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 THE TENEMENT
(Brain Damage
Films) Not Rated. Let me first write that I love low-budget horror
movies! I have seen my share of Good, Bad, and Awful low-budget movies
over the years. Oddly enough, 'The Tenement', a recent release from Brain
Damage Films, includes moments of all three types.
It begins with great promise; an old man stands
outside starring at a multi-unit apartment building, presumably "The
Tenement", a younger man in a black trench coat and long black hair
approaches and asks what he's looking at? The elderly gent says he used to
live in this building and that some buildings are inherently evil.
Such begins what is supposed to be 4 stories
about 4 different families who all lived in this evil building at
different times. The story that starts the film is about a couple in a car
on Lovers Lane who are attacked, and the girl is crucified and sacrificed
in a bizarre ritual.
The stories are completely disjointed. One
appears to be filmed in a two story house and another in a vacation cabin,
so I didn't quite understand how these stories were taking place in a
tenement building located in the inner city, when they were obviously not
in the building. I was totally confused by this and the stories themselves
were pretty weak.
However, I must add that this movie also contains
two of the greatest horror movies scenes ever made. The first includes the
previously mentioned crucifixion scene; which is better than all of that
lame Passion of the Christ big budget bummer put together.
The other scene is a spectacular moment in horror
movie history; toward the end of the movie, a stripper (Syn DeVil) dancing
in a club squeezes a crème-filled style doughnut covered with powdered
sugar between her bare breasts and drops it in on the stage in front of a
patron. In an effort to see this great scene again, my husband grabbed the
remote control to rewind, but this particular screener did not offer any
chapters and we were back at the beginning of the movie, which was a real
bummer.
The movie features Michael Gingold from Fangoria
Magazine, so I have to admit I expected a little more. Several of the
stories had promise but no pay off, and I won't ruin the ending for you
since I myself didn't see anything past the doughnut scene as I tried to
watch it again, but fell asleep.
My last complaint is in one of the vignettes.
There is a Psycho style mother and son relationship, and while the
mother sounds old, she looks barely old enough to be the guy's mother. To
top it off, we come to understand the son is the elderly man outside the
building in the beginning, yet in his story with his mum he is sitting on
a futon with a bookshelf of videos behind him-what's the deal with that? I
can suspend disbelief with the best of them and I gave The Tenement every
chance, but this DVD pushed it just a little too far. - Amy Bugbee
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