Recently a friend of mine brought up the name Klaus Kinski, which reminded me of the short film Please Kill Mr. Kinski that I saw at the 2000 New York Underground Film Festival. So, after a quick search of YouTube, I was pleased to see that the film had been uploaded recently. That’s it embedded above. It’s absolutely hilarious.

Please Kill Mr. Kinski stars and is directed by David Schmoeller, a screenwriter and filmmaker who directed Klaus Kinski in the ’80s horror flick Crawlspace. The short film details the trouble Kinski gave Schmoeller on the set. The actor’s outrageous behavior on set had the crew pleading with the director to hire a hit man to kill him for the insurance money, thus the title of the film.

Unfortunately, I’ve never seen Crawlspace, but Schmoeller did write and direct one of my favorite horror flicks as a kid, 1979’s underground filmmaker Bob Moricz’s wonderful appreciation for this cult classic. Also, here’s a fantastic in-depth interview on the website Terror Trap with Schmoeller that’s well worth reading.

It’s also somewhat funny re-reading my original review of Please Kill Mr. Kinski, in which a younger, punk-ier me felt let down by the film’s ending. I totally don’t have that complaint now. The ending’s actually a nice little coda.