Pulpmovies Reviews

“Do you believe a house… a building can be inherently evil?”
“This place draws evil.”

Neatly avoiding the problem that many horror films suffer of too much padding and/or excessive gore, The Tenement is a collection of four short films based around the common theme that the tenement in question is itself inherently evil.

The film starts with a conversation between former resident Ethan Fernier (Pete Barker) and the owner of the block, from which the quote at the start of this review is taken. Ethan, it turns out, was a resident of the apartment block abut 20 years ago… when the murders started.

After a brief hiatus, involving a rather twisted take on the traditional Christian view of death and resurrection, we jump back 20 years to see Ethan’s story unfold.

The young Ethan (Joe Lauria), it turns out, is not the happiest of people. Still living with his overbearing and bedridden mother and haunted by his dead sister he finds his escape through obsessively watching horror films – especially the low budget slashers of one Winston Korman.

Digressing slightly – writer/director Glen Baisley really does wear his influences on his sleeve in this film. The Tenement is packed with references - some subtle, some less so - to directors from Corman to Hitchcock and to films as diverse as Psycho, The Exorcist and Cherry Falls.

This is not to accuse the film of being derivative – it isn’t – and there is a rather neat double bluff going on in young Ethan’s story.

Back to the plot…

By day, Ethan works in a flower stall and - as luck would have it - all his dreams come true when he gets an order for a dozen black roses from none other than Winston Korman.

Excited beyond belief, Ethan takes it upon himself to personally deliver the flowers so that he can meet the great man.

Unfortunately for Ethan, Korman (Michael Gingold) is a rather unpleasant piece of work and manages to thoroughly humiliate the young flower seller in a superbly surreal scene in which young Ethan’s fragile psyche is shattered as he flees from the studio…

… to become Black Rose Killer.

Ethan’s story is a great piece of filmmaking, very effectively capturing the way in which Ethan goes to pieces and his first – not entirely competent – foray into serial murder.

We then jump forward ten years to 1990.

Sarah (Carol DiMarsico), a mute girl loves to dance to the music on the radio. Her neighbour, Henry (John Sudol) loves to watch – much to the concern of Sarah’s over protective father (Floyd Gumble).

Not too surprisingly Sarah eventually finds herself alone with Henry…

Of the four segments that make up the film, Sarah’s story is probably the weakest. For much of the time it looks very much like a very straightforward and rather nasty slasher story.

But the story ends with a very effective twist that more than redeems it.

And then it’s 1999 and time for the next tale which is a werewolf story… sort of.

Jimmy Wayne Garrick (Mike Lane) suffers from paranoia and the story opens with his first attempt to get out a bit more by joining a support group. Things go reasonably well for him at the group, but on his way home he is attacked by an animal.

Waking up the next morning and not entirely sure of what happened, Jimmy starts to convince himself that he was the victim of a werewolf attack and is therefore becoming a werewolf himself…

Jimmy’s story is a darkly comic tale of mental illness and dangerous delusions and his attempts to emulate wolf-like behaviour – his conscious mannerisms and constant posing - are both sad and funny.

And yet, the story also contains a suggestion, implicit rather than explicit, that maybe Jimmy’s change is not entirely in his mind. Maybe there is something going on beyond Jimmy’s delusions…

The final story doesn’t name the main character; a bogus taxi driver and serial killer whose victims tend to be young women.

Like Sarah’s story, this starts off looking very much like a very bog-standard slasher tale.

And like Sarah’s story, this segment more than redeems itself at the end when the taxi driver finally meets the victim he didn’t bargain for…

While watching The Tenement I found myself reminded of Ju-On – the central idea of the building being the source of the evil as well as the use of separate stories to illustrate this are both familiar from the Japanese film.

Where The Tenement differs, however, is in the twisted nature of the stories. None of them end quite as expected and the film as a whole keeps you guessing right up to the end.

Although there are a few places where its ambitions exceed its budget, The Tenement is a film which tells a series of good stories with intelligent twists. It’s also a film that is well worth getting hold of.

Feed on comments to this Post