20 Exploitation Films You Must See Before You Die

Expanded from a short film about homeless alcoholics who begin to melt after consuming a liquor named Viper, Street Trash tries so hard to be different that its makers forgot to give us sympathetic characters, or even a plot. Instead, what we get is a series of loosely connected, hit-or-miss skits.

There’s a sequence where people play catch with a severed penis that’s as funny/tasteless as anything filmed by John Waters, and James Lorinz (Frankenhooker) is amusing as a mob doorman. Where the film loses its footing is in making its characters as vile as possible, all in the name of setting up the next gross-‘em-out gag. There’s necrophilia, casual racism, police brutality, misogyny and, in the film’s biggest misstep, gang rape.

After following Fred (Mike Lackey) for half the movie, the viewer expects more from their “hero” than to see him kidnap and rape a gangster’s wife. That floats a little too close to what Waters called “bad bad taste”, but then again, Waters liked the movie, so judge for yourself.