Now I realize that the term "grindhouse" has been used (and misused) to death in the last few years or so, but "grindhouse" does perfectly encapsulate certain type of films, whether you want to call them exploitation, b-movies, trash cinema, low-budget, independent, sleazy—all of these terms describe the kind of films you'd watch in a seedy downtown grindhouse theater of any major metropolitan back in the day. Now myself, I'm too young to have gazed my eyes on the wonders of places like 42nd street in New York City back in it's heyday, but in my mind I'm there all the time. TENEMENT is the kind of film that I can imagine being emblazoned on some grimy looking marquee back in 1985 during its initial theater run. I can imagine gazing at the film's one sheet hanging on the wall outside, which featured some bad ass looking thugs (one of them a hot chick no less) looking like leftovers from Walter Hill's THE WARRIORS. Then I'd no doubt notice the bottom of the poster where it states "Rated X for violence!" Just one look at that kind of stellar advertisement and I would have been a popcorn purchase away from sitting my happy ass down in that very theater and waiting in glee for the lights to dim so my eyes can feast on the cinematic carnage that awaited me…because I am a true degenerate cinephile tried and true! Sure I may not have been able to see TENEMENT in a real grindhouse theater, but I enjoyed it the privacy of my own home nonetheless.
Lets take a journey back to New York City, the South Bronx to be specific, circa 1985. Now I know the South Bronx has always been considered a rough part of NYC, but whether gangs roamed the streets dressed like a 80's heavy metal cover band I have no idea—nor do I care, but the gang in this film do and I'm okay with that. Now picture the basement of one of the shittiest, ghetto-un-fabulous looking tenement buildings ever designed. I mean a building not suitable as an outhouse, let alone somewhere for people to live. Well that basement is the gang's headquarters. A place for them to they get wasted, brawl with each other, sexually molest their one female member, and use rats as target practice—I mean these guys are living the life of motherfuckin' Riley up in this bitch! That is until, the landlord becomes a huge buzzkill and calls the cops on them and the gang end up being carted away and taken downtown…wait aren't they already downtown? …Well they're arrested anyways. It's a glorious day for all the tenants as they watch the gang get arrested and then they party like its 1999—in other words prematurely. Yeah, seeing as though the cops didn't have anything to hold the thugs with (doh!) they are released within a few hours. Naturally the gang has revenge on their minds, but first a trip to the dope-man is their first priority…I mean c'mon, they weren't able to get a fix for a whole two hours! So once they get fucked up from the neck up—then and only then is it time for revenge.
The gang is led by Chaco, a mysterious Hispanic dude who mostly acts like an evil version of the Fonz'…you know if the Fonz' was a sociopath that ordered Ralph Mouth, Potsie, and Chachi to gang rape Mrs. Cunningham. Chaco's revenge is plain and simple—he wants all the tenants dead. Does it matter if they had anything to do with the gang's incarceration or if they're completely innocent bystanders? Actually, yes—Chaco gets a moment of sobriety and decides to let the women and children go…I'm just kidding, he wants them all dead…he's a real asshole. The tenants on the gang's hit list include a single black female mother and her 4 year old daughter, an old couple, a prostitute that sells her a$$ets to support her heroin addicted boyfriend, an old lady as old as the building itself, a Hispanic family consisting of a single mother, her grown pregnant daughter and two younger children, the building handyman, a blind man and his dog, and a little sawed-off shithead of a landlord. Now what I found interesting is the order of which the tenants meet their fates and who is left alive in the end. Not to say it's a one-sided fight—that wouldn't be entertaining, no the tenants do eventually fight back and go tit-for-tat with the gang, as they also killed one by one. Ultimately this is what makes this movie, as well as most home invasion movies, so damn much fun. To see a power struggle played out to such violent ends is a glorious thing indeed.
TENEMENT (aka Game of Survival and Slaughter In The South Bronx) was directed by Roberta Findlay (wife of Michael Findlay), who prior to her venture into exploitation, directed such XXX features as KINKY TRICKS and LIQUID A$$ETS (usually under a male pseudonym). She also worked on a few of her husbands films as well and if you know any of his work, you will know some of what you expect with TENEMENT. So right off the bat you know you're in for something special. It's rare to find a female director of both exploitation and/or porn for one, and secondly it's a rare treat to get a female's perspective on such a male driven and often-misogynistic sub-genre of film—that being the "home invasion" sub-genre. Yes, TENEMENT takes a lot of queues from such films as FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE, HOUSE ON THE EDGE OF THE PARK, LAST HOUSE ON THE BEACH, and even STRAW DOGS (two of the all time best home invasion movies), but it may be the first were a gang take over a whole apartment building. In fact TENEMENT constantly refuses to fit into any predesigned mold set by those previous films, in many ways.
As much as I enjoyed and just plain love this film, it truly is a bad, bad movie. It is just horrible on so many levels that it comes full circle and becomes awesome again. The gore effects are z-grade, the blood looks like Campbell's Tomato Soup at times and the less said about the refrigerator (obviously made out of Styrofoam) that gets used as a weapon, the better. The acting is probably the most hit and miss of any film I've ever seen. Literally for every good performance there is an absolutely embarrassingly bad performance. A few standouts include Paul Calderon as Hector, who (not surprisingly) went on to have one of more successful careers of anyone else in the film—and he hams it up big time here. Gy Marino as the pregnant Anita easily gives the best performance (which isn't really saying a whole lot, but hey). Another standout, not necessarily for his acting, but for his hammy—camera-mugging hilarity would be Dan Snow, better known to fellow Tromaniacs as Cigar Face from the TOXIC AVENGER movies. Last, but not least, Enrique Sandino, who plays Chaco truly creates a statue-esque villain and thankfully he has very little dialogue, because he's no actor, but damn if he doesn't have screen presence.
As I mentioned earlier, it's the flow of the film that makes TENEMENT something out of the ordinary. We assume the black ex-military handyman will be the film's hero and while he has a few moments of valiance, he's not the hero. We don't assume the strong black woman, with dreams of leaving the urban hell she lives in with her very cute daughter will not only be the first human killed (sadly, the blind man's pooch is the first to go)—but also brutally raped with her daughter (you know, the really cute one) in the next room. Yeah…didn't see that one coming. At this point there's no predicting who will live and who will die and that alone is praiseworthy. While the film is gratuitously violent (it revels in it) and was indeed rated X by the MPAA for its level of violence, by today's standards it really isn't that shocking with the exception of the one and only rape scene that I mentioned…which really is quite nasty.
So TENEMENT may not have aged all that well, and the hilarious old school rap theme song performed by The Kool Krew doesn't help matters much (as awesomely bad as it is), but the film stands as a time capsule of an era of films like COMBAT SHOCK, STREET TRASH, DEADBEAT AT DAWN, SLIME CITY, and BASKET CASE; grimy, violent, sleazy, nasty, albeit exaggerated tales of the horrors of the inner city—where life is cheap, the hookers are cheaper, and death lurks around every corner. I can't quite pinpoint why I love these kinds of films other than I find them damn entertaining, that and I'm a sick, sick man. If you like any of the films I just mentioned, than you will more than likely get a kick out of TENEMENT as well.
