In Crumb Catcher a doorstep salesman makes his big pitch in a revenge-of-the-nerd thriller with a comic edge, served straight-up with no messing about. Bloody and funny, it’s not bad for a debut at all, though director Chris Skotchdopole did co-write the story with Larry Fessenden (who’s also a producer), one of the stalwarts of low-budget horror.
None of the relationships in it are quite right and Skotchdopole and Fessenden get us straight onto that trail with opening scenes set at the wedding of Shane (Rigo Garay) and Leah (Ella Rae Peck). A street guy, possibly the son of a gangbanger, Shane is also a writer and is currently in the middle of a book which his new wife, who is in publishing, is keen to get out there and onto the best-seller lists.
Maybe Leah is marrying Shane because he’s a hot dude from the wrong side of the tracks, maybe because she likes his writing, or she wants to ride on his success as he takes off. It’s unclear, but one thing seems certain: this is not quite the pure hearts-and-flowers arrangement you’d hope for in a marriage. Her parents don’t seem happy about the union all. His parents haven’t been invited.
As Shane and Leah leave for their honeymoon, John (John Speredakos), a waiter at their reception, buttonholes the newlyweds to talk about their wedding cake. They’re not interested in cake! Giving him the brush-off, they head off to a nearby lodge rented for their honeymoon, only to be re-introduced to John again later when he turns up unannounced at their love shack with the cake he was babbling about earlier.
Then it starts. “I’m not just a waiter…” John says. He introduces Rose, his sidekick (possibly his wife) and he starts pitching Shane and Leah his idea for a gadget the world cannot do without. A crumb catcher, a mini carpet sweeper in effect, which he has a prototype of in the car.
At around the same time he takes Shane aside and tells him that he has some kompromat on him, shot on a hidden camera at the wedding reception. So Shane is forced to play along and not eject John and Rose into the night, much to Leah’s increasing bewilderment and ire.
From here one of those nights of escalating mayhem. It would be farce if it weren’t horror, but Skotchdopole does it with farce energy, Speredakos particularly good as the wheedling, guileful, energetic and threatening waiter/entrepreneur. Lorraine Farris is also particularly well cast – her slash of red lips and shock of black hair marking her as a refugee from a gothic horror movie. Lilla Rae Peck and Rigo Garay, meanwhile, have to keep the ball in air – what newlywed couple would tolerate a home invasion by a one-bit entrepreneur trying to pitch a stupid invention?
It’s the story of a marriage breakdown, done in one night, in grand guignol style, with John and Rose, mad and clearly malign, the ironic template for what a marriage should actually look like. It’s Shane and Leah who are in trouble, as their relationship has been from the start.
Garay and Peck, Speredakos and Farris are a good tight foursome and this is a good, tight little thriller, a first feature for Skotchdopole after a bunch of shorts. He does great things with pace, starting slow, switching it up at the point John and Rose arrive at the honeymoon hangout and then going banzai in late scenes of Shane driving with an entire bottle of whiskey inside him.
Skotchdopole is also the editor and this late sequence is a brilliant example of what editing can do, yoked to pungent lighting (Adam Carboni) and just the right sort of off-whack sound design (Andres E Marthe Gonzalez), to create a sense of things being really out of control.
Alongside production designer Matthew Weir, these guys are nearly all new(ish) to the movie business. I don’t know if they are going to form a unit and work on another film together. Maybe they should.
Crumb Catcher – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
