The Tenement (2003) — Triskaidekafiles

THE TENEMENT

WRITER: Glen Baisley

DIRECTOR: Glen Baisley

STARRING: Joe Lauria as Ethan Fernier/Black Rose Killer

Michael Gingold as Winston Korman/Boyfriend/Coroner

Carol DiMarsico as Sarah Weston

John Sudol as Henry Wallace

Mike Lane as Jimmy Wayne Garrick

Frank Catalanotto as Frank Cooper

Ed Shelinsky as Taxi Driver

Danielle Russo as Trunk Victim/Jen/Chastity

QUICK CUT: A cluster of tales about the wacky hijinks the residents of a tenement building in Faireview Falls get up to.

THE MORGUE

Ethan - A young man who loves horror movies, and is constantly harangued by his mother, to the point he is driven to become a serial killer. As you do.

Sarah - A young woman who became traumatised by the loss of a family member, and now spends her days not saying a word, and dancing to classical music on the radio.

Jimmy Wayne Garrick - A very paranoid, twitchy guy who is convinced he is turning into a werewolf.

I’m looking forward to when it regenerates into the Elevenement.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Happy Octoberween, Triskelions! This week, it's not just another movie from another 50 pack collection, it's another anthology movie! Now, I don't normally do more than one a year, but I literally picked a movie from Catacomb of Creepshows at random, and this is what came up. The fates have decreed it, and so in accordance with prophecy, let's look at The Tenement.

We open up on the titular building, as an old man is looking at it wistfully, and another, younger fellow comes up to see what his deal is.

The older gentleman says his name is Ethan, and he used to live here, then asks the younger dude if he believes a building can be inherently evil.

Which leads them both to remember a series of murders 20 years ago, from the time when Ethan lived here, including flashbacks to another movie, revealing this is part of a trilogy I guess I need to see now.

Don’t make me come down the stairs, I can’t see shit in this.

This fades to a couple making out in a car, until they are bothered by what they believe is a cop. Long story short; he is not. And he has cultist friends with him, to help drag the pair off into the night.

While they are busy with the boyfriend, the girlfriend actually manages to make a run for it, for a hot second, before they conk her out and drag her off.

She wakes up to find herself being tied AND nailed to a cross. Just to be sure!

I don't wanna spend too much time on this, but the cultists are WEIRD. One of them looks like bargain basement Crow, they have two women who bite the victim's legs with removable vampire fangs, and then they start making out, all under the guise of a holy order to remove sinners from the world.

As the cultists mark the girl with the symbol of a black rose, we cut out to a young Ethan watching the movie and...why do these Pendulum pack picks always have someone cut out from a movie they're watching?? Like...I know it can't be ALL of them, there's 200 of them in these collections! But I have picked three, completely at random, and to have them ALL pull the same trick?? Wild, wild coincidence.

But whatever. Ethan is shocked back to the real world of 1981, with his mother yelling for his attention, She's sick, bedridden, and the movie goes to great lengths to avoid ever showing her, only having Eric reacting to her shrill, demanding voice. Hmm, I wonder whatever the reason for that could be??

Ethan heads to work at the local flower shop, when someone comes in to order black roses for a film being produced by Ethan's favourite director.

After another rough night with mommy dearest, Ethan brings the flowers to Mr. Korman, and gets mistakenly roped into an audition. It does not go well.

Seems like the average audition process to me.

One of the guys there, I want to point out he's quietly muttering over and over, "Can't sleep, clowns will eat me" so I guess someone here is a Simpsons fan.

Following that, it's even more yelling at home, where Ethan snaps his cat's neck, and snaps figuratively as well.

He gets dressed up, after some failed attempts, in all black and goes to stand silently over his screeching mother.

Eventually, she sits up and grabs him, so she was alive this whole time. Why go through ALL that trouble, with really bad framing, to have the Big Twist be she was...ALIVE??

We cut to the director's house, where he's yelling at someone over the phone, as he's burying a cat, which is one hell of a coincidence, but I digress.

Ethan shows up, and of course Korman thinks it's just another audition. This illusion is quickly shattered when Ethan chases him with the shovel until he’s dead. Don't meet your heroes, I guess.

If he wasn’t trying to kill me, I’d give him the part…

With Ethan's story wrapped up, we move on to the 1990s, where a young girl is blithely dancing in her room, and her father is worried about the creep who likes to look in the apartment window lustfully.

Sarah and her family seem to have lost someone, and to recover, and get away from Lurky McCreepsalot, they head off to a cabin in the woods.

But wouldn't you just know it? The neighbour comes along too, and bursts into the house when her parents leave Sarah all alone.

After tormenting her for a bit, and getting his tongue bit for his troubles, Henry thinks he hears something and goes to investigate, Sarah gets an umbrella and attacks him with it.

Waaaugh! What are you going to do now, Batman?

She doesn't press the advantage though, and Henry being much stronger leads to him overpowering Sarah. Aaand cue the sexual assault.

While that's going on, Sarah disassociates and stares off into the distance, until Henry climaxes, and finds himself in a nospace.

He's confused, as one would be, and hands from the darkness begin to grope him. Let's see how he likes it for a bit!

Dude nutted so hard he shot himself into the void.

The rapist eventually has a breakdown, crying about being afraid of the dark, and his daddy to let him out. Ah, he was abused. Cool motive, still rape.

He eventually finds himself back in the real world, and locates Sarah listening to some public domain music, which she has been doing all throughout the short.

