Tag: horror

Web of the Spider (1971)

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Dir: Antonio Margheriti
Star: Anthony Franciosa, Michèle Mercier, Peter Carsten, Klaus Kinski

For one of Kinski’s cameo roles – his appearances strictly book-end the film, this is actually not bad, an Italian Gothic horror set in the 1830’s. It’s a remake of an earlier film, 1964’s Castle of Blood, also directed by Margheriti (mostly – let’s not get into that here!), but which flopped at the box-office. The director believe this was due to it being in black-and-white, so decided to remake it in color. He appeared to regret this, calling the decision”stupid.” I haven’t seen the original, so can’t comment, but found this to be an effective enough tale, good enough to leave me interested in locating a decent print. For the one I watched was badly washed-out, pan-and-scanned (with a lot of scanning!), edited down by about 20 minutes, and dubbed into English with Greek subtitles. That it still retained my interest, thus says a good deal.

The wraparound story is a good one, and sees writer Edgar Allen Poe (Kinski) visiting England – there’s no indication, incidentally, this trip ever took place [Though Poe did spent several years in London, it was as a young boy]. It starts with Poe, Lord Blackwood and writer Alan Foster (Franciosa) drinking together in a pub, where Poe reveals that his stories aren’t works of fiction, but reports of events that actually happened, and were witnessed by him. The skeptical Foster scoffs at this, but Blackwood agrees with Poe that there are more things in heaven and earth, etc., and wagers ten pounds with Foster that he will be unable to spend an entire night in a haunted, empty castle owned by the nobleman. The writer is dropped off at the (impressively spiky) castle gates by Poe and Blackwood, and goes inside for a lengthy sequence of Foster walking the halls and rooms of the deserted manor.

web2Except, naturally, it turns out to be far from deserted, playing home to a wide spectrum of characters – some of whom happen to bear a strong resemblance to portraits hanging on the walls. The first of these to appear is Elisabeth Blackwood (Mercier), for whom Foster falls, and falls hard; this is used to explain his reluctance to leave, once the escalating weirdness achieves full effect. She’s followed shortly after by another, rather more sullen beauty, Julia (Karin Field), and before you know it, this supposedly vacant home is playing host to an entire ball. Turns out, as you have perhaps guessed already, that these are not living people, but spectral entities left over from previous tragic events.

This is explained to Foster by Dr. Carmus, an occult scholar who went to the castle to carry out some research, only to be trapped there himself. The same fate seems likely to befall Foster – except for the love that he and Elisabeth share, leading to her trying to help him escape the grounds before dawn, when he is doomed to join the other spirits, forever. At least, that appears to be the plot here: I was somewhat surprised to read other synopses saying things like, “Near the end of the film, the ghosts reveal their true nature: they aren’t actually ghosts but vampires with ghostly powers, and they need Foster’s blood in order to maintain their existence,” because that particular angle would appear to be part of the 20 minutes missing from the version I saw. This would at least somewhat explain the German title, Dracula im Schloß des Schreckens (“Dracula in the Castle of Secrets”), even if Dracula is notable by his complete absence.

While enjoyable enough, with no shortage of atmosphere to be found, I suspect Mercier is likely a downgrade from the phenomenal Barbara Steele, who played the same role in Castle: here, she’s pretty, and not much more, hardly coming over as the sort of woman to inspire the level of devotion shown by Foster. Given its era, this also feels tame; things had moved on significantly in the horror world since the original film, and some more sex and violence probably wouldn’t have gone amiss. It is a bit of a shame the early direction isn’t sustained. I love the concept of Poe’s stories actually being journalism, and think it would have been a fantastic idea to have had an entire series of films based on that premise [H.P. Lovecraft immediately comes to mind as another author for whom this would work]. There’s a sequence which plays under the opening credits that shows where this idea could have gone: Poe stalking his way through a graveyard, all disheveled and flailing, looking for a specific grave and digging it up, before it cuts to the pub where he is telling the story to Blackwood and Foster – still, all disheveled and flailing.

