I miss the good old days of horror/exploitation movies.
Street Trash came out towards the latter part
of the 1980’s, when things were winding down on the horror front and films were
moving away from the financially damning Hard R category. It would be a last hurrah for the
splatterpunk genre as things became much more sanitized and cliché soon after
that.
Street Trash centers on a group of filthy homeless people
located in a junkyard who come into contact with mysterious liquor known as
“Viper.” Anyone who drinks Viper dies in
a very messy manner (they basically melt into neon-colored goop) and it wrecks
havoc on the local community. There are
some side plots concerning a cop investigating the deaths and a psychotic Vietnam
vet who has proclaimed himself king of the hobos but they aren’t fleshed out
very much.
What the movie lacks in coherent story telling, it makes up for it with buckets and fountains of awesome gore! The make-up and special effects for the melting vagrants is a sight to behold—it looks absolutely disgusting in the best way possible. If you are easily offended, this might not be the movie for you. There is no taboo left untouched (gang rapes anyone?) and the director, Jim Muro, even stated that he was trying to offend the most people possible with this movie. One aspect of Street Trash that is surprisingly good is the camera work. There are smooth tracking shots, zoom shots and picturesque wide shots galore. The camera work is very high caliber, so much so that Muro ended up doing steady-cam for movies such as The Abyss, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Titanic and Dances with Wolves!
The writing is actually pretty hilarious and there are many quotable one-liners for those people who are into that kind of thing. The humor is gross and politically incorrect which fits the time period perfectly. You will gasp in disbelief at least once while watching it, I guarantee it. It’s a video nasty through and through and a wonderful little piece of vintage 1980’s sleaze—don’t say I didn’t warn you!
What the movie lacks in coherent story telling, it makes up for it with buckets and fountains of awesome gore! The make-up and special effects for the melting vagrants is a sight to behold—it looks absolutely disgusting in the best way possible. If you are easily offended, this might not be the movie for you. There is no taboo left untouched (gang rapes anyone?) and the director, Jim Muro, even stated that he was trying to offend the most people possible with this movie. One aspect of Street Trash that is surprisingly good is the camera work. There are smooth tracking shots, zoom shots and picturesque wide shots galore. The camera work is very high caliber, so much so that Muro ended up doing steady-cam for movies such as The Abyss, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Titanic and Dances with Wolves!
The writing is actually pretty hilarious and there are many quotable one-liners for those people who are into that kind of thing. The humor is gross and politically incorrect which fits the time period perfectly. You will gasp in disbelief at least once while watching it, I guarantee it. It’s a video nasty through and through and a wonderful little piece of vintage 1980’s sleaze—don’t say I didn’t warn you!