When a liquor store owner discovers a crate of 60 year old alcoholic beverage called Viper hidden in his basement, he decides to get shot of it by flogging it to the local hobo population for $1 a bottle. Rather than cough up a buck, filthy tramp Fred swipes a bottle of Viper (although why he doesn't nick something better is beyond me) but can't seem to hang on to his booze long enough to sample it. This turns out to be rather fortunate for the light-fingered vagrant, since Viper turns out to have the tendency to melt anyone who drinks it!
A low-budget, Troma-style comedy/horror that aims to mix outrageous scenes of bad taste with gloopy special effects and broad comedy, Street Trash has attained something of a loyal cult following since its initial release in 1987. Personally, I can't quite see what the fuss is about: director Jim Muro occasionally achieves a satisfying balance of tastelessness and gross-out humour, but for the majority of the running time, his movie just isn't offensive enough to be shocking, bloody enough to be horrifying, or clever enough to be funny.
Furthermore, the narrative structure for Street Trash is almost as messy as one of its melted tramps, with its tale of dissolving drunks clumsily intertwined with several other random story lines: there's a dreary sub-plot featuring a hard-as-nails cop who is out to capture a psychotic Vietnam veteran, an unlikely romance that blossoms between Fred's teenage brother and an Asian chick sporting nasty 80s hair and makeup, and some rubbish about a smart mouthed doorman who runs into a spot of trouble with his mafia boss.
As for the much trumpeted 'melt' scenes, they are (with the exception of one impressive exploding hobo) very unconvincing, the victims dissolving into piles of what looks like fruit puree and multi-coloured paint.
Still, I suppose a viewing of this movie is still worthwhile thanks to its classic 'piggy-in-the-middle-with-a-severed-penis' scene, the moment where a hugely overweight, bald sleaze-bag indulges in a spot of non-explicit necrophilia (always good for a laugh), and the OTT finale in which a character is decapitated by a flying compressed-air cylinder.
A low-budget, Troma-style comedy/horror that aims to mix outrageous scenes of bad taste with gloopy special effects and broad comedy, Street Trash has attained something of a loyal cult following since its initial release in 1987. Personally, I can't quite see what the fuss is about: director Jim Muro occasionally achieves a satisfying balance of tastelessness and gross-out humour, but for the majority of the running time, his movie just isn't offensive enough to be shocking, bloody enough to be horrifying, or clever enough to be funny.
Furthermore, the narrative structure for Street Trash is almost as messy as one of its melted tramps, with its tale of dissolving drunks clumsily intertwined with several other random story lines: there's a dreary sub-plot featuring a hard-as-nails cop who is out to capture a psychotic Vietnam veteran, an unlikely romance that blossoms between Fred's teenage brother and an Asian chick sporting nasty 80s hair and makeup, and some rubbish about a smart mouthed doorman who runs into a spot of trouble with his mafia boss.
As for the much trumpeted 'melt' scenes, they are (with the exception of one impressive exploding hobo) very unconvincing, the victims dissolving into piles of what looks like fruit puree and multi-coloured paint.
Still, I suppose a viewing of this movie is still worthwhile thanks to its classic 'piggy-in-the-middle-with-a-severed-penis' scene, the moment where a hugely overweight, bald sleaze-bag indulges in a spot of non-explicit necrophilia (always good for a laugh), and the OTT finale in which a character is decapitated by a flying compressed-air cylinder.