Kinski as Poe is an inspired bit of casting; if I can’t say how accurate the portrayal of Poe as a twitchy, sweaty  laudanum addict type might be, I can’t deny how much fun it is to watch. Undeniably, it’s a vast improvement over Klaus’s other cameo as a “great author”, playing the Marquis De Sade in Justine, where he got to do very little except sit in a cell and pretend to scribble furiously. Margheriti had worked with Kinski before to great effect, in And God Said To Cain, and it’s just a shame that his screen time here is limited to a handful of scenes. While the rest is more undeniably more entertaining than some of the Kinski cameos I’ve had to endure in the course of putting this site together, the gap between Klaus and the rest of the cast is rather apparent. I’d have willingly ponied up ten quid, for everyone to just sit in the pub and listen to some more of Poe’s stories, rather than go out on a cold night to a freezing and unwelcoming pile of stones – ectoplasmic babes or no ectoplasmic babes…

Count Dracula (1970)

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Star: Christopher Lee, Herbert Lom, Soledad Miranda, Klaus Kinski
Dir: Jess Franco

While I appreciate the idea of making a more faithful adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel, going back in many ways to its original roots, I’m not sure getting Jess Franco to direct it was the smartest idea. Whatever his merits, he was hardly known for PG-rated works inspired by Victorian literature, and despite a couple of bits of impressive casting, in Lee and Kinski, this feels about 15 years too late, and a bland supporting cast leave it marooned in, at best, the middle tier of vampire movies.

The main coup is, of course, getting Lee to reprise his most famous role, even if this was the third chance to sink his fangs into Count Dracula that year, its release (at least, in Germany) just managing to pip Taste the Blood of Dracula to cinemas, and with Scars of Dracula following later. [Blood wasn’t even supposed to include the Count at all, but the US distributor balked, and he was talked into playing the role again; Lee later complained Hammer’s president used “emotional blackmail” to convince him to keep playing Dracula, saying the crew would be put out of work otherwise – I wonder if it was for this film?]. He was growing increasingly disenchanted with the direction Hammer were taking: “They gave me nothing to do! I pleaded with Hammer to let me use some of the lines that Bram Stoker had written. Occasionally, I sneaked one in.” Here, no such sneaking was needed, and indeed, the film’s best scene has the Count delivering a sonorous monologue about his ancestors, which is close to Stoker’s text:

“To us was entrusted for centuries the guarding of our lands. The Lombard, the Bulgar, the Turk, poured their thousands against our frontiers – we drove them back! The Draculas have ever been the heart’s blood, the brains, the sword of our people. One of my race crossed the Danube and destroyed the Turkish host. Though sometimes beaten back, he came again and again against the enemy, till at the end, he came alone from the bloody field, for he alone could triumph. THIS was a Dracula indeed!”

countdracula2Another cool aspect is the way this Count starts off as old, and gradually becomes more youthful and active as the film goes on and he quenches his thirst on more victims – something also used in Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula. But the film still takes liberties with the text, some of which don’t work, such as the way Jonathan Harker escapes Dracula’s castle, and is transported back to Great Britain, to rehab in a facility – here run by Professor Van Helsing (Lom) – which directly overlooks… Dracula’s English mansion. Really, what are the odds? The fiance of Lucy Westenra (Miranda) is now Quincy Morris, with Arthur Holmwood entirely omitted. So, while more faithful than many, it’s clear the makers still felt it necessary to make a number of concessions on the transition from page to screen.

Klaus Kinski plays Renfield, in a casting choice of both staggering obviousness and brilliance, matched only by Kinski’s other collaborations with Franco, where he played Jack the Ripper and the Marquis de Sade. In this case, it’s a virtually non-verbal performance, where his sole line is “Varna…”, uttered just before Renfield shuffles off this mortal coil, to tell the good guys where the Count is heading. But that doesn’t make it any less memorable, since Kinski has always been capable of conveying an entire chapter of emotion with a stare, and is allowed to do so freely in this film. Right from the first time we see him, hurling food about his cell, it’s clear that this Renfield is barking mad – and that’s before he starts chowing down on his favorite snack, dead flies, which he has hidden in a box in his cell. According to Jay Marks and Waylon Wahl, Kinski took Franco to task for not filming Renfield’s scenes in an actual asylum, to which the director responded, “I had planned to shoot it in a real cell but then it occurred to me that they might not let you out!”

