Interviews
Ryan Kruger Calls ‘Street Trash’ a Standalone Sequel and Gory Love Letter to ’80s Cinema
Fried Barry director Ryan Kruger gives a new spin on the 1987 cult classic Street Trash, relocating the melt madness to Cape Town, South Africa, where the growing divide between rich and poor has changed the world as we know it. But Kruger will be the first to eschew the “remake” label, referring to his new film as a standalone sequel.
The filmmaker wrote Street Trash to be accessible for newcomers, while slyly referencing details and events from the original to make this new movie a continuation of the goopy, melty world introduced by director Jim Muro in 1987. Kruger took painstaking measures to even recapture the ’80s aesthetic, both through practical effects and shooting his reimagining on 35mm. It also helps that Kruger grew up as a massive fan of Street Trash.
“As a kid growing up in the ’80s and ’90s, Street Trash was one of those films that my friends and I would sit up watching on my little TV late at night,” Kruger tells Bloody Disgusting. “We’d either have it on VHS, or it would be on TV. I was a fan of the original, and over the years, as it got older, I went back and watched it. So, when Justin Martell and Matt Manjourides approached me to do the film after I made Fried Barry, I was like, ‘Hell yeah, that would be amazing.'”
But how do you approach Street Trash in the modern world? The director explains, “It was one of those things straightway where there’s a big fanbase for the original film; I’m a part of that fanbase. But at the same time, I really respect the original film, but I wanted to stay very far away from trying to copy the original in any way. What I loved from the original, obviously, is the prosthetics. It was the ’80s, and it was just the tone and feel of ’80s movies. We were very lucky that we actually got to shoot on 35mm, just to give it that eighties film look. And all the prosthetics, but all in all with the whole film.”
Kruger reiterates that he doesn’t consider his film a remake. “It’s in the same world as the 1987 original film. We actually mention stuff from the original film. So for me, it’s always been more of a sequel. For the original fans, it’s actually a sequel. For a new audience it can be a standalone film.“
The commitment to the ’80s meant that Kruger wanted the film’s effects to feel authentic to the period, too. “I wanted to keep it very, very ’80s, very old prosthetics when it came to anything with the blood and the goo and everything. I looked at the original. It’s such a big part of the original. It was just really coming up with those ideas. I guess it just falls under the story as well of how each of these melts happened. It was that bottle of booze that went around and these guys that were drinking it. With this, it was the government. It wasn’t in drink form in some of the film, but gas. So, it was coming up with those different ideas of the melts. And sitting there with the prosthetics people, really coming up with ideas.”
Kruger continues, “Can we do this? Can we do that? You know, is this possible? It was fun. I always say if I didn’t do directing or acting, I probably would have gone into animatronics and prosthetics. So yeah, it was a lot of fun just coming up with these different ideas and then trying to push the boundaries compared to the original. Push for more blood and the goo. It’s almost like a little bit darker, in a way, when people melt. We actually did some pickup shots, and that’s just because we wanted to push it a little bit more with prosthetics.“
In the niche subgenre of melt horror, the 1987 film stands out in part for the colorful nature of the melting. The unlucky denizens that drink tainted Tenafly Viper dissolve into vibrant colors of goo. “That’s such a big thing for the original,” Kruger agrees. “There’s a whole generation that doesn’t even know what the fuck Street Trash is. The color was a big thing. If you happen just to be watching the film and see this purple or yellow or orange goo, you’d be like, ‘What the fuck?’ This is meant to be blood, you know. We wanted to use different colors just to push it. Obviously, prosthetics are a big part of the ’80s, but it’s also the color… it’s that multicolored goo. That’s that’s what Street Trash is, you know.“
While the homeless population in the original film often splintered into factions and fought amongst themselves, the new film centers around a ragtag group of eccentric but ultimately sweet misfits. They form a tight-knit group that pushes back against a corrupt government attempting to snuff them out of existence, and its members include Shuraigh Meyer as “Pap,“ Lloyd Martinez Newkirk as “Wors, “Joe Vazas as “Chef,“ Sean Cameron Michael as “Ronald,“ Donna Cormack-Thomson as “Alex,” and Gary Green as “2-Bit.”
Ryan Kruger says of his motley bunch, “It’s very important for me, no matter what movie you make, that you have characters that you love and sympathize with. There are a lot of genre movies that get made, especially in the low-budget horror world, where there are a lot of characters that are just shit, and you don’t care for them. When writing this film, I didn’t want to just make it a gore film. It’s very easy just to make a gore film. You have to have a good story. You must have good characters, and you’ve got to be able to care for them.“
The filmmaker also voices a unique character in the film: an imaginary puppet named Sockle. Kruger explains, “It was really fun. I’ve never really done voice work before. I’m working with the character 2-Bit, played by Gary Green, who played Fried Barry. 2-Bit probably took way too much acid in his life, too many drugs, and he has this imaginary friend. Only he can see this character. It was like a support character for 2-Bit and Gary Green, too, so I could bounce off him and work very closely. Gary looks amazing, just the way he looks. He’s got such presence. But to have this character as a drug addict and have this imaginary, inappropriate, funny friend… It was just fun to bounce back and forth. Then I was also smoking. So when I was doing this voice the whole time; my voice would really hurt at the end of the day.”
