Great Chase scene in film

A quarry based at a Staffordshire beauty spot was transformed into something resembling a Colombian jungle.

A Stafford movie maker filmed the opening scene there for his debut feature film – on a budget of just £3,500. Film graduate Lee Murphy, 22, is filming all of his "no budget" action movie Money Kills at Cannock Chase.

The film follows the adventures of mercenary Jack Heart on a mission to rescue a police chief's daughter from the clutches of the Russian mafia.

Former King Edward VI High School pupil Lee, of The Oval, is now hoping to attract an extra £10,000 of investment to keep the project going.

So far the young director has spent just £820 of his budget on the movie.

And yesterday he and his team were hard at work making the quarry near Birches Valley Forest Centre look like the South American country.

Lee, who has also written the screenplay, says he has got Bafta on board to help market the film when it is finished in the US.

"It is inspired by the action films I watched in my teens like Die Hard with plenty of explosions and gunfire and heroes rescuing damsels in distress," he explained.

But while big budget directors can recruit big names, Lee has had to turn to up-and-coming actors such as Joe Kerr who plays the lead role and Wolverhampton actor Syd Saeed.

The Staffordshire University graduate has had to beg and borrow some of the realistic looking weaponry for the film – including a rocket launcher.

* Another Staffordshire film maker Shane Meadows from Uttoxeter triumphed in Sunday's Bafta awards winning the prize for best British film for his movie Made in England.

The film was based on his own life and is a story about skinheads set in the 1980s.