Certainly, it’s fair to say that, as well as the canonical Dracula, in Kinski this film also has the canonical Renfield, and I don’t think anyone can match the intense lunacy of his portrayal. Where the film goes off the rails is with the good guys in the cast, starting with Lom as Van Helsing, who is a very pale shadow indeed of, say, Peter Cushing. And that’s before he inexplicably appears to suffer a stroke, which confines him to a wheelchair for the rest of the movie (perhaps inspiring Dr. Everett Scott in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which hit the stage three years later?). The rest of the cast are equally forgettable, despite the scenic contributions of Miranda, and Maria Rohm as Mina – although the latter remain far more clothed than most Franco ladies! And, indeed, Hammer ones of the time, as they released The Vampire Lovers the same year, the first of their Karnstein trilogy.

That’s perhaps what I mean about it being 15 years too late. In tone and content, this comes across as less daring than even Blood of Dracula, made in 1957 and whose success led directly to the entire “Hammer Horror” filmography which followed. That packed much more of a wallop than this even lower-rent version does, which has all the impact of the giant polystyrene rocks used to disrupt the Count’s escape at the end [you can clearly see one of them glancing off the side of a horse’s head as they are “hurled” down from a nearby cliff. And do not even get me started on the “bat” effects…]. The truth is, for all the influence Dracula had, Stoker isn’t actually all that good a writer – if you can name two of his 11 other novels, it will be one more than I can manage, and my Lair of the White Worm knowledge is entirely through Ken Russell’s adaptation.  So a faithful translation to the screen may seem like a good idea in theory, yet it tends to bring over as many negatives as pluses. This film demonstrates why most movie versions have tended to take only the core, and leave everything else.

 

Jack the Ripper (1976)

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Dir: Jess Franco
Star: Klaus Kinski, Andreas Mannkopff, Josephine Chaplin, Herbert Fux

The Jess Franco film so good I watched it twice? Well, kinda… It’s certainly better than most of Franco’s work – I’ve had my fair share of run-ins with the “tedious dreck” end of the spectrum in his filmography, but this is solidly workmanlike, and grounded mostly in Kinski’s fine performance as the central character. However, the double viewing is less because of any quality, than the first copy I got was the English-language version which is among the worst dubs I’ve ever had the misfortune to experience. Virtually none of the characters sound anything like their characters; they could have had Betty Boop dub Kinski, and it would have been more appropriate. That necessitated getting hold of the original German version, which is (as usual) a great deal better.

Just do not expect anything like authenticity, or anything bearing much more than a tangential relationship to the real Jack the Ripper, despite a couple of nods, which I’ll get to later. That’s clear right from the start, where a lady of the night is warned outside the enchantingly-named Pike’s Hole music-hall: “You have to walk through Kensington and Chelsea, where he looks for his victims.” Er… No? And Zurich isn’t much of a substitute for London either, despite providing some waterways through which bodies can be transported. Still, as long as you’re happy with lurid sleaze, you’ll find plenty to enjoy here, even if it does fall a little short of Edge of Sanity, another take on the tale from a sometime director of porn, Gerard Kikoine. That had Anthony Perkins, threw a large helping of Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde into the blender, and was shot like the demented offspring of Ken Russell and Dario Argento. Compared to that masterpiece of misbegotten excess, this is almost tame, yet there’s a good amount to appreciate.

