Tenement (1985)
Shriek Show / Full Screen (4:3) / Color / 1 disc / 94 minutes

Surely they sent me the wrong disc. When the latest offering in Shriek Show’s “Grindhouse Psychos” series spooled up in my DVD player, I was greeted by mid-80s rap music — a cheap knock-off of “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash. What the hell was this? BEAT STREET? BREAKIN’ or perhaps, KRUSH GROOVE?

Nah, that was just the theme song for Roberta Findlay’s 1985 X-rated urban warfare/revenge flick, TENEMENT, originally titled GAME OF SURVIVAL.

And I know I’m getting way off topic right off the bat, but the theme song is damned catchy. It’s by group called the Kool Krew and it goes a little something like this:

Tenement is the place to live / Some look so bad they make you wanna shed tears / Tenement is the place of shelter / But you still can’t escape the helter skelter!

Word has it T-Pain has appropriated that for a new single.

The movie is fairly nifty as well, that is if you have the stomach to endure some fairly sick shit. TENEMENT is one skanky, sordid piece of celluloid. Consequently, it’s probably Findlay’s best work of the 80s.

Known for her work in the proto-porn world of roughie films in the late 1960s (TOUCH OF HER FLESH comes to mind), and later for SNUFF — the unmarketable Argentine film that was eventually turned into a marketable American film in 1976 — Findlay cut her teeth as a director and photographer of all manner of sleaze right into the late 1980s, working in her hometown of New York City. Yeah yeah, most of her output was hardcore porn, but some of her later films were straightforward exploitation. TENEMENT was one of those films, along with the hopelessly dull haunted whorehouse schoolgirl slasher BLOOD SISTERS (1987) and strange covert nun meets Satan beneath New York thriller PRIME EVIL (1988).

The defining characteristic of most of Findlay’s later films is that they are miserably dull. But in 1985, with Findlay shooting and directing TENEMENT, she struck gold. Featuring a dedicated, multi-ethnic cast, a filthy mise en scene, lavish amounts of profanity and gag-inducing violence, TENEMENT is jam-up with action from beginning to end. Combine that with a bizarre soundtrack that at times vacillates between glitchy Kurzweil keyboard beats and wannabe Goblin prog-rock, and you have the formula for a surprisingly entertaining little film.

The plot is simple. Tenants of a run-down apartment building in the South Bronx take up arms and fight back when a gang of thugs try to make the tenement their home. Habitual drunk Rojas sets the violence in motion when he calls the cops on the multi-racial gang living in the building’s basement.

The gang members, as we learn, have been hiding out in the basement for the past four days, snorting coke off the tips of their switchblades, shooting and eating rats, injecting heroin, and just basically doing all the things that an inner-city gang (whose members are male, female, black, white and Puerto Rican) can do to cause anxiety for law-abiding citizens. By the way, what’s with those clothes? These gang-bangers look like they stepped out of a leather bar and into an episode of Square Pegs. Not a good look, son.

The cops, who look and act like the guys from the POLICE ACADEMY movies (according to Findlay, they were actually NYC police officers!), roll up and haul the thugs off, as Rojas boasts of his success in having them rousted. The warm fuzzy feeling doesn’t last long though. The gang gets out on a technicality and comes back for revenge. They start by threatening Rojas with object sodomy, then scale a liquor bottle across his face. The punks skulk off to do a variety of mood-altering drugs, then come back with murder on their minds.

Even before the gang plans their siege on the tenement, things aren’t going particularly great for the tenants themselves. Carol looks like a doughy fifth-grade schoolteacher, yet she whores herself out to support her worthless junkie boyfriend, Poppo. Washington is an electrician by day, a jazz musician by night and the archetypal angry black man the rest of the time.

Then there’s the blind man and his faithful dog, the pregnant woman, the elderly couple, the old Jewish lady, the put-upon single mom trying to improve life for her daughter, and of course, the sloppy drunk and moderately racist Rojas, whose pock-marked face looks like something left to spoil for months in a refrigerator.

