{"id":4601,"date":"2015-11-12T01:33:46","date_gmt":"2015-11-12T01:33:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/?p=4601"},"modified":"2016-01-09T07:55:12","modified_gmt":"2016-01-09T07:55:12","slug":"street-trash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/?p=4601","title":{"rendered":"STREET TRASH!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Street Trash<\/a><\/strong> – 1987, James Muro, USA<\/p>\n

\"Street_trash_poster\"<\/p>\n

Street Trash<\/strong><\/em> rules so hard. Why hasn’t this been remade like,\u00a0eight times by now? Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad, but sheesh…\u00a0This movie really\u00a0is the quintessential\u00a0example of the “underrated gem.” It’s beloved by almost everyone who has\u00a0made the effort to track it\u00a0down and give it a watch, and yet somehow, it remains relatively obscure compared to other comparable films of the era. Street Trash<\/em> is the real diamond in the rough, so suck it, Aladdin.<\/p>\n

THE PLOT~<\/strong>\u00a0Life on the streets\u00a0becomes even more\u00a0dangerous after bottles of a mysterious drink called “Viper<\/strong>” begin to circulate amongst the city’s already badly imperiled homeless community. Viper is first discovered inside an old crate, hidden in the basement of the local liquor store,\u00a0and we all know\u00a0what you do when you\u00a0find mysterious booze in your basement; you sell that shit immediately. So, that’s what happens.\u00a0Unfortunately however, drinking Viper\u00a0comes with a steep price;\u00a0Turns out that anyone who\u00a0so much as\u00a0takes a sip\u00a0of the stuff begins to melt into a\u00a0vibrantly colored, highly acidic slime within seconds.<\/p>\n

\"Street<\/p>\n

\"street\"Street_trash_2\"\"street-trash-1987\"It’s the coolest thing ever.<\/strong><\/p>\n

To make matters worse, the local police department has it out for Bronson, a badly shell-shocked Vietnam War Vet who has used his brute strength and\u00a0zest for murder\u00a0to\u00a0instate himself as\u00a0some sort of junkyard tribal chieftan for all of the\u00a0local hobos.\u00a0This conflict\u00a0doesn’t exactly help Bronson to remain calm and passive, basically, he’s on the warpath. If\u00a0you’re not\u00a0reduced to a puddle of\u00a0gunk from Viper or\u00a0stabbed in the back\u00a0by your peers, there’s a good chance that Bronson will\u00a0lose his marbles and club you to death for no reason anyway. This is the world of Street Trash<\/em>…<\/p>\n

And what a world it is! Probably the best thing director Jim\u00a0Muro does is that he effectively creates a universe which has some serious depth to it.\u00a0Street Trash<\/em>\u00a0is so\u00a0gritty\u00a0that it feels\u00a0borderline post apocalyptic much of the time, but Muro doesn’t take it too far,\u00a0we’re frequently reminded that this is all happening concurrently with regular civilization, as if there was some slime drenched, hobo civil war going on all around us, just outside of view… Which rules!<\/p>\n

\"01_STREET_TRASH_PROMOSTILLS\"<\/p>\n

There’s also a lot going on in Street Trash’s <\/em>dirty, violent little universe.\u00a0In fact, this is a real contributor to one of the film’s\u00a0few legitimate flaws; its\u00a0so busy that it ends up feeling somewhat unfocused. We don’t even really\u00a0know who our central protagonist is until the end of the film, and we never feel as anchored to them as we should.\u00a0The movie actually\u00a0feels more like a few days as a member of the Street Trash<\/em> homeless community than it does a single, traditional narrative, which is kind of cool in its own right, but more reason to care about our protagonist would have been nice. With this level of investment, we’d almost rather just watch him melt to death,\u00a0just because it’s cool looking.<\/p>\n

\"viper\"<\/p>\n

One thing you’re going to notice;\u00a0This movie has a lot of steady cam shots… Like, A LOT. So many, in fact, that Muro sorta made a name for himself as a titan of the Steady-Cam, and later wound up serving as Steady-Cam operator for significantly better known Hollywood movies. What movies, you ask? WELL, homeboy was the Steady-Cam Operator for movies like Clueless<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, Titanic<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, and X-Men 2<\/a><\/strong><\/em>. How’dya like them apples? Knowing that information,\u00a0it should come as no surprised that for a low budget film from 1987, Street Trash<\/em> treats us to a metric shitload of steady cam shots, and that gives our movie\u00a0a surprisingly\u00a0dynamic aesthetic; we’re seldom confined to a single angle on\u00a0a tripod. Instead, we roam about our environments freely, which makes the space our story occupies feel even more real and familiar.<\/p>\n

It also features history’s greatest tank top:<\/p>\n

\"Untitled-7\"<\/p>\n

Look at that majestic bastard.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Worth noting:\u00a0Our old friend James Lorinz<\/strong>,\u00a0star of Frank Hennenlotter’s<\/strong> epic masterpiece Frankenhooker<\/a><\/em><\/strong>, has a small, but memorable role here as a smart assed door man who works for a mobster. Lorinz’s part has several tell tale signs of being largely improvised, and we get the impression that Muro must have really, really liked him. He even gets an extra scene at the end of the film that was almost definitely tacked on to further showcase his wisecracking, and\u00a0in this scene,\u00a0an additional character takes a swig of Viper and immediately melts to death entirely off camera<\/strong><\/span>. Why would Muro possibly include an additional Viper death,\u00a0and then\u00a0not even show it? Well, probably because he didn’t have the money or resources to stage another complicated special effect, but he didn’t want to send Lorinz home without milking him for just a little more comedy. My guess is that\u00a0that’s what happened, and\u00a0I think it was a good choice, it really says a lot that in a movie where homeless people literally liquefy and explode on camera several times, a freaking doorman\u00a0with only a few scenes\u00a0is gonna stick in your memory as being particularly entertaining.<\/p>\n

\"street-trash-10\"I love this guy.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But I digress…<\/p>\n

Street Trash<\/em> is the kind of movie that I love so much, I want to say it’s not a recommendation, but a requirement.\u00a0Equal parts gross, humorous and\u00a0imaginative,\u00a0this\u00a0is a gritty, grindhouse oddity that feels well paired alongside other offbeat, street level flicks like Basket Case<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, or Slime City<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, but at the same time, it doesn’t feel like a rehash of either. Street Trash<\/em> is ruthlessly original, fantastically unique, and wicked entertaining. For reals, check it out.<\/p>\n

A+<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Street Trash – 1987, James Muro, USA Street Trash rules so hard. Why hasn’t this been remade like,\u00a0eight times by now? Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad, but sheesh…\u00a0This movie really\u00a0is the quintessential\u00a0example of the “underrated gem.” It’s beloved by almost everyone who has\u00a0made the effort to track it\u00a0down and give it a watch, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[393],"tags":[1029,1495,12,1496,856,328,1491,1492,1493,1489,396,1494,403,1498,1092,1490,1497,211],"class_list":["post-4601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-1029","tag-bascket-case","tag-bronson","tag-clueless","tag-evil-dead","tag-frankenhooker","tag-homeless-people","tag-indianna-torgo","tag-james-lorinz","tag-james-muro","tag-melt-movies","tag-slime-city","tag-street-trash","tag-titanic","tag-usa","tag-viper","tag-x-men-2","tag-zombie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4601"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4794,"href":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4601\/revisions\/4794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}