534. Deadtime

Leslie Grantham? Terry Christian? Blink and you will miss them.
This is the second low budget film in which Christian has appeared in the last couple of years - otherwise he has been limited to TV appearances on the likes of the Wright Stuff, Come Dine With Me and Celebrity Mastermind.
In other words he is famous for being famous nearly 20 years ago.
Ditto, Leslie Grantham. He will always be Dirty Den, no matter how many times he tries to reinvent himself.
And if Deadtime is an attempt to get them back in the public eye it has failed hopelessly. It will never appear on the radar of most film-watchers.
The most astonishing point about Deadtime is that I have just read that, while it only cost £25,000 to make, it has grossed £150,000 at the American box office. Why?
This is a horror flick where the blood is obviously CGI and the acting is as wooden as the Major Oak.
At least the premise is a little bit different - a fading Midlands band try to give their careers a last hurrah by recording a new song and video.
They set off with their entourage to a crumbling 'studio' where a serial killer, armed with a rather large machete, starts bumping them off.
The problem with Deadtime is that it is just plain boring.
I've written many times before that lakes of blood don't do it for me - particularly when the gore is so obviously CGI.
I know there is an army of people out there who will delight at the red stuff spurting from a decapitated corpse but not me.
But the slayings are not the worst thing about Deadtime - that would be the ridiculous dialogue which punctuates them.
As victims are slashed to death by the bagful, their 'friends' react with similar emotion to that if someone had squashed a spider.
So, while gore lovers and people who want to hear Leslie Grantham say the f-word might be satisfied, I certainly wasn't.
By the way, Deadtime appeared briefly at cinemas earlier this year. I saw my version on Lovefilm.
Laughs: none
Jumps: none
Vomit: none
Nudity: yes
Overall rating: 2/10