Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Memorable, crazy movie

Good movie but grossly overrated

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

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.

Crawlspace (1972) ** (out of 4) Made-for-TV film has an elderly couple (Arthur Kennedy, Teresa Wright) finding out that a strange young man (Tom Happer) has been living in the crawlspace in their basement. The couple never had their own children so they decide to let the man stay there and try to teach him right and wrong but slowly things start to go bad. CRAWLSPACE has a lot of interesting ideas but sadly none of them have much done with them and in the end we're left with a very talky and long feeling movie. The film actually runs just 74-minutes so it's certainly not long in any way but while watching it the thing feels to go on and on. A lot of this is due to the fact that not much happens in the picture outside of the characters constantly talking about everything that's happening. This is one of those films were the people talk more about something that happened rather than us actually seeing what happened. I say this because there are so many conversations between the husband and wife yet they never seem overly worried about everything that's happening. I mean, I had an extremely hard time believing that anyone could find someone living in their crawlspace and being okay with it. I never believed the story being told and I think had they simply had a reasonable discussion about it then I could have bought into it more. The film does contain some very good performances with both Kennedy and Wright coming off extremely good as the couple. Happer is also good in his role, although he isn't given too much to do since most of his time is unseen in his crawlspace. The film really doesn't turn to the horror elements until the very end so for the majority of the running time we're watching a drama that just never connects.

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.

I would love to see this film as an adult... It would air as the CBS Late Night movie when I was a kid... (I think it was made by the network as a TV film originally) and scared the heck out me as a kid.We had a crawl space and the sounds from the duct vents would horrify me after seeing this for weeks!It always seem to air when I would visit my grandfather's house (out of town) as well. He lived in a home from the turn of the century.Talk about a house that could make some noise after midnight.I too would love to see this released on DVD.With Arthur Miller and Teresa Wright it ought to have been made available to the public by now? It appears a remake is due for 2007 which should get the original re-released on DVD.