Yep, they made a new STREET TRASH in 2024, it recently had a limited theatrical release, it’s produced by Bloody Disgusting and Screambox so it’s probly on there, and also it’s on blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome. When I say “a new STREET TRASH” I’m intentionally being vague about how it relates to the 1987 slime epic of the same name, like those entertainment reporters who announce an upcoming “reboot” and the more you read the more clear it is they didn’t ask if it was a remake or a sequel or what, so they’re just using a term that has been bastardized into meaninglessness and hoping nobody notices that they don’t actually have any information.

This could qualify as a remake, but a very loose one, using part of the premise and spirit of the original, but otherwise being totally different. Or it could be a sequel if you figure that the biological weapon called “Tenafly Viper” is a militarized version of the deadly spoiled wine from the first one. At any rate, it’s a movie called STREET TRASH that has a few similarities to the previous film, including the only important one: a bunch of people melt horribly, and a variety of beautifully colored liquids pour out of them.

This one comes from South African director Ryan Kruger (FRIED BARRY), so it’s set and filmed in Cape Town, and it’s way more of a normal comedy than the original film, in both bad and good ways. It’s more interested in telling jokes than in alienating you or making you want to take a shower, so it’s not as unique of a specimen. But also that means it’s a more tolerable experience because it wants you to like the characters (there are deaths that successfully made me sad!) and it limits its transgressiveness to gore and dick jokes, no rapes or beatings. Sure, it’s the more commercial thing to do, but at this particular moment in history I appreciate that they decided to switch from the “everybody in the world is a filthy degenerate scumbag who sucks” approach to an underdog story that clearly sides with the homeless in their violent uprising against the rich (no longer wanting to be killed in medical experiments and police roundups).

It splatters some of the aesthetic of the original film (urban filth, candy-colored slime, the beautiful grain of 35mm film) onto a near-future dystopia with notes of Carpenter and Verhoeven. The city is monitored by flying drones, people fight over batteries because of the frequent power outages, there’s a subterranean gang leader called Rat King (Suraya Rose Santos) who has a stooge named Geep (Carel Nel, Raised By Wolves) who crawls around like a dog and happily licks food off of her nasty feet. The other stuff I can’t even call futuristic because it’s hardly exaggerated. Champagne-drinking asshole Mayor Mostert (Warrick Grier, DREDD) has a plan to make sure the constituents he cares about never have to see a homeless person again, and (you guessed it) he doesn’t plan to do it by providing housing. His cops, led by Officer Maggot (Andrew Roux, GIRL YOU KNOW IT’S TRUE), are militarized goons whose job is not to help anybody but just to go around brutalizing homeless people for fun.

It doesn’t have a cast of non-actors who seem like real maniacs, but it does have some nicely weathered faces in its band of homeless heroes, including dark-eyed lead Ronald (Sean Cameron Michael, “Chopper Pilot,” BLAST). When he helps out a woman named Alex (Donna Cormack-Thomson, Catch Me a Killer) she’s rightly suspicious of him, but he really is a sweetheart who brings her through a secure gate to his outdoor living room to meet his best friends Chef (Joe Vaz, STARSHIP TROOPERS 3: MARAUDER), who kinda looks like Stanley Kubrick at first but ended up seeming more like a Nick Frost character; and goofball twins Wors (Lloyd Martinez Newkirk) and Pap (Shuraigh Meyer), who seem more like Taika Waititi characters. My favorite guy in the group is definitely 2-Bit (Gary Green, title character in FRIED BARRY), a gangly, often shirtless man who looks like he’s carved out of driftwood and who is further gone than his friends. They see him as talking nonsense to himself most of the time, but in his mind he’s talking to a FRANKIE FREAKO-worthy horny blue alien puppet named Sockle (voiced by Kruger).

It should be noted that this is a good looking movie, great production value, the advantage of filming somewhere with good infrastructure for low budget filmmakers, I imagine. They have lots of great gore FX without looking like that used up the whole budget. I wouldn’t say the melting outdoes the original, but it does an admirable job of re-creating that vibe. I don’t really expect people to get it right these days, but these guys did it. They have numerous people bubbling and popping and dripping, tearing off their faces, limbs falling off, guts spilling out, heads popping off (CPR is attempted on a headless body), all so gross and yet so pretty with all those different hues of spew. According to the back of the blu-ray the effects sequences are designed by Kevin Bitters (MERCENARY FOR JUSTICE, TENET) and Adrian Smith (LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT remake, 24 HOURS TO LIVE). Both worked on MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, the latter as dummy supervisor. You gotta respect a good dummy supervisor.

One reason it doesn’t seem like a remake is that it doesn’t restage the iconic guy-flushing-himself-down-a-toilet scene. On the other hand, there’s a pretty good riff on the guy getting his dick ripped off, minus playing keep away with it. (SPOILER: Ronald gives Officer Maggot boner pills and then slams his erection in a gate.)

It turns into more of an action movie than the original, mostly guns, but also a little fighting, including a scene featuring fight choreographer Katharina Arajulo (an Angolan fighter who did stunts in THE WOMAN KING) as “homeless ninja.” Ronald is a war vet who never wanted to use his skills, but after he drinks a powerful vial of glowing blue hallucinogen given to him by a drug dealer named Society (Jonathan Pienaar, AMERICAN NINJA 2: THE CONFRONTATION) he goes kinda LIMITLESS and knows exactly what moves to make to efficiently destroy every fascist pig that comes after him.

I did have to ponder what it means to have white leads as the underdogs overthrowing their oppressors in a country best known for its recent past of minority rule. Don’t worry, the mayor is an Afrikaner too, it’s not some “the tables have turned” shit, but there are relatively few African characters for a story set in a city that’s currently only about 16% white. It’s a fairly diverse cast overall, though, and maybe it’s refreshing there to ignore race and focus solely on class issues – I’d have to hear from (certain) South Africans on that. In a broader context, at any rate, I think we can all get behind a bawdy gore comedy about nice homeless stoners refusing to lick boots and instead melting the rich and the cops who are trying to kill them into puddles of slime. A hero myth for our age.

P.S. You can tell which movies and shows were filmed in South Africa by looking up the cast and seeing they’re all in the same things (Black Sails, Warrior, Resident Evil tv series, DEATH RACE 2 and 3, etc.).