"Crawlspace"(1986)d/David Schmoeller

Here's one of my favorites(no shit!) from the mid-eighties, 77 low budgeted minutes of movie madness featuring everyone's top twisted teuton, Klaus Kinski, who, left to roam free on the pazzo prairie, just might be at his nervous chill-inducing crackers-est in this one, which is no small statement if you've seen your share of Kinski's 200 plus movies thus far in life.I laid tonight's review on my trusty roommate, Doc, the other night, allowing for generous portional intake of chocky hallucino-cake to help him mentally cope with the many bizarrely fantastic moments herein, and he still wasn't where he needed to be when Kinski lets out a carnal moan before flopping onto the mighty crawlspace/air vent toboggan of death in the movie, effectively blowing his fragile mind.I know I was in the same boat as he the first time I saw such amazing events transpire before my eyes back in the vhs era, too.Where an Empire Pictures title produced by Charles Band would normally signify cheap dimestore thrills at best,a la Laserblast(1978) or Troll(1986), Kinski singlehandedly rescues the picture from its otherwise very pedestrian fate,like so much of the mid-eighties horror fare (NOT the greatest era for horror movies,IMHO).John Buechler's gore effects,which look to consist of Sharpie marker and some cheap Halloween store props and appliances, are rightfully understated here; hell, most of the movie's bodycount transpires off-camera and the viewer still comes out of the experience feeling as though they've just bore witness to a much, much sicker little movie, thanks to herr Klaus.Released as a choice lil' Midnight Movies double feature dvd with The Attic by MGM years back, Crawl is a memorably enjoyable ride I'm conscientiously obligated to recommend to all.

Insert your own testosterone-soaked wisecrack about nipples here.
Karl Gunther(Kinski) is a practioner of medicine-turned-voyeuristic serial killing landlord since the day his psyche brought him to the realization that his father had proudly donned the uniform of the German Schutzstaffel under the 'Stache, and was executed for war crimes, and that he, a former Hitler Jugend himself, had saved enough lives as a doctor in Buenos Aires, and it was high time he started taking some himself.In his apartment building full of handpicked young eighties girls, secret passages, caged n' shaved slaves, and innovative booby traps, he carries out his blood-caked bender; an occasional round of Russian roulette being his only self-dictated karmic implication for his crimes, which he shrugs off with a creepy smile and "So be it." each time the hammer clicks into an empty cylinder chamber.When he's not crawling through the duct system and spying on his tenants:an eighties-tastic blonde would-be composer whose ballads produce tears for all the wrong reasons(is it any wonder she's got Barbara Streisand albums framed on the wall?) that enjoys stalker-rape roleplay fantasies with her boyfriend, a bubbleheaded soap opera star too vapid to form her own opinions, a man-starved secretary, and an innocent college student(take a wild stab in the dark who makes it alive to the last reel), he's reciting his memoirs aloud to a tongueless chick he keeps in a cage who begs him to kill her.He refuses, of course, because if he did,
he'd have no one to talk to(!).

"I triet viss gurls. It didn't vurk out."
Interrupting his voyeurism, late night tapping, and releasing of rats into the apartments through remote controlled trapdoors that the tenants happen to never notice, is Josef Steiner, the chainsmoking brother of one of the sixty-seven patients with routine illnesses that perished mysteriously under Gunther's care in Argentina years earlier.His repeated meddling soon buys him a fatal sitdown in Karl's specially designed spring loaded anal-spear chair.After screening Triumph of the Will on a film projector while decked out in an SS uniform and garishly slapped on makeup, he declares himself his own god, jury, and executioner, and sieg heils himself.He fills Lori's(Talia Balsam) fridge with live rats, and dumps Steiner's corpse(with obligatory swastika carved in his forehead) in her bathtub, causing the hysterical young student, desperate to escape, to stumble across the other tenants in the building, all swazzied up n' dead-like.When she tries to flee the building, she is thwarted by Karl's spring loaded escape-proof steel bars, and when she tries to escape into the crawlspace, she discovers that it, too, is booby-trapped by a motion sensor activated blade that slices her sneaker in half.When Karl's rats prove ineffective in chasing her through the ducts, he climbs in himself, and hops upon his trusty crawlspace toboggan(!), but the girl manages to escape back into his room and free the captive girl from her cage in the process.Just when it seems Gunther has fallen prey to one of his own motion sensor blades, he surprises the girls in mid-police call, unhurt and wearing a knife harness(!!).Before he can remove these final victims from the equation though, Lori picks up his revolver and aims it at him,clicking empty chambers several times before a gun shot is heard.Karl's voice is heard to say, "So be it".