The story has Kinski playing Dr. Orloff, a character name used a bunch of other times by Franco, from 1962’s The Awful Dr. Orloff through to one of the director’s best, Faceless, in 1987. He has what can only be described as severe mommy issues, and is acting these out by abducting prostitutes and dismembering them, with the help of an assistant, Frieda, who may be mentally deficient and/or in love with Orloff [the film is vague on such details]. It’s never clear if Orloff’s recollections of his mother as a whore are literal or metaphorical, but if the former, it doesn’t appear to have prevented him from rising up to pursue a medical career, As the body count rises, Inspector Selby (Mannkopff) of Scotland Yard investigates the case, but matters are complicated by his ballet-dancer girlfriend, Cynthia (Chaplin – the daughter of Charlie!), who decides to go undercover in search of the killer herself. Needless to say, she finds the not-so good Doctor, only to fall into his clutches as Selby searches frantically for both of them – like a number of others, a plotline also largely recycled from The Awful Dr. Orloff.

jtr13It’s certainly an epic bit of casting to have Kinski playing a largely undiluted sexual psychopath, and he is actually quite restrained in his performance, save for a couple of moments where the mommy issues burst out in a gush of scenery-chewing. There’s no doubt Kinski had an ambivalent attitude towards women, and it’s the nastier side which is allowed full rein here, in his brutal treatment of his victims, usually raping them before beginning their dismemberment, which is depicted in occasionally highly graphic fashion. The worst such is reserved for frequent Franco muse (and future wife), Lina Romay, whose promising career as a music-hall act is brought to an abrupt end by Orloff carving off one of her breasts in its entirety. Yet Orloff spends his days tending to the poor, accepting whatever they can pay. It’s an unusual dichotomy, perhaps intended to expose Victorian hypocrisy [though when one of his patients attempts to blackmail the doctor, the results are unsurprising!].

I kept expecting Mrs. Baxter, Orloff’s landlady, to play a significant role in proceedings; that doesn’t happen, and her character serves no real purpose. On the other hand, I was quite impressed by the police procedural aspects, in particular a scene where the Inspector has to wrangle witnesses of wildly varied social stature into putting together a composite portrait, only to find there are two, clearly different descriptions. Fortunately, the sharpest tool in the box is also present, in the shape of a blind man, whose heightened senses provide a couple of key elements that narrow down the inquiry, and also gives Selby a crucial clue after Cynthia is abducted. However, the ending falls kinda flat: rather than any kind of fitting retribution for or by society, on behalf of the numerous victims, Orloff simply gives himself up, though in response to Selby’s assertion, “You are Jack the Ripper,” the doctor counters coolly, “You will have to prove that first.”

There are occasional, albeit slight, nods to real Ripperology. For there is some evidence to suspect the real Ripper may, like Orloff, have had medical training, and the film does make a reference to him having “relatives at Buckingham Palace”, perhaps hinting at the connection to the British royal family which has been suggested by some. However, this is an entity appreciated for its own merits, whatever they might be, and not as any kind of historical reconstruction. In particular, it’s good to see a Kinski film which truly lives up to that label, with him front, center and given the opportunity to unleash, quite possibly, a few of his own inner demons involving sex and death. As so often, however, you are left to wonder what might have been, had the material been handled by a better director than Franco, though the results here are certainly among the upper tier of his filmography. Just don’t inflict the dubbed version on youself, for that would be far more horrible than any of the breast-removing and repeated stabbings carried out on Orloff’s victims!

Lover of the Monster (1974)

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Dir: Sergio Garrone
Star: Klaus Kinski, Katia Christine, Ayhan Isik, Erol Tas
a.k.a. Le Amanti del Mostro

lover_of_monster_poster_01Watching this, it struck me that Kinski would have been a good alternative to Udo Kier in the same year’s Flesh for Frankenstein. For this Italian/Turkish co-production starts off looking like it’s going to be another version of the Frankenstein story, with Alex Nijinski (Kinski) and his wife Anna (Christine), moving into the rural mansion which was her late father’s home, as well as his laboratory. Alex becomes increasingly fascinated by the experiments carried out by his father-in-law, and starts to return the laboratory to its former, functioning state, unaware – or not caring – that his wife is being wooed by an old flame, local Doctor Igor Walensky (Isik). When her pet dog turns up dead, Alex seizes the chance to try out the lab equipment and…

