrogance and megalomania. The tongueless Martha serves as his own little concentration camp. It is curious that either the character Gunther or the actor Kinski, both of whom, as Germans, were quite capable of writing something coherent, write only in ellipses in German and jabberwocky in the frequent shots of Gunther's journal. Otherwise Kinski is Kinski, he'd be scary playing Santa Claus (very scary in fact), and he's scary as a troubled psychopath/sociopath. The rest of the cast is also well above average and carry the film as far as it can go with very little action or dialogue. Still the film is a fairly engaging portrayal of a man who is addicted to power and hates himself and humanity. That he is the offspring of a Nazi torturer makes sense on one level, if it was his upbringing that left Dr. Gunther in this state. On the other hand, the story goes he only discovered his father's obsession with death in 1971, which would indicate what? His family has a sociopath gene? The lack of an answer to this question is a disappointing staple of "art" horror movies. (See: </B><I><B>The Hunger,</B></I><B> no don't.) Likewise, the introduction of the vampire motiv, one who requires the death of others to live, would have profited by subtlety and evidence. If Gunther is indeed alive, which is the premise here, he need not heat his hand to shake. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B><U>Plot Summary</U></B><B>: Mr. Gunther runs a boarding house where a young tenant heads for the attic looking to speak with him. She finds instead cages full of rats and enters his room only to have a complicated lock close behind her. As she discovers a young woman in a cage with no tongue, Mr. Gunther appears and executes her with a Rube Goldberg speargun device. Gunther then sits down to a seemingly enjoyable game of Russian roulette which he performs ritualistically and survives, pronouncing, "So be it." The next day he places an ad announcing a vacancy. That night as a voyeur in the yard watches a tenant undress, Mr. Gunther does the same through a ventilation register. The voyeur turns out to be an intruder and potential rapist as he climbs in through the window wielding a switchblade, but after a brief scare, he turns out to be Sophies pig of a boyfriend, Hank, and they mate to the tones of cool jazz. A man comes to inquire about the apartment but Gunther  abruptly and falsely tells him it's been rented. A minute later, Laurie, a young female journalism student at Brown, knocks and quickly takes the apartment as it is within walking distance to the university and unlike the last place she rented, "has no vampires". Mr. Gunther smiles, heats up his icy hand on an open gas flame, and seals the deal with a warm hand-shake. In his diary entry of May 8, 1986, he writes "I used to kill in the name of science, now I kill because I'm addicted to killing. It's the only way I can feel alive." He reads his caged woman of his youth and medical training and she hands him a note saying, "Please kill me." But to whom would he talk then? The new tenant invites him to a glass of wine. She wants to know his vices and his secrets. Karl says he had women, it didn't work out. Tenant Jessica, the soap opera actress, and the other young female tenants have a junk food and booze party and Karl releases a rat into the room through a small hatch and enjoys the screaming through the register. As a surgeon in Argentina, Gunther often employed euthanasia and was happy to end his patients' suffering. In 1971 he began to read his father's diaries and discovered to his horror that his father had used the same term to excuse his killing of Jews in Nazi Germany. As Sophie's intruder boyfriend Hank approaches the window another night, he encounters Gunther in the yard, inexplicably pulls his switch blade and is justifiably killed by Gunther. Gunther plops his eyes into jars of formaldehyde. That night Gunther pulls the trigger twice in his little game of chance. "So be it." Nazi hunter Josef Steiner has found Dr. Gunther after a three year search and grudgingly, Gunther lets Steiner in, who announces, "You are a murderer Dr. Gunther." One of Gunther's "patients" was Steiner's brother. Steiner produces a photo of Karl Werner Reitlinger, the SS designer of torture instruments, executed in 1945 for crimes against humanity. Steiner asks if this is not Gunther's father. He also gives Gunther a photo of himself as a child giving the Nazi salute in a little SS uniform. Steiner warns Gunther he will be watching him. "Dec. 8 1973," Gunther writes that euthanasia is a common practice. "Feb. 17, 1974, "terminated perfectly healthy man due to clerical error," and felt no remorse. In fact the same unusual sensations his father experienced: killing is his heroine/opiate/fix, and he experiences a godlike feeling. Actress Jessica brings home dashing older fop Alfred, and they drink huge glasses of whiskey as Gunther watches through the register. As she slips into something more comfortable, Alfred investigates a tapping he hears at the register. Finally, he can't make love with all that tapping. As he leaves, he makes the mistake of investigating Gunther's open room, and a finger with his ring on it winds up in one of the myriad specimen jars. In an entry of May 9, 1986, as Gunther documents his addiction to death he is beginning to wonder if he has fallen from grace with the world. Laurie visits Gunther to complain about rats and registers, but he is not there.  In his gusset chair, Gunther has installed a blade which fires into the guest at the touch of a button. As Steiner visits Laurie, Gunther crawls  through the crawlspace to the appropriate register to overhear Steiner's attempt to prove that Gunther killed his brother. As Gunther prepares to blow-dart Steiner, Gunther withdraws, vowing "it should be painful," and Laurie shows him the door, not wanting to get involved. Steiner beats Gunther back to his apartment and has a seat in the guest chair where he begins reading Gunther's diary. "Like my father I am fascinated by the delicate balance between life and death, good and evil". That's as far as he gets before a blade splits Steiner dead. Gunther continues his improbable streak in roulette by pulling the trigger three times. He then applies eyeliner and lots of lipstick, and watches a film of Hitler delivering a speech, during which he announces: "I'm my own god, my own jury and my own executioner." he dons his SS-cap, salutes, and shouts "Heil Gunther!". As Laurie returns from school she opens her refrigerator to find a freezer full of rats and a perpetual motion machine in the lower part. The phone rings and Gunther asks "Who's swimming in your bath tub?" With the ensuing grim discovery of the mutilated Steiner, and Laurie's subsequent attempt to free the tongueless survivor begins a diabolical </B><I><B>chambre des corps morts</B></I><B> with a gruesome display of bodies marked with swastikas and a chase via Gunther'</B><B>s</B><B> new mechanic's belly-wagon</B><B> through </B><B>the boobytrapped labyrinthian crawlspace of this house as the Hitler-speech roars. After a lengthy chase, the survivor briefly unites with Laurie, as Gunther, in a ruse, is evidenty pierced by his own mechanical death machine. As his victims shuffle about, Gunther enters, Laurie fires his roulette gun at him repeatedly, finally killing him, with Gunther announcing: "So be it." In a crappy art twist, the ending shows the gun on an empty table with empty shell case, erasing all evidence of the occurences. Ende. </B></div> </td> </tr></table></body>