Slime and Screams: Producer Matt Manjourides on the New Street Trash

It takes a brave filmmaker to risk making a sequel to splatter punk classic Street Trash, but producer Matt Manjourides is exactly the man for the job.

The 1987 original is a testament to zero-budget creativity, a story of rancid old booze that is quite literally gut-melting. Memorable for its scenes of hobos and street scum turning into multicolored pools of goop, it’s attained a rare status among the lucky few that have seen it. It’s hated by some that see it as nothing but sick trash – and that’s OK, because writer Roy Frumkes has said that the script was intended to “democratically offend every group on the planet.”

However, its savage sociopolitical subtext and gross-out comedy has its fans. That includes Manjourides and now, through his Not the Funeral Home production company, he has produced the new Street Trash. Same name but brand-new disgusting flavor, as the homeless community of Cape Town, South Africa, is under attack from the government and developers through the use of a chemical called Tenafly Viper that turns them into pools of sludge. Now that sequel gets a special screening and its Austin premiere Saturday night at We Luv Video as part of their Pulsing Cinema series.

A graduate of the Troma school of filmmaking, Manjourides is no newcomer to the world of franchise cinema, having produced a remake (Castle Freak), a prequel (Subspecies V: Bloodrise), and two sequels (Return to Nuke 'Em High and Return to Return to Nuke 'Em High Aka Vol. 2). This time, he’s made a film that he said “exists in the same world as the original.” Moreover, this was in no way intended as erasing the original: Both Frumkes and director J. Michael Muro were brought in as executive producers and signed off at every stage. “We wanted to make sure we had everybody’s blessing.”

Like many film fans, Manjourides fell in love with the original as a teenager when he saw the lurid art for the VHS – one of the rare times that the movie lived up to the box art hype. “It was eye-grabbing for an 11-year-old,” he said. Years later, when he started working for Troma, he’d be at conventions with studio head Lloyd Kaufman “and people would come up to us and say that Street Trash was their favorite Troma movie, and he would get very upset because Street Trash was never a Troma movie. But people always equated it to a Troma film.”

However, it was Troma that gave him his first professional connection to Street Trash. The studio was releasing a 25th anniversary disc of another street-slime classic, Combat Shock, and Frumkes was interviewed for one of the DVD extras. Manjourides explained, “Combat Shock and Street Trash had done the festival circuit together, and after that interview I became friends with Roy.”

Manjourides started thinking seriously about a sequel around six years ago, but struggled to find a way to make it relevant. He found that relevancy when he started reading about the crackdown on the homeless community in Los Angeles, and saw how that could play in the world of Street Trash, where the homeless are seen as beneath contempt. “How would a very corrupt government deal with such a homeless issue that was plaguing this city in the most unsympathetic way possible? Literally melt away the homeless, and then come along with high pressure hoses and wash them into the sewer.”

However, the sequel moved that story from both the L.A. inspiration and the original NYC setting to South Africa when Manjourides was introduced by his producing partner, Justin A. Martell, to director Ryan Kruger. Martell's record label, Ship to Shore PhonoCo, had released the soundtrack to Martell's first movie, Fried Barry, a sci-fi black comedy about a Cape Town junkie who gets possessed by an alien. Manjourides immediately saw that his psychotropic energy would fit the film, but he also presented an opportunity to put the Street Trash story into a new international context that still resonated with the original. “The New York of today is not the New York of the ‘80s,” he said. However, like Brooklyn in the 1980s, he said, “South Africa obviously has a huge issue with the discrepancy between classes, and a huge homeless issue as well. It just fit, but it was enough of a difference to the original.”

Their plan was quietly very ambitious: not just making a sequel to a cult classic but filming it on 35mm. Shooting in South Africa came with a lot of cost savings compared to the U.S., but filming on celluloid would have been a lot easier if Kodak hadn’t just closed its lab for the region, meaning every reel had to take a 12-hour flight to London to be processed. Luckily, Manjourides had cut his teeth on the zero-budget Troma sets, so knew how to get things done with no cash and still make it look good. He said, “We really wouldn’t have been able to do it if every dollar wasn’t on the screen.”

However, the one place he definitely could and would not cut corners was on the all-practical visual effects. The original was famous for its gross-out Technicolor scenes of people dissolving, and it was important that the sequel retain that stomach-sloshing rainbow. “There’s a lot of movies that have red spray everywhere,” Manjourides said, “but we wanted to have the greens and the blues and the purples and the oranges. That’s the fun of it.”

But knowing that the original has what he politely called “detractors,” the production team kept their plan quiet until it had been accepted into Fantasia. After that, he said, “Nobody came after us.”

However, there was going to be at least one exploitation expert that wasn’t going to just be some random internet commenter. Manjourides’ day job, as it were, is as producer on The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs, meaning that he’d eventually have to explain what he was doing to the legendary horror host. “I don’t know when he knew about the film,” Manjourides said, “and I don’t think he realized we’d done it until it was in theatres.”

The Last Drive-In began as an homage of shorts to Briggs’ old show, MonsterVision. Originally launched in 1991 as simply a late-night horror marathon block, occasionally presented by magical duo Penn and Teller, Briggs took over MonsterVision's hosting duties in 1996. Already an established name in B-movie circles from his written reviews for the Dallas Times Herald, and his previous series for the Movie Channel, Joe Bob's Drive-in Theater, MonsterVision made him a cult hero for his ability to talk about exploitation cinema with the insight usually reserved for Cahiers du Cinema art house fodder.

Shudder’s original plan was for a one-off 13-film marathon, hosted by Briggs and kicking off with the movie that put the “psycho” into “psychokinetic,” 1970’s Tourist Trap. And then the show quite literally broke the internet. Manjourides said, “It crashed the AMC server because so many people tried to watch it, and they literally couldn’t play the show for the first two hours. … So we knew it was a success immediately and the next day they sent us a contract for the first two seasons.”

Yet the show isn't just MonsterVision resurrected. Without the time constraints of broadcast TV, episodes can run as long as Briggs wants, with as many intersegment lectures and digressions as the movie requires. The films themselves can be more diverse and, yes, gorier. However, one of the biggest additions to the format is Darcy the Mail Girl. Historically, Joe Bob's shows had a cast member who would bring him viewer letters, but Darcy has become a full-fledged cohost. Manjourides said, "After the first marathon, she became a very integral part of the show. She's responsible for a lot of the online activity, and the interaction with her and Joe Bob and the fans keeps things going."

Seven years on, The Last Drive-In has become Shudder’s signature content, the monthly double bills must-see TV for the loyal fanbase that has dubbed itself the Mutant Fam. The show is fast heading towards a major landmark of 200 films screened, and there is no sign of slowing down. Manjourides said, “We’re in season 7 now and we’ve never had any real loss of viewership, I don’t know of any show that has gone seven season that hasn’t had some kind decline, but it’s been the same amount of fans and gaining as we go. It’s pretty amazing.”

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Pulsing Cinema presents the Austin premiere of Street Trash, Saturday, May 24, at We Luv Video. Tickets at weluvideo.org.

Can't make the screening? Street Trash is available on Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome.

The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs is streaming now on shudder.com.