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| The Tenement The Plot Ethan Fernier is obsessed with the horror movies of B-movie director, Winston Korman. His destiny lies in the shadows of a black rose - the symbol of decayed innocence. Sarah, a simple mute, lives her life listening to the radio but obsessed neighbor, Henry Wallace has other plans for her. Jimmy Wayne Garrick is bitten by a wild animal and becomes obsessed with the idea that he is becoming a werewolf. The Taxi Driver is a serial killer who picks up innocent women but one of his victims ends up giving him more than he bargained for. The Movie There's always a good and a bad with any low-budget, independant film I see. Here's the good, every independant movie I see looks and feels more "real" than all of those other movies you see released by big companies. The bad thing is that it sometimes (generally during bloody death scenes and such) makes me feel like I'm watching a snuff movie but at least I can always rest assured that the violence really is fake. Those who are not familiar with the term of a snuff movie, I guess you could say that it's the name of the genre for movies with real death scenes, not staged. I'll break this review down since it is based on 4 different stories. Story #1: Fade To Black This would have to be the best story out of them all. Actually, let me rephrase that, it would have to be the most entertaining as my favourite sub-genre in horror is slasher films. The story is nothing out of the ordinary, you get a guy who is made fun of by many people including his favourite movie director so he becomes a psychopathic killer and gets a little revenge. There's nothing new here in terms of the storyline, to be honest when watching this part of the movie I was reminded of the movie "Bloody Murder" (probably the least respected slasher movie known to the horror audience). Do not misunderstand me though, this really was fun for me to watch. I seriously enjoyed it and even found some satisfaction by the end of it. The music sounds like it was made with a music program called "Music 2000" (which is a game that was released on the Sony Playstation and PC if my memory serves me correctly). How would I know this? Well I own it of course, the music used in the film sounds like the music I made when I was a beginner with that program. The acting in this story is probably the best compared to the others, though I would not stretch my wise words too far as it is your standard low-budget, independant acting. Story #2: Sound Of Silence This story doesn't last long, only about 15 minutes if I remember correctly. Though I honestly can't say I was all that interested in it to begin with. By the end of it I was somewhat confused but ready for the next story that seemed more interesting. Sorry if I make a mistake here but I'm sure I heard a song from the original "Resident Evil" computer game called "moonlight sonata". It may have been from the next story, though it was quite nice to listen to. Story #3: Full Moon Rising I'm not a huge fan of werewolf movies myself but I thought the story was a hoot. The performances in this story are the weakest out of all 4, some of the characters were too serious and some of them were too silly which didn't mix well together for me. The old doctor in the film looked like he just wanted to read his lines and leave the set. The "gay" scene between Jimmy and his friend did get me laughing hysterically though. Story #4: The Taxi Driver Another slasher story but this one seems to be poorly executed or maybe I just didn't get it as the story just seemed dry. I never did understand why the killer is the way he is, I apologise if a story was mentioned to the background of this character but I just never picked up on it. If this makes things better, I probably didn't like it as much as I would have because the best story was first and it just seemed to gradually go downhill as each story progressed. Overall, this is still one of the best independant films I have seen. Thanks to Glen Baisley for sending me the copy to review, you've got some good talent here. I look forward to seeing your future work. The DVD The DVD quality is as good as you can expect from any straight-to-video shot-on-video release. Picture quality is clear though sometimes the night scenes can seem a little grey and hazy. Sound is mostly clear and easy to pick up in most scenes. From what I can tell, this DVD plays in all regions (region 0) as the dvd still played as I flicked through multiple regions on my DVD player. With this DVD you get a load of extra features, a lot of them do give some excellent information (my favourite being the "special effects" featurette). Make sure you go over to the Light and Dark productions site and pick up a copy of this movie while you're there.
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