Street Trash (2024) – Review

While I’m pretty sure it’s garnered me a fair few strange looks in my time, I genuinely believe that J. Michael Muro’s 1987 scum fest, Street Trash, is a legitimate masterpiece. It’s nihilistic, rambling plot and synapse frying, candy coloured gore fused with some eyebrow raising technical prowess to create a punk rock, who-gives-a-fuck sensibility that almost felt like Martin Scorsese hitched his wagon to Troma instead of crafting perfectly pitched gangster films.
However, when news hit that this singular experience was getting a remake, I felt as nervous as a vagrant about to take a fateful sip from a bottle of that infamous toxic booze known as Viper, but when I heard that Ryan Kruger, the demented dude behind 2020s frenzied trip-fest Fried Barry, was at the helm, I felt a little easier. However, much like most belated sequels these days, the 2924 vintage of Street Trash isn’t so much a remake as a reimagining slash legacy sequel that tries to expand on the original’s wonderfully strange politics.
Hold on tight, things are about to get messy.

The year is 2050 and homelessness has reached near apocalyptic levels in South Africa and the cosmically corrupt Mayor Mostert has been experimenting with a mysterious compound discovered in Brooklyn New York back in the 80s that causes the human body to breakdown and melt into a myriad of rainbow colours. Before you know it, the compound has been broken down into a gas and is deployed on the streets in the form of floating drones that turn any poor folk breaking curfew into startlingly vibrant goo.
Having to survive in this harsh world is a cluster of hobos and down and outs that try to squeak out a meager existence while the rich plot to gave them systematically liquidated and their charismatic “leader” is the kindly and selfless Ronald who happily sacrifices a needed power source in order to save the newly homeless Alex from a fatal beating. Taking her under his wing, he introduces her to the gang of lovable degenerates he rolls with that includes the extraordinarily Jewish Chef, crack addicted brothers Wors and Pap, the frazzled 2-Bit and his (hopefully) imaginary little blue foul-mouthed friend Sockie and the permanently off-screen Offley and as they all bound and teach Alex to survive on the streets, their fellow tramps are being reduced to puddles all around them.
Soon, Ronald and the gang soon realise that something fishy is going on and a stand has to be made before the rich get their way and eradicate the poor once and for all. However, after starting a movement and rising up by using as much physical violence and drug abuse as they possibly can, will our dishevelled, bug eyed, anti-heroes manage to defend their right to live and melt the rich?

While the original movie styled itself as the ultimate melt movie, it carried with it a feeling of a Troma movie that was swapping out some of that absurdist slapstick for a more hard edged, cynical edge. However in comparison, this new Street Trash feels more at home if it was slotted in nicely somewhere between Hobo With A Shotgun and The Greasy Strangler as its scrappier tone kind of has it circling back towards that Troma style once again as the comedy is much broader and the fantastical, futuristic setting gives things a more cartoonish flavour.
Still, that doesn’t mean that Ryan Kruger isn’t trying to dutifully try to keep the original’s spirit alive with some nods and homages to a lot of the weird shit Muro’s Street Trash slapped across our gobsmacked faces. In the opening sequence alone we have an extended foot chase that echos the opening of the first film and a severed penis to boot which tips its head (steady now) to possibly the most outlandish moment from the 1987 version. The movie also focuses on a lead group of vagrants who are merely just trying to survive and a surprising amount of heart is generated by the camaraderie between the hollowed eyed leads. In fact, the chemistry between the hobos probably proves to be the best part of Street Trash ’24 and most of it comes from the rather amiable nature of Sean Cameron’s Ronald and how he interacts with his friends and Donna Cormack’s Alex. Maybe his intense conversations with Joe Vaz’s Chef about the darker side and sordid of fairy tales won’t be everyone’s idea of top notch comedy, but then this is a movie that sees someone who constantly envisions a little blue alien who constantly makes grotesque sex jokes.
Yes, Street Trash goes out of its way to try and be as offensive as it possibly can, and to the average viewer, it most definitely succeeds, but to a hardened viewer of such fucked up, alt-comedy horror such as Frank Henenlotter’s glorious output and Astro-6’s viciously funny Fathers Day, Street Trash is a little bit too nice (and I use that word incredibly loosely) to really put the boot in. While the original was mercilessly irreverent, finding tar black humour in the most remorseless of places, Ryan Kruger seems to like his characters far too much too wield the sort of abject cruelty that Muro did back in the 80s.

Another huge selling point of the original was – unsurprisingly – the vastly imaginative array of meltdowns that afflicted anyone unfortunate enough to take a hit of the toxic hooch known as Viper and while this new entry certainly ups the amount of moments when certain cast members suddenly find their genetic composition suddenly reach the consistency of Greek yoghurt, the modern melts don’t really hold a card to the original. Yes they are still wonderfully colourful, following the original’s lead by including bright blues, purples, greens and yellows that all come pouring out of every orifice you could possibly imagine, but they are all pretty samey compared to the first movie bending over backwards to make each sequence noticably diffrent. These deadly disintegrations all feel the same, using the same bladder tricks over and over again and soon you get fairly immune to all the goopy goings on.
However, in Kruger’s defence, Street Trash is pretty fun if you’re on the same wavelength and the third act suddenly takes a violent serve into John Carpenter territory as the sight of machine gun waving homeless people rising up against the smug rich folk feels very much like the director is riffing on They Live’s social commentary. In fact, the Carpenter worship is all but confirmed when one character takes a wonder drug to order to become a better freedom fighter (as you do) and immediately starts quoting Kurt Russell from Big Trouble In Little China and while it feels weird that Kruger is paying homage to a filmmaker who had absolutely nothing to do with the movie he’s sequelizing. In fact, while we’re on the subject, the social commentary and South African squalor also feels highly reminiscent of Neill Blomkamp earlier stuff too, but this admittedly (and ironically) helps the film find its own identity.

While this new Street Trash admittedly isn’t a patch on the original, it’s still a worthy find for those whose tastes veer into the sweetly sordid world of the neo grindhouse movement.
Acceptably drippy and certainly trippy.
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