Street Trash (1987) on Netflix
A liquor store owner finds Tenafly Viper in his cellar and sells it to hobos. Whoever drinks it melts. Two brothers live in a junkyard ruled by Bronson, a deranged Vietnam vet.
- Netflix3.0/5
- IMDb5.9/1013,236 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes55%
Trailer
Plot summary
A liquor store in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, has a case of Tenafly Viper in its basement. The liquor dates to the 1920s and has spoiled, but the owner sells the bottles to the local hobos for a dollar each, and anyone who drinks one melts. In a nearby junkyard, two homeless brothers make their home, and a female cashier and clerk frequently tends to both of them. The junkyard is the kingdom of Bronson, a deranged Vietnam War veteran whose gang of homeless veterans does his bidding. A cop, Bill, works the series of unexplained deaths and wants to end Bronson's rule at the junkyard.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Street Trash (1987)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The scene in which an overweight victim explodes, engineered by Dean Kartalas, was achieved by stuffing an explosive dummy with Drake's Cakes, donated by the company as a product promotion.
- Street Trash began as a 10-minute graduate thesis short by 21-year-old director J. Michael Muro at the School of Visual Arts, inspired by Akira Kurosawa's Dodes'ka-den, which depicted life in Japanese slums.
- After raising $30,000 to expand the short into a feature, Muro shot the 14-week production at a Brooklyn wrecking yard and adjacent warehouse that belonged to his own father.
- In an NBR profile Frumkes said he wrote it to democratically offend every group on the planet, and that as a result the youth market embraced it as a renegade work and it played midnight shows.
- In 2023 the South African director Ryan Kruger was tapped to remake the 1987 film, but decided on a "spiritual sequel" instead, set in 2050 Cape Town, where the government wipes out the homeless community with a gas called "Tenafly Viper", named after the alcohol of the original.
