STREET TRASH (1987)

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.

JUNIOR (1985)

[Update 04/04/2022: Need rewatch this film and redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

I saw this in the Horror Section at my local video store and with the chainsaw cover plus the reference to Freddy and Leatherface I can see why they put it there, but once I started watching it I quickly figured out this is not horror at all. It's more like a live action hillbilly version of a Roadrunner and Coyote cartoon. I'm serious!

The opening scene shows two 80's chicks with massive 80's hair and misshapen 80's bodies being released from prison. For hookerin', I guess. Two seconds after they walk out the gates, this pimp dude in a huge car tries to run them over on the sidewalk. He jumps out of the car slaps and punches the women around then pours a bag of coke on the hood of the car and starts slamming one of the chick's face into the coke!!! That's fucking awesome and easily the highlight of the movie, but unfortunately we still have 80 minutes left. So the chick stabs the pimp in the nose and then they steal his car and the pile of money he just happened to be in the car.

They end up in some small town and after the Sheriff threatens them John Rambo-style they decide to buy a half dilapidated building on a lake and make a sandwich stand out of it! That makes zero sense cause this building appears to be in the middle of nowhere and to make matters worse all of the locals are a bunch of inbred rapists.

So for the next 60+ minutes it's just one attempted rape or assault scene after the next. After awhile it becomes humorous, because these two chicks just keep going on about their business of fixing up the building even though they are constantly being attacked. It's silly.

Overall it's a terrible movie, but at the same time I laughed quite a bit, so it wasn't a total loss. If you do decide to watch this turd then you should at least have a drinking game...every time there's shot of one of the chick's asses or they get attacked then take a swig. You'll be fucked up quick!

THE LADY EVE (1941)

[Update 11/14/2021: Need to redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

With so many great films under his belt it's hard to pick my favorite Preston Sturges film, but if I had to narrow it down to one I would choose THE LADY EVE. It's not as screwball as THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CREEK or HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO, that's not to say there isn't plenty of laughs, but he thing that pushes it above his other films is the intelligence of the script and the impressive performances by the leads, especially Barbara Stanwyck.  She's great!  Not only does she play two completely different characters, but one of them is living a lie, so that adds an entirely new level to her performance.

In the opening scenes she plays a card shark who's out to ripoff the innocent and naive Henry Fonda, but even though it's not spoken you can tell just by looking at her eyes that she's quickly falling in love with him. Or is that part of her act? I used to think that, but the line she says at 11:38 indicates that she's thinking about him when he's old, so I believe that shows that she's already fallen in love with him.

Anyway, I'm just rambling. I don't want to give any more of the plot away than I already have, but just take my word for it: if you like classic cinema, especially screwball romances, then you're gonna love this movie! I give it my highest recommendation.  Maybe one day when I'm smarter I'll come back and write a real review.