Street Trash
J. Michael Muro
(1987)
A group of hobos begin melting into multicolored piles of goo after drinking sixty-year-old liquor. At the same time, the psychotic Vietnam War vet who rules the hobo camp snaps and begins killing at random. Two brothers set out to stop the liquor and the killer.
Cast
Crew
Overview and Horror Legacy
Street Trash is the defining entry of the 'melt movie' subgenre and the most Troma-esque film Troma never made. Director J. Michael Muro — primarily a Steadicam operator who later worked alongside James Cameron — brought a cinematographer's eye to guerrilla exploitation, winning the Silver Raven at the Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film. It earned notoriety in the UK video nasty orbit before cementing itself as a genuine cult artifact over decades.
Collector Market and Memorabilia
The melt sequences are the centrepiece: latex-and-goop practical effects that produce neon-colored body horror with a level of craft far above the film's shoestring budget — including a gas cylinder death with detailed model work that lingers rather than cuts away. The film's VHS-era identity is inseparable from its appeal, and recent collector editions have leaned hard into that: Lightbulb Film Distribution's 4K UHD release ships in a retro VHS-sized box with Graham Humphreys exclusive artwork, five character art cards, a laminated beer mat, and an A3 poster — a physical package built specifically for the obsessive shelf.
Cult Status
Muro expanded the film from his own 1984 short, shooting without permits across pre-gentrification lower Manhattan and Brooklyn with an all-amateur cast. The UK VHS release was trimmed by censors; those cuts were fully reinstated for the 2000 DVD and all subsequent releases. A two-hour making-of documentary, Meltdown Memoirs, exists as definitive behind-the-scenes record of how something this specific got made at all.