Well, and that’s where the film makes an abrupt right-turn, into the street which is home to another classic of 19th-century horror literature, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde. For, while attempting to resurrect the pooch, Alex gets a shock – no, literally, since part of the machine, which relies on high-voltage electricity for its power, malfunctions and sends its energy into its operator. For reasons never satisfactorily explained or explored, that turns him into a part-time maniac, roaming the countryside and killing anyone unfortunate enough to cross his path. When the dead bodies start turning up, the local authorities choose to blame any conveniently handy vagabonds. One innocent man is lynched, and after the murders continue unabated, another gets hauled in for a show trial which would make Stalin shuffle uncomfortably. Meanwhile, it’s just starting to dawn on Alex what’s happening during his blackouts.

It’s obviously a good role for Kinski, who gets both to be restrained and subdued (particularly by his standards) as Alex, then is given free rein to go totally over-the-top and let rip as the monster. Initially, it isn’t clear Alex is the culprit, with most of the monster’s early attacks being shown from its point of view, which seems like a waste of Kinski’s talents to me. There’s a strange tension to the relationship between Alex and Anna, apparent upon their arrival, when she shows him to her father’s room, then declares, “My room is in the other wing of the house.” It’s mentioned on occasion that the source of the tension is his possessiveness, Alex saying, “I’ll try to make you forgive my moments of jealousy,” and at another point, Anna says, “Your absurd jealousy offended me.” However, there’s never any specifics provided, and its an angle which doesn’t go anywhere, even though it seems to be Alex’s ongoing love for Anna, which propels things to their final, tragic conclusion.

monstroThe production values are solid, and it has some of the same lush cinematographic feel enjoyed by the better Hammer Productions of the sixties, even if the music largely consists of the same cue, used almost regardless of whether or not its appropriate. Beyond Kinski, the cast are solid, rather than memorable: neither Christine nor Isik have much to do or show any real character arc. It’s remarkably restrained in the exploitation aspects: the killings are positively bloodless, and up until the end, when Christine does her best to make up for lost time, there’s no nudity to speak of either. That’s surprising for two reasons. Firstly, the sex/horror combination genre was well under way by this point – not least at the hands of Hammer – and secondly, Garrone was hardly averse to the sleazier aspects of cinema. To demonstrate that, in his filmography, this comes in between writing The Big Bust Out, a.k.a. Crucified Girls of San Ramon, and his best known directorial work, the Naziploitation entry, S.S. Experiment Camp.

Perhaps the most unusual aspect is the socio-political one. The authorities fail to consider, even for a moment, the possibility that the killer could be a member of the local upper classes. Instead, they just naturally blame a tramp, and execute the first one they find, with little more concern than “I hope we found the right man or it would be a terrible mistake,” hand-waving away such concerns with “No-one in town could have done something similar… I think I can consider the case closed.” Then, when Alex’s murderous spree continues, and proves them wrong, it’s decided that the basic principle was fine, they just didn’t quite get the right vagrant. And the next one actually has blood on his hands! Never mind his “absurd assertions” that this is the result of a chicken he stole, “It’s enough to look into his eyes to be convinced of his offense.” It’s very clear Garrone does not have a great opinion concerning the fairness to be found in the legal and judicial systems.

Garrone had worked, at least tangentially, with Kinski before, having written the story that became 5 per l’inferno. And he worked with him again immediately, since this was also shot alongside/back-to-back with The Hand That Feeds the Dead (a.k.a. Evil Face). [The two are often confused: they have virtually the same cast and make use of the location, and similar premises, Kinski playing a mad scientist in both.] This is respectable enough as drama. anchored by the expected strong performance from Kinski. However, it definitely needs the rest of the film to be ramped up to match, coming over as too genteel to be particularly memorable, and feeling a good decade older than its actual age.

