Klaus Kinski may be creeping in your CRAWLSPACE (1986)

Posted by Stephen Jannise

If you are not familiar with the renowned German actor Klaus Kinski, I think I can introduce you to him in a fairly succinct way. In this week’s Terror Tuesday film, Crawlspace, Kinski plays a sexually confused ex-Nazi landlord who spies on his female tenants and sets elaborate traps throughout the building to kill anyone he doesn’t like. And it’s the quietest, most sedate performance I’ve ever seen him give. Love him or hate him, most people agree the man may have been mentally unsound. If you need visual proof, take a look at this clip from Kinski’s “Jesus” tour, in which he provided his interpretation of the New Testament and, in the process, may or may not have claimed to be Jesus himself.

Crawlspace does not represent Kinski at his finest; for that, you’ll want to seek out the five films that sprang forth from Kinski’s stark raving mad partnership with director Werner Herzog, all five of which are cinematic classics. We saw a short film before Crawlspace, in which director David Schmoeller laments Kinski’s rude, sulking behavior on the set and remembers how much he would have liked to kill him. I think the challenges that Kinski posed for Schmoeller during the making of this film were the result of an aging actor coming to terms with the fact that no director would ever coax the kind of performances out of him that Herzog had. Even Schmoeller has to admit, after his long rant, that he can’t deny Kinski’s achievements. As much as he wanted to kill Kinski, Schmoeller says, the director ultimately decided that he wanted even more to watch Kinski act again.

''Honey, your date is here!''

But Schmoeller does have his moments with this film, particularly after Kinski’s character Gunther falls further into sexual and moral confusion. After every murder he commits, Gunther places one bullet into his pistol, points it at his brain, and pulls the trigger, essentially playing Russian Roulette with fate or God or whatever guiding principle is in his mind. Each time, luck is on his side, the bullet remains in the gun, and Gunther says, “So be it.” Here is a character who seems to be begging on a cosmic scale for the punishment he deserves, and yet, on each occasion, even when he pulls the trigger two or three times, he gets away with it.

Thus, the confusion. How can the universe be so uncaring, Gunther seems to wonder, as to let him continue getting away with murder? Finally, he puts some old film of a Hitler rally into his projector, covers his face in makeup, and hails not Hitler but himself. Schmoeller himself probably couldn’t analyze what this means for his own character’s psyche, but it certainly allows Kinski to shoot off some of the fireworks that he has been withholding throughout the film.

Like many other films about fugitive Nazi war criminals, such as Apt Pupil, the film cannot seem to craft much of a message around a subject that seems to be full of potential. All this film is likely to accomplish is to encourage its viewers to wonder about Kinski’s own Nazi sympathies. Certainly, if you watch the clip I linked to above, or see him erupt into one of his many tirades in film or in life, you can’t help but feel Hitler’s raging, fist pumping influences on Kinski’s acting style. Indeed, Kinski may have been the only person who would consider a comparison to Hitler to be a compliment.

Screaming isn't his only strength, though. He can be quite poignant when he wants to be, as in Herzog's Nosferatu.