Rating: Unrated
Starring:
Jason Flemyng as Chelsea Steve
Janet Montgomery as Giselle
Danny Dyer as Roger Kipling
Dexter Fletcher as Eddie Christian
Steven Berkoff as Kenneth Mason
Dave Legeno as Yuvesky
Craig Fairbrass as Freddy ‘Dead Cert’ Frankham
Ricky Grover as Herbie
Billy Murray as Dante Livenko
Andrew Tiernan as Chekha
Elly Fairman as Ellie
Lisa McAllister as Jen Christian
Lucinda Rhodes-Flaherty as Katy
Amii Grove as Amii
Perry Benson as Magoo
Directed by Steve Lawson
Special Features:
Audio commentary
Making-of “Dead Cert”
Theatrical trailer
Other Info:
Widescreen (2.40:1)
Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound
Spanish Subtitles
Running Time: 98 Minutes
The Details:
The following is the official description of the film:
“Freddie Frankham (Craig Fairbrass, ‘The Bank Job’) is working his way into the East End London big league with the opening of his nightclub, but soon realizes hes made a grave mistake by building it on the sacred land of Dante Livienko (Billy Murray, ‘Rise of the Footsoldier’): otherwise known as the legendary vampire The Wolf. Dante wants the club, but Freddie isn’t going to give up his turf without a fight, little realizing that he’s taking on a 500-year-old legend of mortal combat in a battle to the death…
Dexter Fletcher (‘Kick-Ass’), Steven Berkoff (‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’) and Lisa McAllister (‘How to Lose Friends and Alienate People’) also star in this stylishly gritty horror/gangster mashup from genre specialists Black and Blue Films that tears across the screen to deliver bloodied fight action!”
“Dead Cert” is unrated.
Mini-Review:
“Dead Cert” is a bad film for a lot of reasons. First of all, it has to be the most boring vampire movie ever filmed. The first half of the film has little to no vampire action. It’s mainly a lot of gangster-type stuff, a lot of tough guy posturing, and a lot of cinema tropes about the former mob enforcer going straight. There’s almost nothing in that half of the film that would indicate that this is even a vampire film. That would be fine if those parts were interesting or made you care about the characters, but they don’t.
When the vampires finally do appear, they’re kind of dull. They don’t have interesting looks, they don’t have interesting powers, and they’re not scary. It’s just people with contacts and fangs. This movie was obviously done on a budget and it shows, but a creative writer and director can do a lot with even a non-existent budget. And the big finale is little more than a weak copy of the big vampire bar fight from the movie “From Dusk Till Dawn”.
One of the things that baffled me about “Dead Cert” was the fact that it used a lot of R-rated language. There were profanities that easily would have given it that rating. Yet despite the fact a majority of this movie is set in a strip club, there’s no nudity. If you’re going to set it in a strip club, you expect to see stripping. That’s like setting a movie in a restaurant and never showing anybody eating. Or setting a movie at a racetrack and never showing a race. It just seemed like an odd choice.
Another odd thing is that Jason Flemying is the most recognizable face in the film and he’s fairly well advertised as being in it, but he’s barely in the movie. He has one small scene as a nearly background character, then he’s gone for the rest of the movie. It seems like he was doing a favor for someone by appearing in “Dead Cert.”
I would not recommend “Dead Cert” to anyone other than people doing low budget films. By watching this you can learn what works and what doesn’t work in making those kinds of productions. Everyone else, including fans of vampire movies and British gangster movies, will probably want to spend their time elsewhere.
Despite the low budget production, they still took the time to do a proper ‘making of’ featurette for the Blu-ray. You see the makeup process, the effects, and interviews with the cast and crew. It’s actually more interesting than the movie itself. There’s also an audio commentary.
