Shown by Stirchley Happenings at Stirchley Working Men's Club, Birmingham (May 16th 2013)
A film about a West Midlands publican seeking his dreams with a 7 foot mutant crustacean and learning some lessons about life along the way. Crust is a charming, low budget film which has at its heart a story about what makes life meaningful.
The put-upon downtrodden Bill Simmonds (played by Kevin McNally) sees a chance of redemption from a fighting shrimp that the wheeling dealing Hamid Choudhury (Madhav Sharma) happens to possess. Exactly why a 7 foot Mantis Shrimp from tropical climes has turned up in the West Midlands is never answered since any questions about the shrimp is responded to with the phrase "its the 21st century, who gives a shit!". Yet despite yourself, you do start to care about the three protagonists of Bill and his partners in crime Steve Crump (Perry Fitzpatrick) and Shaz Smyth (Louise Mardenborough) as they head to the bright lights of London to attempt to pitch the fighting crustacean to TV companies. You even begin to care about the shrimp which looks like this:
The reason why you care is that writer/director Mark Locke has a deft touch in terms of both the humour and pathos (yes pathos) elicited from McNally, Fitzpatrick and Mardenborough as their characters have their illusions stripped from them. Locke even manages to draw out Ulrika Jonsson finest acting performance during her cameo appearance. The film's warmth carried me throughout and had me laughing throughout from the sharp humour in the dialogue to the absurdism of the film's climax.
I recommend that this film is watched in good company after a couple of beers and allow yourself to be carried away by its charm.
Many thanks to Stirchley Happenings and the IWW union for showing this tonight. For those wanting to know the shady background as to how the film came into existence then I recommend Adam Curtis' blog The Bitch, the Stud and the Prawn.
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