London Underworld

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.

I do wonder, what the makers of this movie were watching from Dusk til Dawn, to come up with the movie ... Seriously though: You can hate the movie completely (obviously there are quite some flaws, starting from "acting", continuing with a bad script and not necessarily ending with a weak direction) or you can try to enjoy it a bit (which a few people actually did).

I know it didn't go down very well at the Frightfest, so maybe that is saying something. I guess I gave the movie the benefit of the doubt and still wasn't too disappointed. Well not as disappointed as some other movies I have seen. The action scenes are not the best, but not the worst either (from similar movies that is).

I wanted to disbelieve the bad reviews so went ahead and watched it anyway.... Absolutely was a waste of time. Fair to say I stayed awake, but that was only because I kept waiting for the vampire parts to begin. And when they did, they didn't make much sense to me. Maybe because of the accents, maybe the volume was too low, or maybe the movie just sucked but I had a hard time understanding what the heck was going on. Right to the very end.

On a positive note, the acting wasn't bad.... just what they were told to do was. These were some of the strangest behaved vampires I'd ever seen and I often shook my head in disbelief at the storyline. What I felt most during this movie, was annoyed.

Yikes! What a complete and total waste of film. It's a bore fest. I'm not really sure why so many directors these days think that slow means dramatic.

It means borrr-ring!

You know the plot -- tuff guys with a fight club get involved with these businessmen and somehow vampires get involved!

It's an amazingly dumb story line made worse by the slowest exposition on the planet.

I lost major interest about half way through and so will you. Avoid it like the plague.

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.