Crawlspace (1972)

Let's be realistic.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Like the reviewer above me, I saw this when I was young and it returns to my thoughts often...it has a certain haunting quality to it that is hard to define. Powerful and evocative and yet very understated. There is an air of reconciliation for the generations here, after the turbulent and impassioned separation of the 1960s, just passed.No performances stand out in my mind...Matthew Cowles is believable as the small-town heavy, and Arthur Kennedy turns in a memorable performance in the twilight of his career.It's the eerie and unexplained presence of the young man...almost like a lost child, how the old couple summons him up from the crawlspace and just accept him as their surrogate child, that's always stuck with me and made this movie return to my thoughts again and again, after all of these years.

I was pleased to see this old TV-movie was on DVD; we'd had the novel around the house when I was a kid, and I always wondered what this movie would be like. I just finished watching it a few minutes ago, and in my opinion, it's pretty much of a mess. If you're curious about these old 70s TV-movies, it's worth your time, but its brisk running time is actually one of the biggest problems. The plot moves so quickly, and so unrealistically, that some of it was almost laughable. It might be interesting to read the novel, as there MUST be more to this story than its choppy rendering here. It has that grainy, creepy early 70s feel (reminded me of "Let's Scare Jessica to Death" in that way), but don't rent/buy it expecting much, or I think you'll be very disappointed.

Albert and Alice Graves are a retired elderly couple who discover a wild-looking homeless man named Richard living in the crawlspace of their basement. At first they are a little worried and ponder ways to get rid of him but eventually their sympathetic side gets the better of them (as well as Alice's motherly tendencies) and they take him in. First they begin leaving food outside his hole and then Alice even knits him a wee jumper for Xmas. In return Richard helps around the house, mainly chopping wood (he seems have a thing for axes).Everything is going along swimmingly until the jock at the grocery store rips off Richard $20 and he goes back that night and trashes the store with an axe. Albert and Alice cover up for Richard as they are beginning to think of him as the son they never had, but one night after returning home from the orchestra, the couple discover Richard has smashed Alice's loom (he has abandonment issues) and they begin to get a little worried. As time goes on Richard's behaviour becomes more and more psychotic & violent and the old couple basically become prisoners in their own home as Richard refuses to leave & won't let them leave either. This all culminates into a pretty bleak finale involving drunken jocks, the police and an axe (surprise, surprise).Based on a novel by Herbert Lieberman and directed by John Newland (Don't be Afraid of the Dark), Crawlspace is a decent little low-budget 70s thriller. Arthur Kennedy's (Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, Emmanuelle on Taboo Island) performance as Albert and Tom Happer's as Richard are both brilliant and Jerry Goldsmith's eerie score adds loads to the already tense & claustrophobic atmosphere. 4/10

The movie was partly filmed in my father's old grocery store in 1972 in East Norwalk, CT. I was only 13 years old and all I remember was eating the many different kinds of cereals that were used for props in my father's store. I know that it took about 1.5 to 2 days to complete the shooting of the store scene. I was told that part of the movie was also shot in Westport or Weston, CT. There was also another movie shot in my father's store about a year later, but I am not sure what then name of it was. I would be interested in purchasing a DVD of this movie if I could find one. I have seen the movie when I was 13 year old, but I only remember the store scene and the scene were the boy lived in the crawlspace of a house.