There’s no relief once the violence starts. The blind man’s dog gets it first, but it’s the beating, broom handle rape and skewering murder of the single mom, Leona, that really makes the gorge rise. If Findlay were Hitchcock, this would be her “shower scene.” The hand-held camera work is raw, and the hateful harangues of dialog interspersed with the sickening action (”Cut her up Choco” … “She likes it” … “Get the broom .. ram it in there.. ram it, ram it!”) make for visceral cinema. The scene ends with the woman’s corpse splayed out like the final shot of Marion Crane in PSYCHO. And like that film, the violence is implied, rather than seen.

From here on, Washington takes charge like Duane Jones in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, but that doesn’t stop the thugs from molesting an elderly lady and slitting her throat, beating the snot of out Poppo the junkie and eviscerating him, and killing one of Carol’s johns. Then there is the rat-poison-laced heroin shot that one of the thugs injects himself with, resulting in a fairly stunning spasmodic death on a kitchen floor.

The fun really begins with the residents decide to fight back — old ladies take up ball bats, Washington uses his electrician skills to rig up an electrocution device that Angus MacGyver would have been proud of, and even the kids get some action, flinging pots of boiling water at the thugs.

For all you hematolagics out there, be sure to catch the “love scene” between gang leader Chaco and his girl, Chula, featuring some unsanitary blood-smearing foreplay.

I’ve only managed to scratch the surface of all the depravity TENEMENT has to offer. Sure the plot has some holes in it.. and sure, the picture lumbers towards a predictable outcome, but who cares? It’s a solid B-movie that should appeal to fans of urban grit such as DEADBEAT AT DAWN and the DEATH WISH series.

Most of the cast members went on to do little if anything after TENEMENT. One notable exception is Paul Calderon, who played the psychotic gang member Hector. There’s a reason he will look familiar to most pop culture junkies: He’s been on dozens of television shows, including recent episodes of Law and Order. Tarantino geeks will remember him as the affable bartender from PULP FICTION (”My name’s Paul, and this shit’s between y’all”).

Rhetta Hughes played Leona, the unfortunate rape victim. In addition to accolades she has garnered as a Broadway performer, Hughes, like Calderon, has had roles on TV’s Law and Order. Perhaps more interesting is the fact that her first role was a bit part in Mario Van Peebles’ pioneering blaxploitation classic, SWEET SWEETBACK’S BAADASSSSS SONG back in 1971.

TENEMENT was rated X when it was initially released, effectively limiting it to the adult theater circuit. Findlay, in her commentary on the film, claims the rape scene put the picture into X territory. Viewers expecting lots of sex and nudity will probably be disappointed. Short of some brief topless scenes, there’s not much to see here. Blood flows freely though, albeit, most of the violence has a comic book undertone. Still, this isn’t a movie to watch in mixed company.

The film’s unique score was composed by frequent Findlay collaborator, Walter Sear, who also produced and edited the picture.

Shriek Show has done another decent job in packaging a relatively obscure film with some decent bonus features. There’s a commentary track and a great interview segment with Findlay, during which she explains some of the challenges in making TENEMENT, and how portions of the film are even autobiographical in nature. The disc also features the original trailer, radio and TV spots, a photo gallery, and a selection of trailers for other Shriek Show joints — Findlay’s BLOOD SISTERS, DUCK! THE CARBINE HIGH MASSACRE, BLOOD FEAST 2 and NEW BARBARIANS.

Audio and video quality is just OK. I was a little put out with the full screen transfer (Was this film ever released in widescreen?). Sound is clippy and the picture has some weird color shifts and there’s the usual patina of dust and grime for a film of this age. No major problems.

TENEMENT gets high marks from me, so it deserves our highest honor — a shamefully choice four-star rating. Watch it. Enjoy it. Do a pop-and-lock routine to the theme song. Take a shower. You’re going to need it after all that breakdancing.

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Check out a trailer for TENEMENT below: