Trash Humpers is a 2009 American experimental black comedy horror drama[2] film written and directed by Harmony Korine.

Shot on worn VHS home video, the film features a "loser-gang cult-freak collective"[3] engaging in bizarre and destructive behavior on the streets of Nashville, Tennessee.

Throughout the film, the characters participate in a variety of depraved and unpleasant activities, like making two men (wearing hospital gowns and adjoining hats) eat pancakes covered in dish soap.

The Trash Humpers meet a cross-dressing poet, whom they later accidentally kill, and a "comedian" whose jokes consist of crude, bigoted statements with no punchlines.

Walking his dog late at night in the back alleys of his hometown of Nashville, Korine encountered trash bins strewn across the ground in what he imagined as a war zone.

"[4] Upset over the bureaucracy in producing his previous and still most expensive feature, Mister Lonely, Korine aimed to make his next film as fast as he could, analogous to the free-form immediacy of painter and canvas.

"Once everyone was in their character and their costume, and I had figured out the structure of it, the randomness, the anti-aesthetic, it was really the performers, the Trash Humpers, walking around at night, videotaping each other doing these things,"[8] Korine recalled.

[8] For Korine, Trash Humpers is an elaborate portrait of the "American Landscape": a series of "park garages, back alleyways, and beautiful lamp posts that light up the gutter."

Its consensus reads, "It's oddly affecting in a deeply discomforting way, but Trash Humpers pales in comparison with Harmony Korine's earlier, truly transgressive work.

"[12] Rob Nelson of Variety remarked that the film is highly unlikely to gratify all audiences, and questioned what its notability would have been without the director's "hipster celebrity."

However, intrigued by the film, he commented the cinematography as having "no small share of perverse beauty, particularly for those who miss the charming imperfections of videocassettes in this squeaky-clean digital era.

[15] The soundtrack to the film was released by Drag City on 7" in a limited run of 500 copies, with each sleeve "hand-filthed" and signed by director Harmony Korine.