Street Trash | |
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Theatrical poster
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Directed by | J. Michael Muro |
Produced by | Roy Frumkes |
Written by | Roy Frumkes |
Starring |
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Music by | Rick Ulfik |
Production
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Distributed by | Lightning Pictures |
Release date
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Running time
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101 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Street Trash is a 1987 American body horror film directed by J. Michael Muro (credited as Jim Muro). It won the Silver Raven at the Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film. The film has acquired a status as a cult classic independent horror-comedy and is one of a number of films known as "melt movies".
The owner of a liquor store in Greenpoint Brooklyn, New York finds a case of cheap wine ("Tenafly Viper") in his basement. It is more than 60 years old and has gone bad, but he decides to sell it to the local hobos anyway. Unfortunately, anyone who drinks the Viper melts away in a hideous fashion. At the same time, two homeless brothers find different ways to cope with homelessness while they make their residence in a local junkyard while one employee, a female cashier and clerk, frequently tends to both of them. Meanwhile, an overzealous cop (Bill Chepil) is trying to get to the bottom of all the deaths, all the while trying to end the tyranny of a deranged Vietnam veteran named Bronson (Vic Noto), who has made his self-proclaimed "kingdom" at the junkyard with a group of homeless vets under his command as his personal henchmen.
The film is littered with darkly comedic deaths and injuries. It also contains the notorious "severed privates" scene where a group of homeless people play catch with the severed genital of one of their number, as he futilely attempts to recover it.
Roy Frumkes wrote the screenplay. In an NBR profile he later said: "I wrote it to democratically offend every group on the planet, and as a result the youth market embraced it as a renegade work, and it played midnight shows." The film was based on a ten-minute student film directed by J. Michael Muro and starring Mike Lackey.Bryan Singer worked on the film as a grip.
Deleted scenes include a junkyard dance sequence and a sub-plot involving the relationship between Fred (Mike Lackey) and Bronson; these sequences are included in the documentary Meltdown Memoirs.
The film was given a limited release theatrically in the United States by Lightning Pictures in June 1987. They also released the film on VHS the same year.