Street Trash Movie Review
In 1987 a batch of expired Tenafly Viper whiskey was discovered in the basement of a New York liquor store. Not wanting to throw away bad product, but also unable to sell it to his more discerning customers, the shopkeeper opted to sell it to the one group of people who wouldn’t complain about the quality: The homeless.
Society at large generally tries to pretend the homeless don’t exist. So, when the expired booze caused excruciating death via full-body meltdowns, the entire ordeal was swept under the rug and mostly forgotten.
But not everyone forgot the incident. Some sought to gain further knowledge in how old whiskey could cause those who drink it to dissolve into a puddle of steaming goo. It was in the year 2050 that the destructive chemical compound was isolated, aerosolized, and perfected. The chemical wreaked havoc on the homeless population once before. Why not use it again to finally rid the city of its street trash?
The original Street Trash from 1987 is a low-budget classic. A bizarre and sleazy labor of love, it’s the kind of movie that reminds us what true art looks like. It was never the biggest hit, but for anyone who’s seen it over the last 35 years, it’s an unforgettable piece of garbage cinema.
In the modern cinematic landscape, it was inevitable that a remake of some sort would come oozing into our lives. Would it be a cheap cash-grab or would it be a genuine attempt to modernize the story?
Lucky for us, director Ryan Kruger took up the challenge and delivered an almost perfect sequel/remake/reboot/whatever-the-hell. Kruger’s Street Trash is everything you could ask for in an exploitation movie. It’s excessively violent, explosively gooey, and bafflingly heartwarming.
Where the original film was more of a perverse slice-of-life kind of story, the modern version has our heroes taking an active role in the plot. After a brief opening scene in which we see the power of the chemical, we are introduced to Ronald (Sean Cameron Michael) and his good friend Chef (Joe Vaz).
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Together they engage in their homeless antics, endlessly annoying the police goons that prowl the street looking for people to brutalize. After rescuing newcomer Alex (Donna Cormack-Thomson) from being attacked they invite her into the fold, adding one more addition to their fun-loving gang.
They soon learn that the corrupt Mayor Mostert (Warrick Grier) has been abducting people to test the effectiveness of his purified Tenafly Viper chemical. With their lives and their non-melted bodies at stake, Ronald and his gang must band together to stop the mayor before it’s too late.
Where Street Trash really shines is in the ensemble cast of Ronald and his gang of weirdos. They have great chemistry with one another. An almost palpable sense of camaraderie grows before our eyes as their adventure unfolds. The wild-card strength of the film is in how much emotional investment it pulls out of the audience. Vicariously we suffer their losses and celebrate their wins. Watching them gradually band together to overcome their oppressors was one of the most satisfying movie experiences of recent memory.
That said, adventure, excitement, and the enduring power of friendship are all fine and dandy, but what we came for was disgusting bodily destruction. You can rest assured, there is plenty of that to be found. Not ten minutes will go by without someone being melted, chopped, sliced, shot, or otherwise mutilated. Technicolor slime explosions are the bare minimum requirement in a sequel to Street Trash and the modern version more than delivers on that promise.
Where the movie stumbles a bit is in some of its humor. It tends to be a mixed bag of genuinely funny moments between the gang followed by ham-fisted street jokes. Your buddy may be able to crack a lame joke and get a decent laugh. But watching someone on screen tell the same joke just doesn’t quite have the same impact. Street Trash’s comedic timing eventually corrects itself, but early on the movie struggles with its awkwardly placed setup-punchline routines. Once that balance is found, however, Street Trash becomes unstoppable.
It’s not an easy task making a follow-up to a cult classic. Too many things can go wrong resulting in a movie that’s a slap in the face to the original film and its fans. The margin for error is razor thin.
Kruger and company thread the needle so well that they make it look easy. His Street Trash manages to simultaneously be a respectful homage to the original, while also standing on its own as a unique and wildly entertaining story. History likes to repeat itself, and once again, Street Trash has arrived to show us what true art is supposed to look like.
