Street Trash

Gore never bores in this scrappy South African remake of a cult 1987 body horror comedy. But the unhoused misfits at the centre of this dystopian story are fighting back, as the mayor exterminates the ‘homeless problem’ one melting body at a time.

Writer-director Ryan Kruger revives the gross-out exploitation of the ‘melt movie’, but also throws in shades of Robocop, They Live and The Warriors. Its tagline “melt the rich” perfectly sums up the added action plot: the unhoused misfits will most definitely take revenge on the cartoonishly villainous mayor, as he exterminates every unhoused person in the city, one melting body at a time.

While the 1987 original was written “to democratically offend every group on the planet”, here bad taste has some limits – with immodesty favoured over immorality. Subtle it is not, but there’s a wholesomeness to the affection this remake has for its central characters – though much more, of course, for its gore. The beating, melting, exploding heart of the film, these sequences – in which people are spectacularly eviscerated from the inside out – keep coming, and keep pushing the threshold. There’s something for everyone (to be grossed out by): torn-off faces, severed genitals and a horny, foul-mouthed imaginary friend. And that’s all in the first ten minutes. All guts, so gory.

– Callum McLean

Trailer

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