Roberta Findlay’s Bronx Tale: Notes on Game of Survival

This chapter examines an outlier from Roberta Findlay’s filmography: Game of Survival (aka Tenement, 1985). If Findlay’s career tracks as exploitation, softcore, hardcore, and, finally, horror, Game of Survival stands out as something different, a brutally violent, urban, action-thriller set in the South Bronx area of New York City. Arguing that it nevertheless conforms to the closer-to-the-mainstream efforts of the latter part of her career, the chapter offers a detailed textual and industrial analysis of the film that situates it within a variety of contexts. Race, place, politics, authorship, and genre are all examined, as are the economic imperatives behind the film’s production, distribution, exhibition, and reception. Ultimately, this outlier, this chapter argues, may very well offer much to understand Roberta Findlay, exploitation film, and the conditions in which it was made and seen.