sub-plot involving the relationship between Fred (Mike Lackey) and Bronson; these sequences are included in the documentary Meltdown Memoirs. Release The film was given a limited release theatrically in the United States by Lightning Pictures in June 1987. They also released the film on VHS the same year. In 2005, Synapse Films marketed an all-new, digitally remastered version of the film. Included with the DVD were sticker-type "labels" of the Viper wine featured in the film. In 2006, a second release by Synapse Films was announced, featuring the documentary Meltdown Memoirs by writer Roy Frumkes. The feature includes interviews with most of the surviving cast and crew with the exception of Jane Arakawa. It also contains the original 16mm short version of Street Trash. In 2010, Arrow Video released a two-DVD set in the UK featuring the documentary Meltdown Memoirs along with a previously unavailable featurette with Jane Arakawa and the booklet 42nd Street Trash: The Making of the Melt written by Calum Waddell. Since then, the movie has been released also on Blu-ray in numerous countries. Reception Street Trash received little critical attention upon its initial release. The film holds a 67% rating on review site Rotten Tomatoes, where critic Walter Goodman of The New York Times said of it, "It claims no redeeming social value, and you don't have to be a Supreme Court nominee to question whether the Founders could have foreseen anything like it when they wrote the First Amendment." Other reviewers on the platform consider Street Trash a crude but overlooked dark humour pioneer in the splatter film genre. The film has since gained a cult following among horror fans on the internet, owing in part to the minor character role of an obnoxious kid being played by infamous contestant Ian Bernardo from reality TV shows So You Think You Can Dance? and American Idol, both of which he lost due to rude and bizarre behaviour, making him an iconic meme on YouTube. Chuck Bowen of Slant Magazine said (of the Street Trash Blu-ray), "Street Trash is a cult item that’s almost earnestly eager to offend, which is admittedly an odd thing to say about a film that features a prolonged scene in which a group of bums play hot potato with a man’s severed penis. It’s a 1980s American film, like Repo Man, that celebrates the proletariat’s resigned disenfranchisement as a badge of aesthetic