I like making fun of things that are usually taken seriously," says first-time writer/director Alan Madden, and he is not talking about vegetables.

Mushrooms is a quirky, black, but gently romantic comedy, with some of the elements of Arsenic and Old Lace, or the old English Ealing comedies.

The widows Minnie and Flo live in a large house: they advertise for a lodger to help them with their housekeeping money.

Harry, an elderly cop, applies, while a criminal on the run forces Flo to hide him in her room.

A faulty gas heater kills him off, and the two old girls, fearing accusations, get rid of him best they can - in bits. Some of him is stored in the freezer.

Sunday comes and Harry cooks up a surprise roast with the meat he finds in the freezer, for the ladies back from church. Uh-oh!

The ladies spend the night cooking and mincing, to slowly feed their chickens in the garden as a way of getting rid of the incriminating body of evidence.

Soon, there are mushrooms aplenty in the chicken compost, and by film's end, Harry joins the ladies in a specialty restaurant, with its own vegetable garden.

"It appealed to me as a subversive script with many layers," producer Brian Rosen says.

"It's unconventional in its values: it is confrontational about taboo subjects like elderly sex, death and dismemberment, accidental cannibalism and religion."

Andrew L Urban

Prod: Brian Rosen

Exec prod: Richard Harper

Dir/scr: Alan Madden

Ph: Louis Irving

Ed: Henry Dangar

Prod des: George Liddle

Music: Paul Grabowsky

Cast: Julia Blake, Lynette Curran, Simon Chilvers

Running time: 92 mins

Int sales: Southern Star Screening: 22 June, 17.30, Blanik

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