In December of 1988, I was fortunate enough to get a seat on a Charter Bus bound for New York City as part of a traveling Big Band, led by now famous retro Bandleader George Gee. Playing in the Fourth Trumpet chair, I was perhaps the most expendable member of said Band, the name of the Band was the George Gee Make Believe Ballroom Orchestra, a Band that specialized in performing for Weddings, Corporate events and crowds of the educated who pursued the Old School practice of Swing and Ballroom dancing. The entourage of two Charter vehicles was making the 8-hour trek from Pittsburgh, Pa to the Big Apple to do two shows, one on Long Island on a Saturday Night and then a show at the prestigious Cat Club in Greenwich Village on a Sunday. It was the 17th and 18th of December. On Saturday the 17th, we had some time to kill in Manhattan. My friend at the time, Brian McDonald, who passed away thirty years ago of unnatural causes, was on the trip as well as the Band’s Conga player. I got in touch with my colleague Omar, a childhood chum who was now an up-and-coming Bebop Trumpet player in NYC and was attending the Manhattan School of Music. Omar lived in Spanish Harlem, upon our arrival in New York this particular December, I got in touch with Omar and he told me and Brian to come up and visit him in the afternoon before our Long Island gig.
Brian and I got on the Subway and arrived at our destination, which was a few blocks from Omar’s apartment. New York City in 1988 was wild and untamed. As Brian and I walked the streets, we were suddenly literally surrounded by a multitude, at least 6-8 Men in puffy Winter coats, all speaking some kind of hybrid of English and Spanish. The Men wanted to know if we were interested in purchasing Crack Cocaine from them. Brian and I did our best to keep moving, inferring to these newly met solicitors that we were already high from smoking Marijuana, which was a partial truth. The Men were such relentless and aggressive salesmen, I wondered for a brief moment, is this how I will die? In an instant, I will be robbed, mugged and murdered by local Crack dealers in broad daylight in New York City? Shit, will our bodies even be found? Somehow, Brian and I were allowed to pass, Brian was considerably larger than me and happened to be African-American, I suppose we had the look of harmless innocuous travelers who posed no threat to these street entrepeneurs, who realized we were not in the market today for retail Cocaine purchasing and let us be on our way so they could descend on the next group of lost wondering visitors.
Even so, in that moment, I came to understand the hype declared by the media in Magazines and Newspapers about the dangers of America’s crime and drug-infested neighborhoods, yet these were just people trying to make a buck. They didn’t kill us, they didn’t even harm us, they just possessed some serious-ass aggressive sales techniques. Brian and I made our way to Omar’s and eventually got back to the Hotel in Manhattan in time to make the shuttle for the gig. In the back of my mind, however, I always wondered if we had not made it back, how long before someone would have filed a missing persons’ report? It was New York City, people probably went missing all the time, I thought. Brian and I certainly had a story to tell when we returned to the Hotel to put our tuxedos on.
The mythology of New York City in the 1970’s through the 1990’s was no illusion. Once I returned to NYC in the early 2000’s with my young son to visit my Sister and play pick up gigs in the Bowery, Mayor Giuliani had police with automatic weapons placed seemingly on every corner in Manhattan, the era of immigrant populism was over. Gone was the funky wildness of Times Square, the meshing of the affluent and overeducated with the indigenous Urbanites, as wild as it sounds in earlier days, it was still functioning and familial. I probably visited New York City ten times between 1980 and the mid-1990’s, it never failed to invigorate me, there was an energy there I couldn’t get enough of.
Recently, when dawdling around on the internet, a saw a post from one of those rogue film pages, discussing a movie from the late 1980’s titled “Enemy Territory”. When exploring forgotten B-movies from the past, one can walk a fine line between surprisingly clever and effective and too fucking awkward, amateurish and stupid. Some movies are meant to stay buried. So, rather than take the leap of faith, I figured why not watch the trailer first, see if there’s a chance I could forge through an hour and a half of some unknown and buried shlock. I viewed the trailer of “Enemy Territory” on You tube, the trailer had all the quality of somebody dubbing it off of a pirated VHS tape. But hey, the music (by composers Richard Kosinski and Sam Winans) wasn’t bad for starters, some synth pop funk with some surprising tension. Featuring some actor named Gary Frank I had never heard of, all of a sudden the trailer unfurled a veritable treasure trove of recognizable respectable and dependable names in the cast. The great Tony Todd? Stacey Dash? Ray Parker Jr? Jan-Michael fucking Vincent? What fucking movie was this?
