I first saw STREET TRASH when I was a sexy young teen falling in love with
movies and it definitely made a strong impression on me. Revisiting it again
now, it's not as wild as I remember, but it's still pretty crazy: a liquor store
owner on skid row finds a case of old booze and puts it on sale for $1 a bottle.
The local bums quickly buy it up and the second any of them take a swig of it,
their body starts melting and bubbling and exploding in all the colours of the
rainbow.That's the main story, but the majority of the screen time is actually taken up with just the random events taking part in all of the bums lives. You know, normal bum stuff like shoplifting, fighting, ripping some guy's dick off and playing "Catch" with it, more fighting, chasing people, stealing stuff, standing around talking shit, a woman getting gang raped to death and then the next day some dude finds her corpse...and rapes it.
After the opening excitement there's a 30 minute dry spell that's kinda slow, but things pick up during the last act. Don't let the slow part scare you off though, STREET TRASH is one of those movies that you must see at least once. For being made in 1987 this was some pretty wacky stuff. Definitely required viewing for people who enjoy the wilder side of Cinema.
The camerawork on STREET TRASH is impressive. It's easy to see why Director/Steadicam Operator Michael Muro went on to work as a camera operator in some of the bigger movies like TITANIC, TERMINATOR 2, CASINO, HEAT and two X-MEN movies.
Also check out Tony Darrow, as the gangster guy, before he starred in six (to date) Woody Allen movies most notably SMALL TIME CROOKS.
