Street Trash

The title tells you everything. And nothing.

Street Trash is a 1987 splatter comedy that shouldn’t work but does, a grimy fever dream set in a Brooklyn junkyard where homeless men melt into puddles of Day-Glo goo. It’s disgusting. It’s hilarious. It’s weirdly beautiful.

The plot is pure pulp. Poisoned booze called Tenafly Viper turns bums into human Slurpees. A psychotic Vietnam vet named Bronson terrorizes the junkyard. A mob boss hunts for his missing girl. These threads tangle and explode in ways both random and inevitable.

What surprises is the craft. Director Jim Muro—who’d become Hollywood’s go-to Steadicam wizard—shoots these ruins like a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The scrapyard becomes a monument to decay. Every frame drips with atmosphere.

The effects rival anything from the studios. Bodies don’t just bleed, they erupt in neon rainbows, melting like Crayolas on hot pavement. It’s not gore. It’s surrealism with intestines.

The comedy cuts deepest. One bum shoplifts raw chicken, gets caught, then accuses the store manager of racism—both men are black—and storms out through a plate glass window. Another scene features bums playing keep-away with a severed penis while ragtime piano tinkles merrily. When no cab will take him, the victim rides to the hospital clinging to the back of a school bus. I’m not making this up.

But the actors can’t match the artistry. Tony Darrow brings menace as the mobster. James Lorinz sparkles as a doorman. But the rest of the cast is stiff and charmless.

The pacing drags. Too much hangs on characters who can’t carry it. A leaner cut might help, though the film’s shambling, digressive nature is part of its charm. It’s a hangout movie in hell.

The script earns points for honesty. These aren’t lovable rogues or flesh-eating zombies. They’re just trash—society’s and their own. Everyone’s complicit. Everyone’s awful. It liberates the film to be outrageously, gleefully dark.

And that ending. That closing song. It’s perfect.

Street Trash feels like Frank Henenlotter’s twisted cousin—the body horror, the New York grit, the pitch-black laughs. But Henenlotter cast better leads. Still, this one sticks with you. The kind that gets better with repeat viewings, when you stop waiting for it to be something it’s not and accept it for the mess it is.