Vampire in Venice (1988)

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Dir: Augusto Caminito
Star: Christopher Plummer, Klaus Kinski, Barbara De Rossi, Donald Pleasence
a.k.a. Nosferatu in Venice

vampireinvenice2 An unofficial sequel to Herzog’s Nosferatu… Well, that was the plan, anyway. The intent was rapidly derailed when Kinski showed up and proclaimed that he wouldn’t cut his hair, so the vampire here is not the bald creature from the original (and Murnau’s original), but sports a typically Kinskiesque main of shaggy, blond hair. [He does, however, have the same fangs as in Herzog’s film] That was only the start of a nightmare production, which chewed up and spat out any number of directors, while the money ran out when they had only filmed half the story. We’ll talk about that in a bit. Get some popcorn.

Vampire hunter Professor Paris Catalano (Plummer) is called to Venice at the behest of Helietta Canins (De Rossi), who wants his opinion on a tomb, tightly secured with iron bands, she has found in the family crypt. Could this be the actual resting place of the infamous Nosferatu (Kinski), who supposedly left Venice two centuries earlier? Turns out he did have a connection to the household, vampirising a distant ancestor of Helietta, whose portrait bears a spooky resemblance to her descendant. [Anyone who has seen more than two vampire movies will know immediately where this is going] Helietta organizes a seance, to try and contact Nosferatu’s spirit, but it acts more as a wake-up call, and he rises from his rural grave, though what he really wants is the black veil of death. Fortunately, the only thing that can kill him is the love, freely given, of a beautiful virgin. Any of those around? Hello, Helietta’s little sister, Maria…

Though set in the modern day, the film rarely feels like it, with a stiff, mannered approach to the characters which appears rooted more in the Hammer tradition of middle Europe in Victorian times. Venice provides a highly evocative backdrop and, overall, it looks very, very nice: credit to Tonino Nardi for the cinematography. Many scenes have a dreamlike – more accurately, nightmarish – quality that is not dissimilar to Herzog’s version, with people moving in what often seems like slow-motion. Nosferatu is particularly good at that, capturing perfectly the world-weary air of the undead: when you’ve lived for hundreds of years, you aren’t going to be in a rush to get anywhere. However, even its most ardent fans would have to admit that the story leaves a lot to be desired, and some scenes, such as Nosferatu flying, in very badly-done green screen, with his lady, may have strayed in from entirely different films [Superman would be a good guess for the one mentioned]. These do a good job of destroying the atmosphere, and the end result is a patchwork of the creepily effective and the cringe-worthy.

vampireinvenice1There’s good reason for this, because the film had as many as six different directors at various stages of proceedings. According to Luigi Cozzi, who was originally the special effects supervisor, the first was Maurizio Lucidi, who shot some scenes without Klaus, such as the Venice Carnival. Then Squittieri Pasquale wrote a new script, but didn’t actually direct anything. Third was Mario Caiano: he lasted two days, mostly spent arguing with Kinski. When Caiano left, producer Augusto Caminito took over, but was so slow he asked Cozzi to help out, doing second-unit work. Klaus also had “some creative ideas,” which Cozzi helped commit to celluloid. Kinski’s ideas made no sense, even with input from an experienced film-maker – but it kept the star happy, and willing to work with Caminito. This was likely in the best interests of both men, as part of the lure for Kinski to reprise his role, was that Caminito was willing to fund Klaus’s pet project, Paganini.

But eventually, the money for this one ran out, with only half the story filmed – in part, I suspect because Caminito had to pay all three directors who left the project their full fees. But he eventually cobbled together something that was semi-coherent, and it was premiered at the Venice Film Festival, mostly due to the producer’s clout. It certainly wasn’t as well-received as Herzog’s, and that’s fair enough, since Nosferatu had a far stronger consistency of tone, even if it was less imaginative and inventive. This throws some curves into the standard vampire mythology, such as the suggestion that they can be killed with mercury, while daylight and crosses are ineffective. However, these ideas are never developed, although who knows what might have happened, had the film been able to be made as originally intended.

