THE SUM OF SEVERAL STICKY SITUATIONS INVOLVING SALAMI STICKS ** Australia 2021 Dir: Oli Stenning. 20 mins
The plot begins in a butchers, where a policeman Sonny (Ben Corlett) enters to explain to the insane proprietor- Ivan the Butcher (Oli Stenning) – behind the counter how someone had stolen his ‘salami sticks’ as he slept on a park bench.Told in flashback we see how two hat wearing stoner types – Ray (Adam Dean) and Trent (Jarrod Barling) – eat the salami as the policeman continues to doze in the sun, waking to find he’d been robbed.
Later one of the stoners, Ray wanders into the butchers and is taken out the back by Ivan, to try and find some bread. Ray then wakes, to find himself tied up, as Ivan removes one of his arms performing a weird dance with it afterwards.
Sonny is then accosted by a lawyer who was playing on a TV advert previously seeking to help his case and then the film abruptly ends.
Very visually similar in style and the evident film skills to the Peter Jackson ‘Brain Dead’ – but lacking in much of story, which can always be the trouble with a very short movie, perhaps being made just to showcase the skills of Oli Stenning with the assumption that he would then give it the full treatment in the future, with the appropriate backing.
Review by Ian Carroll