Paul Day I'll be honest - I couldn't finish this. I'm not sure I've ever seen a b- movie try so hard to be pretentious. It comes of like Plan 9 meets Grand Hotel. A full 20mins gets taken up establishing the apartment building that will be terrorized. Worse, it comes with time stamps as if there's some sort of urgency in the blandness and horrible acting to follow. It's hard to know if the lead villain is Hispanic or a French guy doing an Hispanic. Another small quibble - why are villains all dressed up like BDSM submissives? One would think they'd want to dress a little more dominant. This is a poorly written, directed and thought out piece of crap with literally nothing to recommend about it.

Backlash007 ~Spoiler~"Tenement it's a place to live some look so bad make you wanna shed tears." Tenement: Game of Survival is a tale of urban decay from Roberta Findlay (Blood Sisters, Snuff). Yes, women can make trashy exploitation just as well as men. Perhaps better. This movie has one scene in particular that goes further than anything in Last House or I Spit on Your Grave. I found myself covering my mouth with my hand! You'll know the scene if you've watched the flick. Actually, I'm going to spoil it: A woman is raped to death with a broom and her 6-8 year old daughter sees the aftermath. It was pretty shocking even to me, and I've seen plenty of trashy movies. The storyline is similar to Death Wish 3...only without Charles Bronson. A gang is hanging out in the basement of a building where one tenant has had enough. He calls the cops and the gang is arrested. Unfortunately, the punks are soon released and swear vengeance on all the tenants of the building. Before you can say Assault on Precinct 13, the gang is fighting their way through the building killing everyone. One complaint I had is that I would have liked to get to know the tenants a little better, specifically Mr. Washington. There are some things left unsaid about his character. Was he a Vietnam vet, or just the bada$$ super? The gang members were also one dimensional characters who are only amused by death (even if it's one of their own). I didn't really care when they killed the tenants, and on the other hand, I didn't find myself cheering when they were killed like I should have been. I think the movie is a bit of a failure in that regard, but it's still watchable. I really wouldn't mind seeing this one get the remake treatment. The acting is terrible all around with few exceptions. Those being Joe "Mr. Washington" Lynn, Dan "Cigar Face" Snow, and the always underrated Paul "Always Underrated" Calderon.

The_Void Tenement may clearly be a very cheap production, but this is excellently masked by the thoroughly mean exploitative style. The film is along the same lines as urban exploitation such as Assault on Precinct 13 and The Warriors and is similar in style to both also; although the film actually reminded me a lot of the Lamberto Bava trash classic "Demons", also released in 1985, as the main focal point of the film is on a disorganised group of people trapped in a claustrophobic building and facing off against a group of ravenous thugs. The central setting is a run down block of flats in a poor area of The Bronx. The flats come under attack from a violent street gang and naturally the residents call the cops and get them hauled off to the station. The gang doesn't take lightly to this, however, and after being released a short while later; they decide to take revenge by returning to the flats and trapping the residents inside. The gang hold the residents to ransom with brute force, but things take a turn for the unexpected when the locals turn the tables...Despite obviously being made on a budget, director Roberta Findlay clearly put aside enough of it to ensure that the film features plenty of gory kill scenes. The violence is not constant though it is gratuitous when featured and I'm sure that will delight anyone with a mind to see this film. The style of it verges on post apocalyptic and the costumes worn by the central gang reflect this. The block of flats at the centre of the film provides an excellent location for the film to take place and the director does a good job of enforcing the central situation on the audience and ensuring that the claustrophobia comes across as well as possible. The plot doesn't contain a lot of surprises and it's always obvious where it's going, so it's a good job that getting there is a lot of fun to watch. You can be sure that there's going to be another kill scene just around the corner and the film is pulled off with a pitch black sense of humour which bodes well with the unpleasant goings-on and atmosphere. Overall, this is a cheap and cheerful eighties gore-fest and I'm sure that it will please anyone lucky enough to track it down. Recommended.

christopher-underwood This movie, of course, has it's fans but I just found it tedious. It is not the constant shouting, running up and down the stairwell and the bloody violence that is in itself boring but the manner in which it is depicted. The direction is all over the place, sometimes really effective but often embarrassingly poor. Even without a storyline and with over and under acting, if the vision of the director is focused then we as the viewer can indulge in the resultant movie, be it good, bad or indifferent. The inconsistency continually forces us to reappraise what it is we are watching and with 'Tenement', we are bombarded throughout with clichéd situations, dialogue and camera angles. Were this a film made by complete amateurs, strangely I think it would have been better. It is the very existence of occasional effective moments that continually makes one so aware of the trashy, carelessness of so much else.