The audio side is kinda weird too. It’s mostly a synthesizer-based soundtrack by Luigi Ceccarelli – but it also throws in chunks from the Vangelis album, Mask, as if Ceccarelli also had a fight with Kinski and left the production, leaving Caminito to fill in the gaps from his CD collection. Watching this with the English-language dialogue is equally odd, because Plummer and Pleasence are clearly recognizable as themselves, while Kinski is just as obviously dubbed by someone else. It doesn’t really impact his performance very much, because he hardly has many more lines than he did in the original – it’s all about the presence. And the staring. There’s lots of staring. Plummer provides good support in a role I can easily imagine Peter Cushing having played, but Pleasence is never given too much to do. He plays the family priest, Don Alvise, and one wonders, again, if perhaps his role would have been more pivotal had the film been completed.

In some ways, this is a Rorschach Blot film, where what you get out, is based on what you put in. Knowing about its troubled production, you’re left having to fill in the blanks yourself, and how much you enjoy this, may well depend on how good a job you do. Here’s the Japanese trailer.


Vampire in Venice aka Nosferatu a Venezia (1988… by Z-cinema

Crawlspace (1986)

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Dir: David Schmoeller
Star: Klaus Kinski, Talia Balsam, Barbara Whinnery, Kenneth Robert Shippy

“We were doing this one scene in the crawlspace–so it was uncomfortable for everyone. I asked for a second take and Klaus shot out like a bullet, running toward me–as if he were going to attack me. He was screaming at the top of his lungs, ‘I am not a hamburger! I am Klaus Kinski!’ ”
— David Schmoeller

The first time I was aware of this film was not through the movie itself, but through the short created by writer-director Schmoeller 13 years later. Entitled Please Kill Mr. Kinski, which showed up on, of all things, a DVD collection put out by Troma. That’ll be covered elsewhere on the site, but in brief, it details the hellish experience the director had, working with Kinski during the shooting of Crawlspace in Rome. When I eventually saw the film, I must confess to being somewhat disappointed. Not, I should stress, in Kinski, who gives one of his more impressive English-language performances. But the whole idea of a mad doctor scuttling around inside the walls of his apartment complex, spying on and murdering his tenants, is a pretty ludicrous concept.

Fou a tuer 001frfrThat barely scratches the surface of the madness which is Dr. Karl Gunther (Kinski), the son of a Nazi war criminal who escaped Germany and hid out in Argentina. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree, with Gunther Jr. euthanizing patients at his hospital, and graduating from there to full-fledged murder. When the heat grew too much in Buenos Aires, he headed for America, and sets up as a landlord – catering to pretty young female tenants in particular [Schmoeller makes a cameo near the beginning, as a prospective tenant who fails all of the good Doctor’s criteria] But it’s not long before he’s keeping a woman (Tane McClure, Doug’s daughter) in a cage, having removed her tongue. After every murder, he plays Russian roulette, greeting his survival with a muttered, “So be it…” Then there’s watching films of Hitler, while smearing make-up on his face and yelling “Heil Gunther!” It’s almost as if the writer started with a list of “Ways to make your character seem insane,” and included them all.

This makes some sense, with a bit of background. Schmoeller’s script was written on request by Empire’s Charles Band, who wanted a script which could be used with a set that was already built for another shoot. The original version perhaps made somewhat more sense, as the central character there was a Vietnam vet, who returned from his experiences mentally broken. He recreated his POW camp in the attic, and used bamboo traps to ensnare his victims. However, Band nixed the idea, suggesting the lead be made a Nazi, and that he could get Kinski for the role. Schmoeller agreed, and rewrote the role specifically for him. And, I have to say, it fits Klaus like a glove. You just can’t imagine anyone else playing the part. Every twitch, gaze and mannerism is Kinski being Kinski. Of course, that might largely be down to Schmoeller’s on-set problems: he said, “I would go to work every morning with my stomach in a knot.” So, how do you direct, that which will not be directed?

