Dead Cert

source: Dead Cert

When I was a youth, we got 6 TV channels. Four were from Buffalo, NY; and two were from Toronto. Canadian TV had some British shows, including "On the Buses". I could only understand half of what the Cockneys were saying. The first half of this flick is a Cockney gangster film. The second half is a vampire blood bath. The first half is drama; the second is comedy. So I gave it a 1/2 rating. Seen on Tubi, the free streaming site; which has many films, and some live TV.

When you have a film that casts Craig Fairbrass, Jason Flemyng, Dexter Fletcher, Billy Murray, Danny (Fah-kin) Dyer, Steven Berkoff, and Ricky Grover, to name but a few, you'd probably expect to see a British cult classic. Unfortunately, this isn't one. Directed by Steven Lawson, and written by Jonathan Sothcott, Nick Onsloe, and Ben Sillito, this 'Black & Blue Films' production is just as classy as the production companies other piles of steaming content ("Strippers vs Werewolves" (2012), "Devil's Playground" (2010), "7 Lives" (2011)). This action-horror film was released in 2010, rated 15 and has a runtime of 92 excruciating long minutes. A cockney hardman who has invested all his money into a club loses it when he backs the wrong fighter. Romanian gangsters take it over, but unbeknown to anyone, they also happen to be vampires. The fight is on - for the club; for survival; and for ratings too as this film is practically a cheap rip-off of "From Dusk till Dawn". There... I said it. This film takes itself seriously and wants to be a gritty gangster film which crosses genres and touches on horror too. In truth it does neither convincingly well. Split into two parts the first is about the gangsters, while the second is aimed at the vampires - but it takes close to an hour before anything interesting happens - by which time I didn't care about anything or anybody anymore. Sure, it has cockney's in it that elicit buckets of blood (even though it's CGI blood at times), yes there are vampires, there is a bit of female flesh on display (don't get your hopes up, scantily clad, not naked), lots of violence and gore, and plenty of effing and jeffing (bad language)... but that's about it really, barring the occasional famous face appearing and then disappearing this film brings nothing new to the game, and just rehashes tried and tested films. I was disappointed, but maybe that is because I expected a 'Black & Blue' film to be good. This felt like a waste of talent with good actors not utilised for their ability, but more so for their accent. I would be hard pressed to recommend this and I can't see this film having much future success or cult fame.

Not only does ex-East End wrong 'un turned legit entrepreneur Freddy 'Dead Cert' Frankham (Craig Fairbrass) lose his best friend in a bare-knuckle smack-down with ruthless head-case Yuvesky (Dave Legeno), but he also loses his livelihood, having unwisely staked his business (strip club The Paradise, which somehow boasts one of the best rooftop views in London) in a wager against Romanian gangster Dante Livenko (Billy Murray). More than a little miffed, Freddy and his dodgy mates decide to seek retribution for their pal's demise and take back what was theirs, only to discover that Livenko and his thugs are vampires. Brit gangster/vampire flick Dead Cert hardly explores new ground, essentially being a fairly low-budget Cockney retread of 90s Tarantino/Rodriguez genre mash-up From Dusk Till Dawn. But despite scoring low in the originality department, the film still manages to be reasonably entertaining enough nonsense for its duration thanks to its colourful collection of criminals performed by a veritable Who's Who of affordable London actors. The film's splendid cast includes Dexter Fletcher and Jason Flemyng, counts no less than three ex-Eastenders stars amongst its number (Murray, Fairbrass, and Ricky Grover), and also features the likes of Steven Berkoff, Perry Benson ('Dad' from Mum & Dad), and Danny-bloody-Dyer, making this film more Cockney than a pearly king and queen eating jellied eels in Bethnal Green. Watching these guys do their thing is a blast. Where the film doesn't work quite so well is in pulling off the awkward genre switchover from Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels style gangster shenanigans to vampire flick: the change comes way too late in the day and is all too sudden, leaving viewers no time to adjust to the shift and giving the film little opportunity to make the most of its horror aspect. Other negatives include a lack of nudity from the busty beauties who work in the Paradise (for a strip club, there ain't much skin on show) and Billy Murray not bothering to adopt a Romanian accent (the makers were obviously so pleased to have him on board they wrote an excuse for this into the script). A few juicy stakings and a unique solution to the vampire problem go some way to compensating for these less than perfect elements in the film's finalé.