All of your tomorrows are belongs to Kinski, plix.He'll take your eyeliner and lipstick if you aren't using it, too.
Uncredited in a cameo as the rejected male tenant, Schmoeller, who captained the excellent Tourist Trap(1978) and The Seduction(1982) prior to tonight's review, went on to direct Puppetmaster and Netherworld for Full Moon.Though I obviously have no problem sitting down to watch some atrocious movies when the mood strikes me, I'm gonna take this opportunity to state for the record that I'm no big fan of Full Moon movies to say the least, from Puppetmaster(as I've mentioned before, Schmoeller wrote all EIGHT of these,ferchrissakes) to Castle Freak, Subspecies on through to Demonic Toys and every last movie tie-in collectible that nobody asked for.You can keep all of that craptastic cheesy shit, thank you very much.Cutie survivor Talia Balsam followed this up with 1987's The Kindred, then went on to a very successful career in movies and television with credits in everything from Happy Days and Magnum P.I. to Law & Order:Criminal Intent and Ally McBeal. Kinski worked right up until his untimely end in 1991 in fare like the unofficial Italian 1988 sequel to Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampire, where his legendary difficulty resulted in three different directors being credited to the picture.You gotta love Klaus.Three big ones.

I've got no words for this.There are none.

"The Seduction"(1982)d/David Schmoeller

Few girls possessed more memorable mammaries in the eighties than Morgan Fairchild did.Being a true can-noisseur myself,I'd be able to spot one of her milkwagons from a football field away while wearing a blindfold left over from one of those seventies "taste test" commercials.Morgan's nipples(not aereolas,mind you)somewhat resembled red Twizzler bites when erect,and at other times,fleshy pencil erasers.Needless to say,as a twelve or thirteen year old boy,a pair of voluptuous Bozos like Morgan's were pretty high on my list,though her gimmick nips never really threatened a chick named Barbeau who stuffed a pair of gargantuan M107 shells into a sweater in the top slot.In the black cable box days,tonight's entry played in heavy daily rotation on services like HBO and Prism,and in a battle between "Goin' Ape" with Tony Danza and Seduction,the gimmick nips trump monkey business every time,if not by much.
Any genre cool points David Schmoeller might have earned himself by helming the original effort,Tourist Trap(1976),he effectively pissed away with this vehicle of showcase for She of the Weird Elongated Nipples(she had a funny Irish nose while I'm at it),a ninety minute excursion into how many times Fairchild could shed gear in front of a camera lens while something vaguely resembling a plot transpired in the background.With my yank fantasies being more elaborate and ummm,sophisticated(translation:twisted)nearly thirty years later,there's not much else going on that's view-worthy here,seriously.Andrew Stevens' fifteen minutes were up twenty minutes before he signed on to do this picture,and Michael Sarrazin,well,fifteen minutes were about fourteen too many for him.There's a couple of cheap jump scares,several Flow-bee haircut victims,and prop gunplay embarrassing enough to raise Charlton Heston's worm-ravaged corpse from his grave on a blood vendetta.