One imagines, probably by standing back and getting out of the way, once other possibilities e.g. murder, have been exhausted. That’s largely what happens to the storyline as well: it stands back and gets out of the way of Kinski’s performance. The basics are established quickly i.e. Gunther is a loony, and there’s a new tenant, Lori (Balsam) after the previous occupant makes the mistake of going into the attic. I had to smile at this exchange, Schmoeller clearly riffing off one of Klaus’s most iconic performances:

Loril: I swear, the guy across the hall was a vampire. You know what I like most about this place?
Gunther: That there are no vampires?

crawlOnce the basics are established, not much actually happens, until the final 20 minutes. There’s a faux-rapist – ah, those wacky eighties! – and the brother (Shippy) of one of Gunther’s Argentinian victims shows up, creeps Lori out by knowing way too much about her. Gunther almost carries out a plan to execute him with a poisoned blowdart (because there is no better weapon to lug around a crawlspace than a blow-gun…), before opting for a more painful method of dispatch. That’s about it in terms of story arc, with the rest of the running time largely occupied by Kinski acting increasingly deranged. He finally topples over the edge, leaving Lori trapped in the house and the subject of an extended stalk ‘n’ slash sequence, as she crawls through the ducts and around the building, pursued by her landlord. The highlight here is probably when he gets on a wheeled dolly and starts whizzing round the ducts like a crazed street luger.

However, it is never anything less than thoroughly watchable, and it’s entirely down to Klaus. Without him, it’s difficult to see how this could ever sustain a viewer’s interest, though the Vietnam riff originally planned, might have gone in some interesting directions. Say what you like about Kinski – and Schmoeller certainly has over the years since – there’s no doubt that he could be utterly compelling. This is an excellent example of mediocre material being elevated by his presence, and after a spell of these review where he was an ancillary character, getting limited screen time, it was nice to get back to a movie where he’s front and center.  He certainly delivers – the US trailer below gives a good idea of what you can expect.

Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)

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Dir: Werner Herzog
Star: Klaus Kinski, Isabelle Adjani, Bruno Ganz, Roland Topor

I’ll confess, I have never been able to get through this one without falling asleep, and always feel guilty about dozing off. It possesses a very languid sense of pacing, unfolding at the pace of an unmanned sailboat drifting into dock – one of the most memorable sequences depicts exactly that. Quite often, I found myself urging the film to get on with it, as in the trip by Jonathan Harker (Ganz) from the local village up to Dracula’s castle, which appear to unfold in real time. Still, asking Herzog to hurry up is a pointless exercise – it’s not what he does.

There’s certainly a wonderful sense of atmosphere, right from the opening shot which pans along a series of what you first think are dolls, only to eventually realize they are actual mummified corpses [victims of a cholera epidemic in 1830’s Mexico, filmed by Herzog – the cemetery was also used as a location in El Santo contra las momias de Guanajuato]. When you see Kinski’s Dracula, it’s an incredibly-creepy sight, even if you wonder why Harker completely fails to notice the fangs and claws which his real-estate client is sporting.

It is, very much, a loving homage to F.W. Murnau’s original, though the expiration of copyright allows Herzog to use the actual names of the characters, rather than, as Murnau did, make them up in a (failed) attempt to avoid a lawsuit. The make-up is almost identical, not just on the vampire, but on Lucy Harker (Adjani), who has the same pasty-pale pancake on her face and perpetually-concerned expression as Ellen Hutter in the original – see the illustration on the left. Indeed, sometimes the only way to tell her and Dracula apart is to look for the pointy teeth.

The relationship between Kinski and Herzog on this one was relatively peaceful, helped by the chore of getting the lead ready for his close-up. “If Kinski would start a tantrum, it would be four hours of make-up again,” said Herzog, a prospect which apparently kept Klaus reined-in. There were more problems with the thousands of rats which were needed by Herzog. The Dutch city of Delft, having just dealt with a rodent infestation, was unimpressed by the idea of letting large numbers roam their city. Additionally, the laboratory rats bought were white, and needed to be dyed: they responded to the process by licking themselves clean.

While Kinski is great at capturing the tortured angst of an immortal soul, who yearns for death as an escape from his loveless existence, it’s too restrained to be truly effective. Kinski is at his best when he’s not constrained, when there is a sense of him being unleashed in front of the camera. Here, it’s more a sense of someone who is tired of everything, who can barely be bothered to go through the motions any more, and completely lacking in passion. If that makes him a somewhat tragic figure, it’s not one in whose company you want to spend much time.