Street Trash (1987) Lightning Pictures/Comedy-Horror RT: 101 minutes No MPAA rating (graphic bloody violence and gore, strong sexual content, full frontal nudity, rape, necrophilia, pervasive language, lots of drinking) Director: Jim Muro Screenplay: Roy Frumkes Music: Rick Ulfik Cinematography: David Sperling Release date: June 1987 (US) Cast: Mike Lackey, Bill Chepil, Vic Noto, Mark Sferrazza, Jane Arakawa, Nicole Potter, Tony Darrow, R.L. Ryan, Clarenze Jarmon, Bernard Perlman, Miriam Zucker, M. D’Jango Krunch, James Lorinz, Morty Storm, Sam Blasco, Bruce Torbet, Roman Zack, Gary Auerbach. Box Office: N/A
Rating: ****
What’s the dirtiest movie you’ve ever seen? Before you answer, let me qualify the question. I’m not talking about dirty as in vulgar and obscene. I mean it literally as in filth, grime and trash. For me, it was C.H.U.D. Now it’s Street Trash, a body-melt comedy-horror set among the homeless population in NYC. Most of the people in it look like they haven’t showered in a year. They mainly hang out in a junkyard or wander the streets and alleys of what has to be the most depressing section of Brooklyn. I kept waiting for somebody to start raving about cannibalistic monsters living in the sewers. Consider what actually happens here, death by C.H.U.D. could be considered a mercy killing as well as a messy killing.
How would I describe Street Trash to somebody that’s never seen or heard of it? That’s easy. It’s like a Troma movie directed by Frank Henenlotter although neither of them has anything to do with this completely bonkers splatter-and-goo flick. It does, however, have actor R.L. Ryan, aka corrupt Mayor Belgoody from The Toxic Avenger, playing another sleazy character. He’s just one of several undesirable types that populate Street Trash, a gleefully gross and knowingly nasty piece of work that aims simultaneously for the gag reflex and funny bone. It hits both marks.
While checking his inventory, liquor store owner Ed (Krunch) finds a case of old, expired booze hidden in the basement. He decides to sell it to the local bums for a buck a bottle rather than throw it out. The booze does more than get his least-favored customers drunk. It causes them to melt from the inside. All it takes is one sip and all that’s left is a puddle of corrosive goo.
The main character is Fred (Lackey), a thieving type who lives with his younger brother Kevin (Sferrazza) in a junkyard overseen by Bronson (Noto), a psychotic Vietnam vet who sees himself as the king of the homeless people. He even has a makeshift throne from which he terrorizes his subjects. Local cop Bill (Chepil) divides his time between trying to take down Bronson and investigating the mysterious, messy deaths. His job gets a lot harder when the girlfriend of mob boss Nick Duran (Darrow, The Sopranos) turns up dead. The circumstances of her murder are bad enough (she was gang-raped first), but what happens to her after is just sick. The junkyard owner (Ryan) finds her naked corpse and that’s where the necrophilia comes in.
Street Trash is absolutely INSANE! I can’t believe I waited until now to watch it. It’s the kind of movie I live for. Wonderfully weird and delightfully disgusting, it’s on par with Frankenhooker and Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead. It even features Frankenhooker star James Lorinz making his debut in a small but memorable role as a mouthy doorman who gets on Duran’s bad side. There is a lot of craziness going on here, but the topper has to be when the bums in the junkyard play keep away with a severed penis. That’s after the poor guy gets it cut off for accidentally peeing on Bronson.
Watching a movie like Street Trash reminds me that actual artists worked on special effects once upon a time. It wasn’t a bunch of tech geeks sitting at computer terminals punching keys. Real people with real skills put in real work to create real art sans the $200M price tag. Sometimes they were working with serious budget constraints. Street Trash cost about $500K to make and the effects look 100 times more convincing than any Marvel movie. We have makeup artist Jennifer Aspinall to thank for all the gross, slimy, icky FX. The melt scenes look great, the victim in the toilet is a work of art, but the piece de resistance has to be the part where the fat guy expands and explodes after taking a swig of the toxic hooch (brand name Tenafly Viper). Guts, organs, blood and pieces of flesh fly everywhere. Now that’s art! It’s as impressive as the exploding head in Scanners.
One doesn’t watch a movie like Street Trash expecting to see Oscar-caliber performances from master thespians. If that’s what you want, go watch one of Laurence Olivier’s Shakespeare films. That’s quality acting by professionals. None of that applies to Street Trash. The acting is pretty bad and a lot of these people have never been in another movie. To be fair, they weren’t working under the most ideal circumstances. In the case of Noto, he wasn’t cast until the day before shooting began. He was given his lines on a scene-by-scene basis; he had no idea who his character was or even what the movie was about. Under the circumstances, he could have done a lot worse. To be fair, the lousy acting is part of this movie’s sleazy charm.
Street Trash is director Jim Muro’s only feature film effort. He’s primarily known for his Steadicam work on films like The Abyss, Dances with Wolves, The Doors, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and JFK. He doesn’t do too bad a job in the driver’s seat. He fumbles with the more dramatic aspects of his movie like the relationship between the brothers and the kind-hearted junkyard employee (Arakawa) who looks after them. He also makes the mistake of dropping the poison booze plotline for a spell to focus on the mob boss, the cop and Bronson’s reign of terror. Some of it is fun, but I wanted to see more bodies melting and exploding.
The most ideal viewing circumstances for Street Trash are as follows: midnight, Times Square, shady grindhouse theater. Since I can’t replicate the location, I did the next best thing by watching it late at night in my living room on Tubi (the streaming equivalent of an 80s-era Mom & Pop video store). All that was missing was the sticky floors covered with stale popcorn and God knows what else, the smell of weed hanging in the air and potentially dangerous people sitting in close proximity.
Despite being unable to create a fully immersive experience, I really enjoyed Street Trash. It’s by no means a quality film, but it is a great midnight movie. It’s campy, gross, funny and smart in its own way. Muro is clearly trying to make a point about the socioeconomic divide between the haves and have nots by showing how trashy everybody is. That’s all fine and dandy, but I didn’t come to the party for that. I came for the disgusting effects. I was NOT disappointed. Street Trash will put even the most cast iron stomachs to the test. Enjoy and don’t say I didn’t warn you.