The commitment to ’80s cinema extends beyond Street Trash for Ryan Kruger. The filmmaker tips us off to Easter eggs hiding in plain sight: the costume designs. “In all my films, I put in a lot of little Easter eggs. Little nods to different movies that I enjoyed growing up,” he teases. “Some people will pick this up, and some people might not pick it up, but a lot of the characters in the movie are based on them. For example, Alex’s character. If you look at her wardrobe, it’s Ripley from Aliens. 2-Bit has red overalls and yellow gloves based on Roger Rabbit and Ronald, our lead guy. He was based on Robin Williams’ The Fisher King. And then you’ve got Chef, who is Stanley Kubrick if you look at his jacket, hair, and his glasses. Then, the two guys who are part of Rat King’s men are Snake Plissken and The Duke from Escape from New York. If you look at the wardrobes, it’s all ’80s and ’90s movies with the characters.”
Street Trash releases on Digital on November 19, just in time to get melty this Thanksgiving.
Nothing is the same when two crewmates return to shore in Rose of Nevada, the latest by Enys Men filmmaker Mark Jenkin.
Time and reality blur for stars George Mackay (Wolf, 1917) and Callum Turner (Green Room, “Neuromancer”) in the hallucinatory time travel mystery releasing in New York and Los Angeles theaters on June 19, 2026.
But this isn’t your standard time travel movie.
Rose of Nevada bends time and genre in its exploration of Cornish identity and community, upending the lives of Nick (MacKay) and Liam (Turner). There’s a listless, dreamy quality to the time travel, and for inspired reason: Jenkin approaches it like a haunting.
While time travel was on his mind early in the writing process, Jenkin’s partner and collaborator asked a question that unlocked Rose of Nevada and inspired the filmmaker.
Jenkin explains, “I remember saying to Mary [Woodvine], my partner, who’s in the film, I said to her, ‘God, it really seems like I’ve fallen into this thing of either making films about ghosts or films about time travel,’ and then she said to me, ‘Yeah, but aren’t all ghost stories just time travel films, and aren’t all time travel films just ghost stories?’ And then I thought, ‘Oh, great. So I’m not making two types of films. I’m actually always making one type of film.’ But that was ultimately liberating because I thought there’s a nice gap or a crossover in the perception of genres, there’s a lot of room to play and to be free within that.”
“Once I’d abandoned the idea that I was going to master quantum physics in any academic sense,” the filmmaker continues, “It was incredibly freeing because I thought, ‘Well, I can just set my own rules here,’ and it really doesn’t matter what the rules are as long as you stick to them. You can’t bend them for the sake of the plot or for the sake of a character arc or something. You have to establish those rules upfront and stick to them, which made me really think I’ve got to limit the time travel element. This film can’t be about time travel.“
Bearing the brunt of the time travel disruption is Mackay’s Nick, a man struggling to support his family before the ill-fated voyage upends his entire world. It’s the type of role that was an easy yes for the actor, simply because of the filmmaker behind it.
“I saw Bait at the cinema when it was first out a few years ago and was so struck by it,” Mackay tells BD. “I just hadn’t seen a film like it. I want to work with the best directors. I want to work with the best directors and people who have a singular vision. As an actor, the process of work is almost my biggest draw, as well as what a story’s saying, but I think you learn by doing, and if I can do my bit in as many different ways as possible. The physicality and the discipline of Mark’s filmmaking, how that is so entwined in the DNA of the film, and therefore in the way that I work within it, that was the biggest draw. I’m just a fan of Mark’s. I was just very pleased to be involved.”
That reflects in Rose of Nevada‘s unique casting; Mackay initially was eyed for Liam.
“When I first got the call to meet Mark at the audition stage,” Mackay said, “We didn’t wind up reading scenes, but they said, ‘There’s a project. There are two roles in it that you could be right for, and Mark is leaning towards you for Liam.’ So, I had a look at Liam, Callum’s role, and had my interpretation of the script ready to talk about it and what I thought that character was, who he was, and how I’m thinking about how I might inhabit that or what I saw in him. And when we met, we didn’t talk about the film at all. We spoke about everything else. But following that meeting, I got the message, said, ‘Mark would like you to be part of the film, but he thinks you’re definitely more of a Nick,’ which I think I just may be a complete sheep because I went, ‘Of course I’m Nick.’
Mackay continued, “But it’s funny, I do have in my own life, I just started a family, and so much of my last few years of being has been trying to figure that balance and what that means and how you navigate that. So with family being at its core and all the kind of conundrums that come with staying level with that, that rang true. So I felt like I understood objectively, I have my interpretations of what both men mean to each other and within the story, but then once I was playing Nick, I just became about a very present focus on who he was and what his situation was. What I liked about him is that he’s a very straightforward bloke. In the best possible way, he’s quite a simple man. It’s just he’s in an extraordinary situation.”
Jenkin wrote Rose of Nevada during the pandemic lockdown that had forced a halt in production on Enys Men. He’d return to rewrite once Enys Men had been completed, creating overlap between films. “They are even more in conversation than you’d think because the first draft of Rose of Nevada was before I’d made Enys Men, and then everything I learned through the making of Enys Men, I fed into Rose of Nevada. But also the reaction to Enys Men, all the critics and writers and audience members who are telling me what Enys Men was about. I’m always the last to realize what I’ve done, I think like most filmmakers. You don’t really know what you’ve made a film about until the audience tells you. I was able to feed that into Rose of Nevada and also scale it up a little bit. So, yeah, in some ways it predates Enys Men, and in some ways it follows on from it,” he said.
Jenkin’s latest caps what’s unofficially been dubbed his Cornish trilogy, a moniker that initially surprised the filmmaker, but he’s come to embrace it. A recent revisit of Bait made it even clearer. “I can now understand why people are linking the three films together. I’d forgotten how linked they are, which is amazing, really, considering the first draft of Bait was written in 1999. So, most of my adult life has been one way or another making this trilogy. I am quite looking forward to starting the next chapter.”
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