Street Trash (1987)

My buddy and I used to watch this show called Buzz and Tony's Drive-In Reviews. I think that was what it was called anyway. And I think it was on Comedy Central, too. Anyway, we loved it, and this was one of the movies they reviewed. It took some doing, but we managed to track the fucker down, and it lived up to the beauty we imagined from seeing it on the show. It's now a classic among my friends.

Street Trash is about this subculture of hobos living in a junkyard. The community's run by a tyrannical Vietnam vet who kills people with a sharpened human bone, even though the junkyard's owned by a gross fat man. There's a dude living there who's kind of a scam artist that gets by on his wits and street smarts. His younger brother takes a shine to the secretary of the guy who owns the junkyard, and they form a bond. While all of this is going on, a liquor store owner finds a bunch of this old booze called Viper stashed away behind some other stuff. He sells it for a buck a bottle to the hobos. The catch is, the stuff makes you melt. It's pretty ridiculous. After some doing, the girl and the younger brother fight off the tyrant and free the junkyard to make it a safe place for hobos.



This movie is amazingly great campy horror. It's up there with Bad Taste, only Bad Taste is more fun and Street Trash is a little more depraved. The special FX and types of deaths are right in line, though. So is the film quality.

One clip shown on Buzz and Tony's was the famous Penis Toss. In it, a guy is taking a leak behind a bus, he pees on the tyrant by accident, so the tyrant rips his dank off, and throws it. The guy chases after it, and the rest of the hobo community plays keep away. How can you not love a Penis Toss?

Another great scene is the death on the toilet. A bum gets his hands on some viper, and he drinks it while sitting on a toilet. As he melts, he tries to grab the chain for help, and he starts to flush himself. It's absolutely disgusting yet sweet at the same time. I dug it the most.



This is a genre of horror that's always kind of appealed to me more than the Saw Part Deuxs and the Hostel 666s. I mean, you can't get any sicker than a Penis Toss, yet their brand of brutality is so much more fun than the new kinds. The problem is, I seem to be in the minority, so the big studios greenlight more Saws and these guys are lucky if a studio like Troma will pick them up. Then guys like me have to search like a dog to find them.

There's a new special edition DVD of this movie. I'd say buy it. My friends and I went years with just the copies we bootlegged from the one we found at a rental store. $20 is a little on the expensive side, but if you're a fan of campy horror like Bad Taste and Evil Dead, it's a $20 well spent.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094057/