Horror Movie Review: Street Trash (1987)

Ah, melt movies…a sub-genre of horror that has a tongue in cheek comedy approach & ramps up the grossness. Street Trash is one of the finest ‘melt’ movies on the market with visuals & effects that will make you grin ear to ear as well as some of the most cheesy acting & dialogue of any 80’s horror movie. It makes for a compelling watch, one that is entertaining from beginning to end.

A liquor store owner in New York finds a case of wine in his dirty, old basement. The stuff is way past its best before date so he decides to sell it to the local hobo population at a knockdown price.

Unfortunately for the local hobo population this wine (Tenafly Viper) turns anyone who drinks it into mush, a melted pool of colourful mush. This does result in some amazingly gory scenes, the combination of silliness being backed up by graphic moments of melted flesh.

To flesh out the movies run time there is Bronson, a Vietnam veteran who has made a junkyard his own little kingdom with other homeless veterans as his lackeys, the local detective who is tying to get to the bottom of the sudden rise in deaths & the two homeless brothers with very different ideas about life.

The acting is pure-silliness with some horrible dialogue:

“I don’t need this. I already got trouble with my kids, my wife, my business, my secretary, the bums… the runaways, the roaches, prickly heat, and a homo dog. This just ain’t my day”.

It’s the kind of stuff that might be adorable if the movie wasn’t so sure it was hilarious. It might have been funny in 1987, it’s not now & a few too many jokes are based around some form of sexual assault. The grossly overweight boss trying to get his young, hot assistant into bed & never taking no for an answer? Yeah, that’s not funny.

Each part of the story has its own merits & faults with most of the latter being when the movie takes itself a little too seriously. One drunken sexual scene that leads into a group rape is particularly bad. It’s not amusing & paints one particular character in a horrible light.

Thankfully these are rare instances & for the most part it’s a silly movie playing on the perceived images of hobos. The film is packed with deaths & mutilations that have a dark comedy edge to them. One in particular sees a group of the homeless in the junkyard playing catch with another’s’ severed penis.

The melting scenes on the other hand are fantastic & it was really good to see effort put in in making each one different in some way or another. The use of bright colour to replace most of the blood doesn’t dent the impact in the slightest, they are still uber-violent moments & make the movie one that is well worth checking out.