Though the plot looked inane, concerning a White guy and a Black guy trapped in a Bronx high-rise for poor folks on a Friday night, the building dominated by an all-Black street gang who want to kill them for insulting them, I figured, what the fuck, I’ve watched worse. I tapped into a thread on You tube and watched the credits until I saw the name that really intriged me and gave me hope that I would view this yarn until it’s completion; legendary Cinematographer Ernest Dickerson. I’m not going to go as far as some online enthusiasts do, calling it “Die Hard in the Hood”, but for it’s low budget and meager storyline ambitions, I must declare that “Enemy Territory” was pleasantly surprisingly cohesive and engaging, bolstered by good performers who sell this oft-times cliche-ridden script, Dickerson’s camera work is his usual stellar caliber effort and both the TV movie script by Stuart Kaminsky and Bobby Liddell and unflagging direction by Peter Manoogian do this little gem justice.
While the movie’s initial narrative does seem to be about the innocuous innocent White guy just trying to do his job (isn’t that what the media says about ICE officers these days?), caught up in Ghetto dynamics and drama, the film gives us a spate of personalities who live in the squalor of Housing Project life with dignity and integrity, aside from the nefarious Gang of African-Americans who terrorize the building on a nightly basis, of course. When Gary Frank as Barry, the strongly affable insurance Man is ordered by his apparently very Jewish boss to go obtain an insurance policy payment from a retired Educator on a late Friday evening when the sun goes down early, there initially doesn’t seem to be much contentiousness involved. Even though he discovers it’s in one of NYC’s worst neighborhoods, it’s a routine gig; get in, get out, score some points with the boss so he’ll get off his ass. While the film devolves into a movie of potentially nightmarish survival for the upwardly mobile White guy, the movie’s Black characters seem acclimated to the ideal that the wanton violence that transpires is just part and parcel for another night in a dangerous Housing project.
“Enemy Territory” plays on the audience’s predisposed notion that everyone knows there are savagely dangerous apartment buildings in Urban areas in the 1980s. While this film takes that concept to steroid-like extremes, the picture puts forth the notion that everyone who’s poor and a Minority knows there are places you just don’t go and people you don’t fuck with after dark. In this regard, Barry is like a missionary, oblivious to the dangers of the Urban jungle and as an envoy of the Corporate world, assumes he can go anywhere as a suit-wearing White business guy. Ray Parker Jr (yes, the singer of the “Ghostbusters” theme and other 1980’s R and B pop hits) is Willie, a telephone company employee who is visiting the same dangerous apartment building to get laid after work, yet Willie knows what to do and how fraught with trouble the building is. When Barry enters the run-down, graffiti-covered apartment complex after dark, he immediately catches the eye of the African-American building security officer (played by Tiger Haynes), who informs Barry his best option is top get in and out before the local gang called the Vampires gets wind of his presence in the building. The kindly, yet savvy security guard acts as an escort for Barry, knowing that the Gang would most likely rob the White Guy if they discovered him…..and maybe worse.
After receiving the insurance from the kindly and world-weary educator(played by Frances Foster), now Barry can be on his way, but of course the Gang finds out about his presence in the building and worse yet, he has earlier unwittingly insulted a mouthy Junior member of the Gang and to top it off, the educator gave him the premium in cash worth six grand. Led by The Count, played by stalwart action-horror movie stand-out Tony Todd, the Vampires now are hell bent on killing the White guy. Somehow, Barry’s pale Unicorn-like presence brings out the protector instincts in Willie, who I suppose just can’t bear to see a nice Middle-class Corporate White guy get gutted unfairly when he runs across Willie by happenstance after the Security Guard escort gets rudely snuffed out by the Vampires.
The movie from this point on actually reminded me more of John Carpenter’s “Assault on Precinct 13” more than anything else as the movie-length chase is on. Barry is not only marked for death because he’s a stranger in a strange land who represents the Anglo ruling class, he’s also deemed responsible for the death of the same precocious young Gang member who’s been killed by the Security Officer in an elevator scuffle. What ensues is an hour and a quarter of hot pursuit within the confines of the New York City Project building. The cops won’t be there until morning, the Vampires are at their worst at night, just like real vampires of yore.
This basic plot combining elements of a Western, a Crime flick and even a Horror survival pretext includes an eccentric cavalcade of city dwellers who assist our fearless protagonists attempting to evade the Vampires until morning. The pastel of well-drawn characters begins with Tony Todd as the lead bad guy, Todd once again brings his booming stage voice and statue-esque frame , just as he does to considerable effect in such future thrillers as 1992’s “Candyman”, 1998’s “Never Too Big” and his role as cryptic Detective in the “Final Destination” series. Todd’s delivery and mannerisms always seem to hint at having had a prior stage career, Todd gives off the impression of a real craftsman actor, trapped in an easy to stereotype succession of menacing roles. Todd even excels when he has bad lines, with a flair for the cryptically dramatic. Todd can be scary, but also campy. Rather than play to Ghetto stereotypes, Todd’s work is at times like a Shakespearean actor versed in Hood vernacular.
