An Exercise In Nonsense

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Fed up with their basement serving as headquarters to a gang of violent, drug-taking street punks, the tenants of a run-down New York tenement building inform the police about their unwanted guests' stash of illegal narcotics and firearms; believing the gang to be safely behind bars, the delighted tenants hold a party to celebrate, but elation quickly turns to terror when they discover that the thugs have been released from jail and are looking for revenge.Just a few seconds of the horribly dated rap theme-song for Tenement should be enough for most sane movie fans to switch off in abject horror, but those who stay the distance (the certifiably insane, lobotomy patients, obsessive fans of z-grade trash) will find that bad 80s music is possibly the least offensive thing about this film: schlock director Roberta Findlay packs her film to the rafters with scenes of mean-spirited violence and sleaze carefully designed to keep even the most twisted of movie degenerates drooling with glee, including several bloody stabbings, a pair of scissors in the face, a throat slashing, and a rape that ends with the old 'broom handle up the punani' routine.Sadly, while a catalogue of assorted unsavoury acts like this would normally qualify a film as an unmissable exploitation treat in my book, Findlay's typically ham-fisted direction, unconvincing gore, and terrible performances from nearly all involved make this film a gruelling experience for all the wrong reasons. It's not often that a movie can feature so much atrocity, yet still be most memorable for its bad guys' (and gal's) terrible dress sense: sporting cropped vests (tastefully slashed), chains, black spandex, and a fetching range of studded leather apparel, they look like they've either spent the evening partying hard at an S&M club or just been to an audition for raunchy 80s dance troupe Hot Gossip.Some IMDb reviewers have cited this as their favourite of Findlay's directorial work, although as far as I am concerned, choosing your favourite Roberta Findlay film is akin to choosing your favourite STD.

review title lyrics: Marc Almond – The Days of Pearly Spencer "Tenement" is hostile, mean-spirited exploitation in which the cheapness of production is only surpassed by the brutality in tone. Also known as "Slaughter in the South Bronx", this nasty movie perfectly lives up to his reputation of shocking urban horror class-sick! The story opens with a gang of thugs being arrested for drug-abuses and other insane felonies committed in the basement of an apartment complex. The other tenants hope that this will finally mean the end of all crime in their neighborhood, but the gang returns the exact same night already and plots annihilate everyone in the building. The first half hour seems slow and not at all eventful but, in reality, you feel that the tension is being build up towards a claustrophobic highpoint that'll stand for pure mayhem. "Tenement" is very extreme with some of the most disturbing death-scenes ever shot on film. Luckily the special effects are so weak, because the violence is already shocking enough in concept. There's a woman raped and barbarically beaten to death, other tenants are stabbed with rusty pokers and one guy dies after a seriously sick heroine-shot. Furthermore, we have slit throats, electrocution and a truly repulsive castration. Yikes!! There are no real heroes among the tenants and you feel like every character has an equal chance to die (and they most likely WILL before the movie is over). "Tenement – Game of Survival" is hugely controversial cinema and easily one of the most jaw-dropping movies I ever beheld. Enter at your own risk!!

A street gang squatting in the basement of the worn-down title structure is thrown in jail, only to be released the same day, and gunning for the occupants who turned them in. Thus begins "Tenement," a bargain-basement attempt at outdoing the violence and depravity of "Last House on the Left" and its imitators. Instead of increasing its admittedly warped charm, the low budget instead hinders the production, with lamely rendered deaths (that employ the same Campbell's Tomato Soup blood FX), a plodding pace, uneven acting, and some of the most regrettable fashions of the 1980s (which is saying a lot). Director Roberta Findlay (co-author of the notorious "Snuff") poorly juggles windy dialog scenes intercut with violence that is more shocking in theory than execution (the broom-handle rape being a prime example), but also presents a few daringly unconventional characters (including a woman who whores herself out to support her boyfriend's heroin addiction) that raise the interest factor a little. "Tenement," long a lost video relic from the '80s, didn't necessarily deserve to be found, but could actually benefit from a decent remake.

If one were to crown Roberta Findlay's best film, I think TENEMENT would be it. A variation of "people trapped in the house" genre, TENEMENT takes place in a run down building, all in one day with Findlay keeping the tension going with on screen titles giving the time (and sometimes even the apartment levels). This helps as the gang ruthlessly tries to make its way up to the tenants.The gang is, as most gangs in films were during this time period, cinematic-ally goofy. It is a multi-ethnic gang dressed to the hilt in chains and leather. Findlay admits on the DVD audio commentary that during filming she encountered many real gangs in the Bronx and subsequently found out that her vision of gangs "wasn't very realistic." Regardless, the cast, comprised of mostly unknown but professional actors, is very convincing. Both Sam (Joe Lynn) and Chaco (Enrique Sandino), the leaders of the good guys and bad guys respectively, are given very strong portrayals by the actors. An interesting bit of trivia, TENEMENT marks the film debut of Paul Calderon, a recognizable character actor who went on to be in a wide range of stuff from PULP FICTION to LAW & ORDER.One of the multiple films in the mid-80s urban warfare genre, TENEMENT is perhaps the sleaziest of the bunch. Director Findlay goes for the throat in terms of the violence, featuring brutal rapes, stabbings, throat slicing, animal mayhem and castration. It created a cumulative effect so strong that the film was award an X rating by the MPAA (interestingly, so was the gang war epic DEATH WISH 3 at the time, but it was reversed on appeal).