What a waste of my time!!!

the audience applauded

Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Absolutely amazing

Fed up with their basement serving as headquarters to a gang of violent, drug-taking street punks, the tenants of a run-down New York tenement building inform the police about their unwanted guests' stash of illegal narcotics and firearms; believing the gang to be safely behind bars, the delighted tenants hold a party to celebrate, but elation quickly turns to terror when they discover that the thugs have been released from jail and are looking for revenge.Just a few seconds of the horribly dated rap theme-song for Tenement should be enough for most sane movie fans to switch off in abject horror, but those who stay the distance (the certifiably insane, lobotomy patients, obsessive fans of z-grade trash) will find that bad 80s music is possibly the least offensive thing about this film: schlock director Roberta Findlay packs her film to the rafters with scenes of mean-spirited violence and sleaze carefully designed to keep even the most twisted of movie degenerates drooling with glee, including several bloody stabbings, a pair of scissors in the face, a throat slashing, and a rape that ends with the old 'broom handle up the punani' routine.Sadly, while a catalogue of assorted unsavoury acts like this would normally qualify a film as an unmissable exploitation treat in my book, Findlay's typically ham-fisted direction, unconvincing gore, and terrible performances from nearly all involved make this film a gruelling experience for all the wrong reasons. It's not often that a movie can feature so much atrocity, yet still be most memorable for its bad guys' (and gal's) terrible dress sense: sporting cropped vests (tastefully slashed), chains, black spandex, and a fetching range of studded leather apparel, they look like they've either spent the evening partying hard at an S&M club or just been to an audition for raunchy 80s dance troupe Hot Gossip.Some IMDb reviewers have cited this as their favourite of Findlay's directorial work, although as far as I am concerned, choosing your favourite Roberta Findlay film is akin to choosing your favourite STD.

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.

I am a great fan of this movie. The first time I saw it (I was 18yoa) I was blown away !!!. The actors of course are not going to win any academy awards for their performances here, but the intensity and brutal violence of this flick cannot be denied. I was a punker kid growing up in L.A. so it reminds me of youth. There are many scenes in this movie that will forever be engraved in my mind, like when "Chaco" and the rest of the gang smoke PCP in the junk yard and in a drug rage vow "to take their building back!!" Brings tears to my eyes(sigh)......... The gang even kills a blind man's seeing eye dog, isn't that just too classy!!!??? Well, you got to see this movie. I'ts one of my favorites. Hail Chaco !!!P.S. "Dead Boys can't fly" is another winner.

I bought this DVD last Friday because I was looking for some early 80's, politically incorrect, sex'n violence balance to the banality of to-days oh-so-correct trash that Hollywood spews out. As I scanned the shelves for something that would scream Independence, I came across 'The Tenament'.You usually cannot go by what the cover says. They can't ALL be the 'most shocking', 'depraved', 'explicit', 'gut wrenching', 'gory', 'perverted'...well, you get the picture.As I picked up 'The Tenament', I hoped the cover-art hype would be, for once, right on. The claim was it got an X certificate on release and it wasn't because it was a porno in drag! My wife saw the cover and excused herself. She knew I was on an odyssey to combat the effects of the sanitized hogwash we bathe in daily and was not quite ready to cleanse her brain. She has a much higher tolerance, being a woman.I sat down with a very nice glass of chardonnay, dimmed the lights and fired up the DVD.....I was in luck! This was definitely a find - a throwback to the days when you 'made a statement'. Sleezy sex, violence, gore, disco music, electrocution, did I say Gore?, slashings, drug use and other assorted bad stuff. They don't make 'em like this anymore! This is definitely an NC-17 or 'X' for real.Talking of 'X', I really miss the category. I don't mind the porn industry but I'm ticked of they hi-jacked my favorite movie certificate. The Should have used 'P' (for Porn) or 'PPP'.Afterwards I watched the directer interview. Roberta gave some very interesting anecdotes that indicated life during filming was just as bizarre.Well, I'm re-balanced and ready to absorb more of the bland, bleached offal being forced on me by the media moguls.Highly recommended. Watch the extras on the DVD. Not a date movie. Has multiple viewing potential.