STREET TRASH (2024) 

3 stars

Lightbulb Film Distribution. Select UK cinemas January 10. Digital & Blu-ray from February 17.

Some of you may remember the original STREET TRASH from 1987, which was directed by J. Michael Muro, an expansion of his short film and scripted by Roy Frumkes. It was a crazy and slimy body horror. 

In this sequel-cum-remake the opening titles declare it as ‘A Ryan Kruger Thing’ (as he directed and co-wrote the script with James C. Williamson)… so we know who to blame for this!

In Cape Town, South Africa, “volunteers” are being brought in off the streets for an experiment. We see one such man strapped to a chair. He is injected with something whilst a scientist observes through a large glass window. The man writhes about and then he falls unconscious and his skin begins to pulsate. His guts fall out. As he screams his skin comes off as he begins to melt. Another day at the office…

The homeless are fighting the government in the streets. There is high unemployment due to the large corporate monopolies – the result of Mayor Mostert (Warrick Grier) having been in charge for 8 years. Homeless man Ronald (Sean Cameron Michael) is being chased by the police. Others help him. Caught and tussled to the ground, He blows something in the cops face which gives the policeman an erection. Yes, it’s that kind of film! The boner is then gets chopped off by a slammed shut gateway, as Ronald manages to escape, thanks to his friend Chef (Joe Vaz).

Ronald then sees Alex (Donna Cormack-Thomson) being harassed by two guys who work for the Rat King (the local leader of the black market ops) and manages to save her. He welcomes her into their crew – she meets Pap (Shiraishi Meyer) and Wors (Lloyd Martinez Newkirk), Offley (Ryan Kruger, who is offscreen) and the mad 2-Bit (Gary Green) who talks to a strange blue imaginary creature called Sockle (also Kruger), which is represented by a naff puppet. A right motley bunch. 

The scientist types have managed to reproduce the Viper compound, in massive quantities, from samples of the ‘New York incident’ in 1986. Hence why this is more a sequel than a remake per se. The Mayor is using clones to clean up the streets by spraying the population with this deadly concoction – which causes people to melt in a brightly coloured manner.

Our bunch of vagrants try to fight back leading to an action packed, gory finale.

Whilst this has good practical effects to recommend it, with ‘melts’ a colourful and grisly highlight, it’s not enough to maintain interest. The film is tonally all over the place and things soon become tiresome and repetitive, with silly and often crude humour. The acting is variable and the whole thing is both literally messy and a bit of mess overall. The adverts and news clips that fill in the back story, call to mind ROBOCOP.

Steve Kirkham