Street Trash (The Last Drive-In)

Film Year:  1987
Genre:  Comedy
Director:  Jim Muro
Starring:  Chicken down the pants

The Movie

Joe Bob, what the FUCK did you just make me watch?

I usually start out with a mini-premise summary, but, as far as I can tell, this movie is about very little.  It's about homeless people doing random homeless things.  They'll argue, squeegee windows for spare change, rape drunk women, stuff chicken down their pants, toss a mutilated penis around...you know, homeless stuff.  There's some story about a batch of bad alcohol called Viper that is going around and melting the hobos, but it largely doesn't go anywhere and only exists as an excuse for colorful (and I mean colorful) gore.  Also a former Vietnam vet has taken over the dump as the champion of the Garbage Pail Game of Thrones or something.

This movie, probably not surprisingly for a film called Street Trash, is garbage.  The only thing about it that I can definitively state that it's trying to be is that it wants to be funny.  And it really isn't funny.  It's labored humor, and about as funny listening to an eccentric uncle tell a fart joke he's told a hundred times before.

You know how random Family Guy is accused of being even though it's honestly hyperbole?  That's how random this movie is.  Nothing seems to happen for rhyme or reason, things just happen and they unfold so more things can happen.  Street Trash has no purpose or destination, and is just an excuse to be offensive.  Personally I can't be offended at a mentally challenged person yelling "POOP!" at me, so why should I be offended by this movie?  I mean, sure, it tries to get us to have a laugh at rape, necrophilia, and other taboo topics, but I'm not so much offended as I am puzzled by the film's bizarre bad taste.

I can see that maybe there's a sense of a Sam Raimi indie-spirit of trying to storm into filmmaking with your guns blazing here, but the film is less like Raimi's Evil Dead and more like Raimi's largely messy follow-up Crimewave.  Crimewave is a much better movie than Street Trash, but they both feel as if they have a confidence in being something different but an uncertainty in what they're trying to achieve.  There's one thing I can say for certain about Street Trash and that is that I thoroughly did not enjoy it.

The Drive-In

Joe Bob decides to do a double feature of substance addiction with a side of goop this week.  The first film, The Stuff, wasn't great but it had it's charms.  Street Trash, however, has no charm to it.  Joe Bob doesn't even like it that much, but he's got a mischievous glint to his eye that says "Hey, check this shit out!"  He at one point lists off things in this film you won't see anywhere else, and it's one hell of a list.

He has a fair bit to share about the film's director, Jim Muro, who went on to work in cinematography, being the director of photography for films such as Rush Hour 3 and the controversial Oscar winner Crash.  Not a lot of castmembers worked on other projects, though he notes one became a comic book writer, another became a cop, and one joined the navy.  He also relates that the woman in the rape scene unfortunately suffered PTSD from an assault earlier in her life, and was triggered during filming the scene, but hey, anything for a laugh, right?

One neat detail Joe Bob shares is that a production assistant on this film was a very young Bryan Singer, who went on to direct The Usual Suspects and four X-Men films.  He's had some shady allegations come forward lately, so it might not come as a complete surprise that he worked on a tasteless movie that laughs at rape.

Oh, and he melts people in his movies too!

The big cap on this episode is a phone call to Sleepaway Camp's Felissa Rose, the show's official Mutilated Dick expert, as they have a colorful conversation about the penis tossing sequence.  It's a fun moment that is worth watching, as are most of Joe Bob's segments, as usual.  It's just that movie, man...

Joe Bob's Rating

⭐⭐