In the year 2050, the world is in the grip of economic disaster. In South Africa, the city of Cape Town is hardly an exception to the rule, experiencing ninety percent unemployment and daily unrest as the homeless try to survive in a society where it’s just them and the super-rich. Displaced from a middle class which no longer exists, Alex (Donna Cormack-Thomson) is taken in by the friendly Ronald (Sean Cameron Michael) and his bunch of amiable street-dwelling misfits whose aim is to have as quiet a life as possible – until, that is, they uncover a plot by the establishment to exterminate those deemed undesirable with a toxic chemical agent…
I clearly remember renting the original Street Trash on VHS and being stunned at how it was lifted from the morass of most direct-to-tape offerings by being so bizarre and wilfully offensive, to the point of having me crack up laughing on several occasions and subsequently love it to bits. I’m aware it’s a movie that a lot of people don’t like and, if you’ve seen the Jim Muro source material and are on that particular, rather crowded boat, I understand your annoyance.
In the list of movies ripe for a remake, reboot, reimagining, call it what you will, I would not have expected Street Trash to be given that treatment, but here we are. We live in interesting times. When I heard Ryan Kruger was going to be in charge of the new version, it seemed the perfect choice as his previous movie, the frankly bonkers Fried Barry, possessed a great deal of the scuzz and the seemingly random, episodic happenings of Muro’s 1987 opus.
Muro (credited here as J. Michael Muro) and original writer Roy Frumkes are on board as executive producers and there’s still a feel of the ’87 version in the way our jolly band of homeless folks are introduced, although there’s a sharper focus on the main plot and fewer, button-pushing diversions. This time out, you don’t get a vignette in which someone’s severed penis becomes an extended game of piggy in the middle, but there is a nod to that in an early chase sequence in which a powdered variant of Viagra is used to slow down a pursuing police officer.
The contaminated hooch of Frumkes’ story is replaced by a much more sinister agenda, as those flagged as surplus to requirements are experimented upon via injection and aerosol. If you’ve come for the melting, there’s someone leaking neon goo and losing bits of themselves even before the opening title card shows up. From there, we’re spun through a series of RoboCop-style news articles detailing the terrible state of affairs – including the confirmed death of the last rhino on the planet – before homing in on Ronald and his unlikely band of heroes.
No previous knowledge of the origin tale is necessary to enjoy the 2024 incarnation of Street Trash, but for those of us who have seen both, comparisons are inevitable. The OG Frumkes screenplay sets out to assault the viewer’s sensibilities as much as possible and succeeds a fair amount of the time. This redo, co-scripted by Kruger and James C. Williamson, still features a number of awful things happening, but the ludicrous nature of it all is given more emphasis, which goes a long way to taking the edge of the potential offence. That’s not to say that innocent folks being made to dissolve into puddles of goo doesn’t have the necessary punch, but there’s a certain cartoony element to the proceedings and a clear delineation between the good and bad guys which gives the whole thing the air of a very gory pantomime. Oh no, it isn’t, I hear you cry. Oh yes, it is and you’re waiting for the boo-inducing villains to get their comeuppance.
Very much like Muro’s messy mini-maybe-masterpiece, mileage will vary, although in this update it isn’t the level of offence you can stomach, it’s how much of the often puerile humour, often centred on bodily fluids or sex, you can take. If you like the idea of a foul-mouthed, sex and violence obsessed alien called Sockle which only Gary Green’s character of 2-Bit can see, then you’ll most likely enjoy the rest of what Street Trash has to offer. Yes, Gary Green was the titular subject of Fried Barry and is a welcome presence here, giving a welcome, off-kilter turn which you suspect is going to shift in an amusingly different direction come the third act (it does).
For a movie with Trash in the title, the performances aren’t rubbish (See what I did there? Sorry). Sean Cameron Michael is a genial presence as the philosophical Ronald, Cormack-Thomson gives good wronged, out for revenge lass and Joe Vaz rides the lovable/annoying line for all he’s worth as the talky Chef. In terms of the real criminals of the piece, Warrick Grier as the conniving Mayor Mostert and Andrew Roux as the thuggish Officer Maggot are fine, but aren’t given much to do other than being the punchline to a couple of major confrontations.
And this is where Street Trash, unfortunately, does fall down somewhat. The heroes are, for the most part, fun and engaging to follow, but their enemies lack the detail to be genuinely worthy adversaries. There is a point to be made that, come the revolution, the folks in power will prove themselves to be genuinely useless in defending themselves, but a last stanza overthrow of the regime never seems remotely in doubt and perhaps I wanted a little more jeopardy in getting there. Still, it would be churlish to throw the entire film under the bus because of that and seeing the usual “eat the rich” manifesto turned into “melt the rich” is satisfying, if only to see yet more gloopy effects.
So, how does 2024 Street Trash stack up against 1987 Street Trash? I may not be the right person to answer that question, as I’ve seen the 1987 vintage more times than is probably safe for one human being to see it and I should give this young whippersnapper the same level of consideration over a longer period of time. What I can say is that Ryan Kruger has brought his own stamp to the material while maintaining a level of reverence for the audience-baiter upon which it’s based, softening some of the spikier edges to make it more palatable while still delivering on the spilled guts and liquefying limbs.