She cranks up the volume, making Henry scream out and fall to his knees in pain, as it is clearly much louder for him than us. Ethan coulda used this radio with his mother.

The volume continues to rise until Henry fades out of existence, and the timeline shifts ever closer to the present, by bringing us up to 1999.

We enter this segment in a addiction support group, and one of the members is our main character, a skittish guy named Jimmy.

Oh, and another member of the group, is the same weirdo from the auditions who was into the Simpsons. Which was set 18 years previous. Dude is looking REALLY GOOD for all that time. Nowhere near as good as Ethan looks from 1981 to 2003.

While he's walking home, Jimmy hears some howling in the distance, and he is soon attacked by a 'wolf' that is about as convincing as the ones in Future Shock.

Jimmy heads home and cleans up, passing out, only to be awoken the next day by his best friend, who wants to make breakfast for them.

He's noticing he's a bit hairier, he has a craving for meat, and when he sees his therapist the next day, he is a little too eager to declare, "IT WAS A WOLF." I think we can all see where this is going.

Jimmy is SO DESPERATELY clinging to any minor difference and trying to use it as a sign of lycanthropy, just to gain some sense of power and control over his life. I kinda dig this angle.

After a few more visits to his therapist, Jimmy misses his friend's birthday, but they hang out to have some burgers the next day. But Jimmy is craving some other kind of meat, and bites a huge chunk out of his friend's neck.

On his way to therapy, Jimmy runs into a hooker, and kills her as well. This leads to a few more murders leading to the climax.

The cops grab Jimmy after he kills a stripper and was caught on tape. They drag him in for questioning, and he insists he doesn't remember anything, and they show him a giant wolf like Halloween costume glove, with blades worked into it for claws, which he has been using to go around killing all these people.

Jimmy gets sent away to a mental hospital, where he awakens one night to find a pair of doctors coming for him, telling him he was drawing too much attention...and it's real werewolves! Okay, cool twist.

The final story brings us up to 2000, with a taxi driver picking up a hooker to take her home after a long night of work.

He has other plans though, as he knocks her out and takes her back to the tenement, ties her up, until he strangles her.

Later, he picks up another fare running from a guy screaming and threatening her. She has him take her to the place where Walter Korman filmed his movies, and says she's just going inside to get some money.

At least he waits to get his fare before killing them. Bills to pay and all that.

The Taxi Cab Killer gets bored waiting, so heads inside to just get this over with. The girl is waiting, and willing to pay him in...other ways.

He shoves her against the wall, and oh no, she thinks that's hot. The pair struggle, both say they were just starting to like the other, and we have a bit of a fight.

She gets him up to the hayloft of a barn on the property, and clonks him with a shovel. When he wakes up, the shoe is on the other foot, and looks like we have two killers trying to kill each other.

This just leads to more kissing, and the pair decide it's better to team up for maximum carnage, and ride off into the credits to terrorise the town.

Well, there's a pinch more with Elder Fernier and the new landlord in the present, but not much happens there, other than bookending the movie.

The couple that slays together stays together.

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: Like all these Pendulum pack picks, they video is a bit on the rough side fitting four movies on a disc. This one being two hours long does no one any favours. But it’s all clear enough.

Audio: About what you’d expect here.

Sound Bite: “Fuckin' nuts is what he is!"

Body Count: A little less than I’d like with a “Black Rose Killer” and two hours of runtime, but it’s not bad.

1 - Five minutes and the guy driving his car gets strangled

2 - And then his girlfriend is crufified

3 - Director gets his head bashed in

4 - Rapist gets what he deserves.

5 - Wolfboy eats his friend

6 - And then he eats a hooker

7 - And then a would be robber

8 - Then he slashes the neck of a stripper

9 - And then he gets possibly killed by a real werewolf

10 - The Taxi Cab Killer strangles a victim.

11 - Taxi Girl slashes a throat

Best Corpse: Jimmy eating his friend is the highlight for me.

Blood Type - C+: Not a bad grade here, it tries, and it’s all right.

Sex Appeal: The woman on the cross gets her bra removed showing her breasts, and we also get a nekkid Jimmy.

Drink Up! Every time someone mentions or you see a black rose.

Movie Review: I’m gonna be grading this one a curve, as I tend to do. For what it is, a lower budget indie flick, I kinda dig it. It’s not GREAT, but it does what it does well enough. I love a good themed anthology set around a framing sequence, and this building being evil and drawing people or making them do things, is a nice idea to set this around. The Eric story is probably the strongest, and knowing there are a few more adventures with him are nice to know. In what passes for my research into these things, I discovered there’s not just a trilogy centered around the Black Rose Killer, but Baisley has built an entire UNIVERSE around his fictional town of Fairview Falls and the evil within it. And lemme tell you, I want to do a deep dive and consume it all. I noticed this movie’s universe felt lived in, and now I knew why, and I’d love to see more. Jimmy is probably the other notable story, just for Jimmy’s quirky performance, and it’s really fun, in a darkly comic way. And I do love the romantic team up of the final story too. A very solid three and a half black roses.

Entertainment Value: The kills are fun, there’s sprinkles of humour, and there’s something about this movie that just kept me entertained. It maybe could’ve been a bit shorter, but overall, it’s an interesting little movie. Jimmy brings most of the humour, but there’s some good performances to entertain throughout. Three out of five werewolf gloves.