Cold Fusion Video Reviews

• Written and directed by David Schmoeller
• Starring
  • Klaus Kinski
  • Talia Balsam
  • Barbara Whinnery
• Produced by Roberto Bessi
• Executive produced by Charles Band

Here’s something you’d never guess without looking at the credits: Crawlspace was exec-produced by Charles Band. It’s nice to look back and see the films he was involved with in his pre-Full Moon days; they may have been exploitative and cheap, but they still weren’t as –what’s the word I want? — crass as his recent output. (Just imagine, though: A collectable Klaus Kinski action figure.)

Kinski here is Dr. Karl Gunther, former doctor at the National Hospital in Buenos Aires and son of a Nazi war criminal. Apparently German badness runs in the family, because he finally gave up his practice after he began enjoying euthanasia more than healing. Now he’s the landlord of a small apartment building, where he rents only to young attractive women and then spies on them from the ductwork, subtly tormenting them with rodents and mysterious sounds in the night.

Now, I’m sure most of the critics who gave this film a lukewarm review did so by the checklist approach: “Hm, movie has no strong protagonist.” And they’d be right; the nominal heroine just happens to be the girl who survives, through no strength of her own (although the clues are there — the four tenants are a man-hungry secretary, a pianist who enjoys wild sex, a soap opera actress, and a student — who would you bet on?). The main character, both protagonist and antagonist, is Gunther, as he re-reads his journal, talks to the poor tongueless girl he keeps in his apartment, protects his secret from the obsessed brother of on of his euthanasia victims, and slowly descends into madness.

And the best thing about the part is Kinski, who started out an unsettling actor and just got spookier as he got older. By this point (at age 60, five years before his death), they could have filmed 90 minutes of him eating his Cheerios and reading the Sunday Times and it still would have creeped out the audience.

A delightful little film, and a credit to writer/director David Schmoeller (sort of makes up for his later films The Arrival and Netherworld).

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 8
• breasts: 2
• explosions: 0
• dream sequences: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0