Monday, March 8, 2010

Street Trash Review

STREET TRASH, 1987
Directed by: J. Micheal Muro
Written by: Roy Frumkes
Starring: Mike Lackey, Vic Noto, Bill Chepil, Marc Sferrazza, Jane Arakawa, Nicole Potter, Pat Ryan Jr., Clarenze Jarmon, Bernard Perlman, Miriam Zucker, M. D'Jango Krunch, James Lorinz, Julian Davis

"Things in New York are about to go down the toilet..."

A liquor store owner decides to sell a case of cheap wine, ("Tenafly Viper") that he finds in a hole in the wall of his building. The stuff is decades old and way past its sell date. Of course, he does what any responsible businessman would and sells it cheap to the local vagrant population. The few  unlucky enough to drink the stuff disolve into a mess of primary-colored goo.  All the while, a crazy Vietnam vet and self-styled king of the hobos reigns over the local junkyard, murdering his subjects at will with his sharpened femur-bone knife.

Throw in a few subplots about a psychotic cop, a local mob boss's doorman, and the kind-hearted junkyard secretary and you've got a giant mess that is still somehow endlessly watchable. For every bad actor, cheap looking set, and horribly delivered piece of dialogue, you've got a ton of amazingly fascinating crazy going on here.


And if the gut-churning scenes of melting hobos and genuinely funny (if oftentimes awkward) social commentary weren't enough, you get the most horrific game of keep away in movie history.  I won't ruin it for you here as it's truly something you need to experience. If you like your trash   cinema with huge doses of humor and plenty of gore, you really can't go wrong with this one. 

It's a cruel movie full of cruel characters, and there are several scenes that seem over the top and unnecessarily violent, but that's kind of the point.  If you go in ready to take STREET TRASH seriously, you'll be in for a huge disappointment.  Just remember, you're supposed to feel like you need a shower after watching this thing.





REASONS TO WATCH: Melting hobos, gratuitous violence, genital mutilation played for laughs. 

BEWARE: This movie contains plenty of melting hobos, gratuitous violence, and genital mutilation.

RATING:

4 comments:

  1. Still haven't seen this one yet, however that is possibly one of the greatest trailers of all time.

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  2. This is a truly tasteless, but amazingly watchable movie. An otherwise fun movie tainted only by an unfortunate, out-of-place hobo gang rape. It's a ridiculous misstep that I think really makes it a hard recommend to anyone not comfortable with the some of the more unsavory tropes found in exploitation movies.

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  3. That's just your polite way of saying you're a weirdo sicko. ;)
    Yeah, I could see how hobo gang rape might not appeal to EVERYONE.

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