When's the last time you saw Michael Sarrazin in a romantic lead...or anything at all?
Jaime Douglas(Fairchild) is a tv anchorwoman in Los Angeles that any yuppie worth his weight in snorted pick-me-ups in the corporate bathroom gets exec wood over.Problem is,her perky blouse-cows and sultry bedroom voice also attract a voyeuristic weenbag named Derek(Stevens)who blows the needle off the creep-o-meter in a decade free of anti-stalking laws and a story mostly free of coherence.He starts out using the old fashioned pervert method,ogling her at great lengths through a telescope as she perpetually swims,showers,and preens herself,totally unaware of the impending,as most Californians must have been at the time,on the quest for sexy.If you think Jaime spends an inordinate time in front of the mirror,try Derek on for size.He blow dries his hair so much that it's a minor miracle he has enough stalking time reserved for taking sixty-four thousand paparazzi-style photographs of her,which he inappropriately decorates his place with.Hey,at least he isn't boiling them and eating them at this point.At first,repeatedly calling her,leaving her messages at work,and randomly sending her bouquets of flowers quells his inner-creep,but when her boyfriend Brandon(Sarrazin)'s limp macho act and cop Maxwell's laissez-faire approach to the matter open Derek's creepy floodgates,he seemingly kicks it up a notch,though the viewer might not notice at this point,overwhelmed by a severe case of couch-zzzzzzzz's.

Make "Andrew Stevens in the closet" jokes at your own discretion.
After Derek breaks into Jaime's place sort of,since high profile news anchors in Los Angeles have the good-hearted propensity for leaving the front door open,Maxwell admits his hands are tied until the guy commits an actual crime."Breaking and entering" ring a bell at all,Chief?Brandon does a pretty half-assed job of roughing up his girlfriend's stalker,proving he's nearly as much of a mouse-shouldered,skirt-wearing mary as the neighboring psychopath is.Jaime rewards her sissy man with a bubbly piece of whirlpool pussy,which Brandon momentarily hits like a muscular dystrophy-stricken arm on a heavy bag,groaning like a reindeer getting its ball pouch bitten off by a Finnish housewife-in-heat,as Derek,who just lets himself in once again,snuffs his candle before he can even give her the Sarrazin-custard,right in front of Jaime's eyes.As he cockily drags off Brandon's lifeless body into the hills to bury for the next hour,Derek unwisely leaves a disbelieving Jaime enough time to hastily don some duds and split,and/or phone the police.She does neither(!).The stalkee gives in to her attacker's fatal obsessions and seduces the son of a bitch(!!)instead,in a kind of over-the-top sleaze porn-trash way,even begging him to fuck her(!!!).Of course,Derek's power lies in domination,and when his object of desire turns the tables on him,his manhood is effectively pulverized,and he is unable to put the sex-blocks to her.Jaime gets her hands on a shotgun,ineptly overpumping the damned thing before sending him to that big made-for-tv movie in the sky.Vadge-1,Stalker-0.

Morgan's naked...again.There's a shocker for you.
Schmoeller took the shambles he made of his reputation with this movie,and flushed it directly down the cinematic toilet afterwards,writing(!) EVERY Puppetmaster movie.I was always under the impression random words on a corkboard got pub darted by rabid lemurs to put those things together.I stand corrected.Save your venom,Full Moon fans,I've tried to endure a few of their ahem,films... over the years,but face it,their productions are to movies what Insane Clown Posse is to music.It should be mentioned though,that Jodorowsky's former classmate(!),who earned kudos from Luis Bunuel,did direct Klaus Kinski in 1986's excellent entry,Crawlspace,and for these morsels,Tourist Trap included,I must salute him...just not tonight's review,sorry.The still-lovely Fairchild,who can be spotted in classic television dating back to Kojak,Barnaby Jones,and Happy Days,most recently did work on tv's Chuck series this year.Genre-wise,she's always thrown us an occasional bone,appearing in fare like The Initiation of Sarah and Phantom of the Mall:Eric's Revenge.Well,maybe not a bone,more like a scrap of marrow.Ah well.Wrapping up tonight's review,Seduction doesn't really hold up under the light very well,and you'd probably find 1979's The Seduction of Joe Tynan with Alan Alda a sexier possibility.One wop.

One of Morgan's signature gimmick nips.Worth 104 minutes of your time?I'll let you decide.