(For an explanation of what these posts in October are, see the parent post.)

Synopsis

Homeless people start melting when drinking “Viper”, toxic hooch discovered after being locked away for 60 years.

Opinion

This film is all over the place.  It goes from black comedy, to body horror, to action film, to Vietnam veteran drama, to the plight of the homeless, to gore/splatter pic, to gangster humor, to… it’s just all over the place.  I keep writing sentences about it and then erasing them because I honestly can’t understand what the fuck I just watched.

I’ll defer to “RevRuin” from IMDB, who in 2001 summarized the film better than I seem to be doing right now:

One day someone said, “I’d like to make a movie featuring a bottle of hooch that makes people melt into multi-colored ooze. I think I’ll also add “sub-plots” about insane homeless vets, murder, necrophilia, gang-rape, castration, and police brutality. Oh, and it’s a COMEDY.”

Anyone who blasts the movie probably had no idea what they were getting into. Yeah, the story – if you want to call it that – is flimsy at best, but the film is punctuated by some inventive effects, some nice camera work, and a hysterical mostly-improvised Doorman character played by James Lorinz.

Summed up, if you like your movies dispicable, reprehensible, obnoxious, offensive, crude, and downright nasty, pick this one up.

That’s about right.  It’s downright odd how it switches subjects and tone every 5-10 minutes.

Recommendation

I guess if 30% of more of the above appealed to you in some way, watch it, I guess?  50%, maybe?

Actually, there is one good reason to watch it:  Tony Darrow.  Darrow was a lounge singer until, at age 50, he was cast in this picture as a gangster, which he was familiar with having grown up around gangsters his whole life.  He did an ok job, but what is surprising is that Martin Scorsese somehow saw Street Trash and cast Tony in Goodfellas, which then led to a number of gangster characters until he found himself in The Sopranos where he played “Larry Barese” for the entire show’s run.  If you’re a Tony Darrow fan, you’ll enjoy him in this picture improvising some funny scenes with James Lorinz.