Another British independent film, with another shockingly low score on IMDb...I'm not sure who the people are rating these, but films in the '2-3 star' region would suggest that they are so bad, and painful, that you wonder how they were even financed and made - Scores this low would suggest that a film is trash, through and through, with no redeeming features. This piece of work, whilst not academy award worthy by any means, is certainly not 'trash' - in fact, it's quite entertaining and well made. Lets look at the facts - The actors have presence, and did a great job - lots of familiar faces for us Brits, such as Billy Murray, Craig Fairbrass, etc.. who have featured heavily in U.K television, and film. The soundtrack was cool, and whilst the special effects were not ground breaking, they were certainly good enough. It looks pleasant on the eye, and is quite cinematic in places. The vampire clichés are not original, but I honestly haven't seen a British gangster/vampire flick before, so that was kind of refreshing, as I'm a fan of both. There was lots of violence, lots of gore, and lots of blood, if you're into that sort of thing. Corny love scenes are not present. I found the pace to be fine, as the film is split into two halves, with the first half playing out like a regular gangster/crime movie, and the second half focusing on the vampire element. It worked fine. I'd pick this film over twilight any day of the week, and that's a compliment, considering one had a multi-million dollar budget, and this had a fraction of that... The negatives? The voice effects of the vampires were quite lame, and some of the female actors were a bit average at best. I've seen much better films, but also seen much much worse. 3.5? Ridiculous. 6/10 in my opinion.

British thugs meet vampires, but not for at least 45 minutes. Then it's still slow. The vampires speak crappy Romanian and have Slav names and act like they are retarded, while the thugs are behaving like pussycats. It's a waste of good acting, if you ask me, with a lot of British actors that I've seen playing heavy roles in cool films now being forced to work on this lame rip off of From Dusk Till Dawn. There is no humour, no real fun, little action and a lot of talking that makes no sense nor brings any meaning to an otherwise bland script. So this is not as much as a failure as it's a boring failure. The little bit of actual horror, the helplessness feeling when the vampires arrive, is lost in a uninspired story.

Freddy (Craig Fairbrass) is married into the mob. He is their main strong man. His wife (Lisa McAllister) is attempting to get pregnant. Her brother Eddie Christian (Dexter Fletcher) is the owner of a gentleman's club and runs a fight club which features his brother Dennis. The Romanian mafia who want the club are extra strong and have a hypnotic effect on people. The two groups enter into a drug deal and soon the Romanians get control of the nightclub. At this point, in the battle of the bad guys, I started rooting for the vampires over the Brits. One crazy man, Kenny Mason (Steven Berkoff), who was a squatter over the site of the club long ago knows the secret of the vampires. The high action packed vampire film suggested by the DVD cover doesn't materialize until late. This is more of an adult "Twilight" for British mobsters. The acting was good. I enjoyed the "realism" of the script, as a change from more traditional vampire movies. The movie had potential. The soundtrack they used during the credits would have been better during the film. The important scenes were too quick and not memorable. Makes for an okay rental, but nothing more. F-bomb, no sex, no nudity (scantily clad dancers).

For a vampire movie, then the blood within the veins of "Dead Cert" was running awfully thin. The story is about a group of Romanian thugs who move in on a British club owner, wanting to take over his business. Settling it all with a single fight, the Romanian wins and they take over the club, soon turning everyone within into vampires. However, the British gangsters want their club back and take up the fight against the vampires. The storyline was fairly simple, and it was a good enough attempt at trying to mix the traditional vampire genre with the gangster genre, however, it took the movie more than halfway of its entire length before it got up in pace and started to become interesting. A sad fact, though, as I am sure many would fall through out of sheer boredom before that even happens. Then when the movie does pick up pace, it is nothing more than a mediocre experience. Not boasting a super big budget is reflected in the production value, although I will say that I found that aspect of the movie to actually be good. They made what they had work and clearly didn't need a big million dollar (or pound) budget. However, the movie was just weighed down by a slow pace and a fairly uninspiring story. As for the acting in the movie, well they did have some pretty good names on the cast list. Jason Flemyng (playing Chelsea Steve) had a small role, though his face always brings something great to a movie. Dexter Fletcher (playing Eddie Christian) also did a good job. Billy Murray (playing Dante Livenko) was the centerpiece of the movie, so to speak, with the most impressive role and performance. And lets not forget Steven Berkoff (playing Kenneth Mason) was also in the movie. For a vampire movie, then "Dead Cert" was below average. It just lacked that motivation, characters that had personalities and weren't just generic characters, and most importantly, it lacked that special dark, romantic feel to it that all good vampire movies have. So if you enjoy vampire movies, perhaps "Dead Cert" is not the best of choices, but still it did provide adequate entertainment, though I can honestly say that I will never watch it again, it just wasn't that appealing.

