It’s October. Time to talk horror. This year I’m reviewing a different horror movie each day of the month.
“I wrote it to democratically offend every group on the planet,” says screenwriter Roy Frumkes. I’m not sure if he manages to offend every group on the planet, but if you’re a man, a woman, or human, you’ll probably be offended by Street Trash at some point. It’s a movie which plays the kind of dopey score you would expect from a bad slapstick comedy even as it deals in gang rape, necrophilia, and castration. The severed penis, by the way, ends up becoming the subject of a game of hot potato.
When the unscrupulous owner of a liquor store finds a long forgotten case of booze in his basement, he decides to sell it to the local bums on the cheap. What he doesn’t know is the stuff is toxic. Anyone who drinks it melts spectacularly. Street Trash is part of a small subgenre called “melt movies.” (The 1988 remake of The Blob is probably the most mainstream melt movie. 1985’s The Stuff was one of the first horror movies I remember ever seeing in my life.)
Soon, a curiously psychotic policeman begins investigating the rash of mysterious deaths. When he beats the shit out of a suspect, leaving the assailant unconscious, he doesn’t just kick him and shove his head into a urinal. The cop finger-forces himself to puke on the back of the man’s head. There’s a violent, punk rock energy about Street Trash, and it keeps the picture swiftly moving despite the fact there are way too many characters for a movie like this, too many plot angles, and very little to do with the toxic hooch that causes the human meltdowns.
That’s not a complaint. Merely an observation. This is easily one of the wildest movies I’ve ever seen. It’s just really fucking weird.
Nothing’s off limits in Street Trash. Although it treats the homeless with all the emotional complexity of a Smokey and the Bandit sequel, you can tell Muro feels a kinship with the marginalized group. The hobos aren’t just there for him to poke fun at—they’re the heroes of the film, the people we’re supposed to be rooting for… and in some cases against. I rather like that the villain of the film is a dishonorably discharged vet who carries around a knife fashioned out of a human femur—but what we end up with is a movie which ultimately scrambles to give us closure for each of its many characters before reaching its hilariously bonkers climax.
If you’re into sleaze, you’re going to love Street Trash, too. It’s the Troma movie Troma never made… and probably would have made if they weren’t so damn cheap. “Don’t drip on me, man!”
Come back at midnight Central Time for the next movie.
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