Todd’s deep voice and lengthy scowl add to his already menacing on-screen persona. The Vampire Gang he leads has a militant and campy theme and feel to them. They prowl the hallways and elevators of the building, searching for tenants to shake down, strangers to mug/kill/rape etc. They refer to Barry as a “Ghost”, due to his skin color. Todd through his portrayals in the aforementioned movies created a memorable gangster/villain archetype, similar to Hollywood toughs such as George Raft, Richard Kiel, Bolo Yeong and Richard Lynch crossed with Vincent Price. Without Todd’s scene-stealing, scenery chewing histrionics this movie might not have worked due to the shallowness of the lines at times he is given. Yet Todd’s commitment and intensity makes it work, he circumvents the limits placed on his character’s dialogue and creates something so over the top, he personifies a seemingly unstoppable force. You can see how Clive Barker could have honored this intensity in casting Todd as the titular “Candyman” years later.
As for other ancillary characters, they ae an integral part of what makes “Enemy Territory” click. The wise crone Female Educator, the sagacious Security Guard, the hot good girl (Stacey Dash), the eager African -American tyke (Deon Richmond) who knows where all the secret hiding places in the building are, the glib prostitute (Renee Banks) who has an “office” in the building, the burnt-out wheelchair-bound Vietnam Vet (Jan Michael-Vincent), who has turned his apartment into a survival bunker. This movie embraces Urban stereotypes, these are almost like characters from a survival video game that hadn’t been invented yet.
Frank and Willie’s means of navigating this labyrinth of paradoxical Urban hostility and benevolence is for Frank to spend his commission that he received from the educator, greasing needy palms with $100 here and $100 there. In one scene, the pair has to make a dramatic escape from an upper floor to a lower floor by tying bedsheets together and crashing through the windows on a lower floor apartment (ok, so that is like “Die Hard”). When they do, they find two young unchaperoned girls playing with stuffed dolls and watching TV. Barry hands the two stunned children $100 for the damages to the apartment. After Barry and Willie leave, the girls are sitting in the apartment with the windows smashed out. The Two girls then proceed to high-five each other and proclaim they are going to spend their new found winnings on gummy worms.
“Enemy Territory” ‘s ability to weave comedy in and out of the violence and tension gives it an enjoyable smart ass timbre. When Stacey Dash as Toni finally and heroically makes it to the Police station to alert the Police as to the mayhem going on at the Apartment complex, the Police blow her off initially in part because she’s Black and partly because they are too afraid to venture in there at night. When Tony Todd’s lead henchman, aptly named “Psycho” (Robert Lee Rush) is about to corner our fearless heroes, the little kid comes out of nowhere and hits Psycho in the package with a Baseball Bat swing that Darryl Strawberry would be proud of. There are multiple examples in this movie of what a colleague of mine once referred to as “Ghetto technology”. Meaning, people use what they have at their disposal in the moment in order to survive, which is intimated at as a normal Friday night in the Projects.
A playground swing is used as a weapon against an assailant. Willie, the Phone Company tech hotwires an elevator so the protags can escape down an elevator shaft. The Vietnam Vet uses the mail slot on his apartment door as a secure position to fire his M-16 out of. He also customized his wheelchair to fire daggers at unsuspecting bad guys like a James Bond gadget for the disabled. The creativity of “Enemy Territory” keeps it pulsing, you wonder after a few rounds of this chicanery what parlor trick the filmmakers will conjure up next. Aside from Todd’s performance, the most fun acting contributions here are from Dash as the never-say-die Ingenue, Jan Michael-Vincent as the crusty and distrusting Nam vet and Ray Parker Jr as a kind of Dollar Tree version of Billie Dee Williams.
With an inane premise, erratic dialogue and low-budget production values, what keeps this movie on track and memorable, you say? Though Director Peter Manoogian does a credible job keeping this veritable late-night TV movie afloat, the real stellar work is by Cinematographer Ernest Dickerson, his camera work breathes integral life into this B-movie, which is part Castle adventure, Labyrinth exercise and Haunted House thrill ride. Each apartment that the Protags stow away in to escape the malevolent posse chasing them has the look of a different diorama. The Nam Vet’s bunker, the Hooker’s red-light paradise, the various economically struggling families attempting to create an equitable living environment out of the lemons that society has provided them. Dickerson’s long hallway shots of overly lit hallway floors are almost as memorable as Stanley Kubrick’s shots of the hallways of the Stanley Hotel from “The Shining”. The scenes carry an energy and electricity with them, rarely have I seen a Cinematographer save a film with his exceptional work and give it relevance. I found myself shockingly engaged in this Urban action movie and I was stone cold sober. I daresay, if one intends to put yourself to sleep watching this, with a running time of Ninety minutes and a plot involving non-stop cliffhanger situations, you might have to pair this with something else as a double feature, “Enemy Territory” is an adrenaline-fueled pleasant surprise.
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