There are times that when you read a premise on paper that seems fun, you actually aren't surprised when it doesn't turn out to be particularly good. At least I'm not. I've already seen several movies that had fun premises-"Shadow: Dead Riot" for example-that didn't live up to said potential. A recent case in point: "Dead Cert", which wants to be a mix of a tough British gangster movie and "From Dusk 'Til Dawn", and wastes said potential. In the East End of London, Freddie "Dead Cert" Frankham (Craig Fairbrass, who seems to be forever cast as a big, tough guy from the East End) ends up getting mixed up in the affairs of Romanian Gangster Dante Livenko (Billy Murray) and his gang. Well, it turns out that Dante is a vampire known as the wolf, and to make matters worse, the local strip club Freddy and his pals frequent is now overrun with the bloodsuckers. To be fair, this movie does feature some decent to good performances, especially Murray, whose a lot of fun as the villain. The problem though, is that it takes too long to get to the good stuff, so to speak. It's not until the fifty something minute mark that the club is overrun, and until then, the movie is mostly just a bunch of talk with the occasional act of violence padding out time. Speaking of which, after the vampires come out to play, we get more talk. In fact, there's so many scenes of people arguing and conversing that you kind of wonder why the filmmakers decided to include vampires at all. Which leads to the movies biggest problem: it doesn't go far enough. Sure, there's bloodshed and the make up FX look good, but they aren't anything you haven't seen before. In fact, for a movie that has strippers turning into vampires, the movie feels sort of tame. It takes itself too seriously, doesn't offer the bountiful female nudity and gore one would hope for, and the final battle between humans and vampires feels pretty anemic. I went into "Dead Cert" with low expectations, and guess what? Mission accomplished. There's nothing here that sets this apart from other crappy vampire movies or British crime/gangster movies. Your better off just watching "From Dusk 'Till Dawn" again instead of this generic soup.

DEAD CERT is nothing more than a British rip-off of the ultra-cool vampire flick FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, with the action shifted to London and a cast of mildly familiar faces from British TV rather than big name stars. The biggest, and unfortunately, crippling, problem that DEAD CERT faces is that it was made with a very low budget, meaning the whole thing looks cheap, and also amateurish in places. One-time hard-man Craig Fairbrass (DARKLANDS) plays a Cockney chap who's ploughed his life savings into opening a new club, only to have it taken over by Romanian gangsters who also happen to be vampires. Don't you just hate it when that happens? As in FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, the first half is a typical gangster film while the second is a vampire-heavy set-piece. Compare this to FROM DUSK TILL DAWN and you'll be disappointed, because it's nowhere near as good. The calibre of the script just isn't there and the special effects are entirely limited. Still, I went in expecting absolutely nothing, and as a result I found myself enjoying this. There are frequent funny moments, and it's great fun seeing all the familiar faces. The attempted additions to the vampire mythology are a hoot - apparently vampires are afraid of dogs and instead of using crucifixes, you only have to have something you have faith in. None of it makes much sense but it is fun. Chief vampire duties are handed out to EASTENDERS actor and one-time insurance advert man Billy Murray, who perhaps wisely doesn't bother attempting an accent here. There are brief cameos from the likes of Jason Flemyng and Danny Dyer, along with a larger slice of the action from laughable one-time Hollywood star Steven Berkoff, who really does seem to have fallen on hard times. Watch out for THIS IS ENGLAND's Perry Benson and 300's Andrew Tiernan in supporting roles, and a fairly meaty part from the impossible to dislike Dexter Fletcher. Interesting, most of the main stars seem to have doubled up as producers, alongside Martin Kemp, so there's a lot of enthusiasm here; it's just a shame it's not matched by quality.