If there’s one thing to be said for Flick, it’s that it has guts. Not only is the protagonist a stuttering, zombified Teddy Boy seeking to wreak revenge on those who teased him at his last dance; but the project as a whole shows huge amounts of ballsy initiative. Flick truly proves that you can do anything if you put your mind to it.

The fact that this team managed to get BAFTA-winning and Oscar-nominated actress Faye Dunaway on board is a triumphant selling point. The supporting cast also has some well-known faces including Michelle Ryan (Zoe Slater in EastEnders) and Mark Benton (the annoying bank manager from the Nationwide adverts). An as a first film attempt, it gets top marks for effort. Yet, on the other side of the coin, Flick also proves that, sometimes, you need more than a few big names to make a decent movie.

The pre-title sequence is set in Hobbs End, 1960, and begins with a brilliant shot of Johnny Taylor (Hugh O’Connor) looking up into the wing mirror of his red Hillman Minx and repeating one simple question, ‘W-w-will you dance with me Sal?’ At the dance itself, Johnny blurts out his request, but before Sally (Hayley Angel Wardle) can agree, Creeper (Terence Rigby) and his gang taunt him and give him a beating. The bass drum punctuates the punches as Creeper says, ‘I bet you wish you were dead now…’ which reeks a bit of Pierce-Brosnan-era James Bond cheese. Johnny leaves the room and suddenly becomes consumed with rage. He re-enters the hall and runs riot with his pocket knife, slashing at all and sundry as red corn syrup runs down the camera lens. In the commotion, Sally collapses and Johnny takes her to his car. When Sally regains consciousness, realising where she is, she screams in fear causing Johnny’s car to veer off road and into a nearby river.

Here the film cuts to a section of comic book animation picking up from the title sequence. There are several of these interspersed within the film, usually in situations where an expensive effect is needed. This technique proves you can make an elaborate story work on a budget, all you need is a bit of lateral thinking. Forty years later, Johnny’s ride becomes tangled in the nets of a fishing trawler, and is raised from its watery grave. The security guard watching the car tunes his wireless to Rockabilly Radio, a pirate show where DJ Bobby Blade (Richard Hawley) delivers ‘killer cut after killer cut’. As Blade puts on Teenager in Love by Dion and the Belmonts, Johnny is woken from his immortal slumber.

Zombie Johnny looks amazing. Everything looks immaculate: from his maggot ridden fingers to his bony blackened face. My highest praise on this production goes to the make-up team. There is a fine line between gloriously gruesome gore and gratuitously garish garbage – but they get it just right.

As he wakes, Johnny suffers from a kind of tunnel vision, where he sees everyone as they were in 1960. This is a clever little concept that works well. I was also tickled by the fact that, after Johnny takes revenge on his primary victim, the first thing he does is comb his hair into the traditional Teddy Boy flick. The Fonz would be proud.

Johnny returns to his mother’s house, like the prodigal son, and there is a great comic moment as he crosses the threshold. Ma Taylor (Liz Smith) stands in her nightclothes, mouth agape, but rather than scream, she’s elated at her son’s return, regardless of the fact he looks like he’s been barbequed. Writer and director David Howard allows himself to pepper the script with a few obvious jokes – ‘You’re nothing but skin and bones’, ‘Get some rest, you look like death’ etc.

For the next four nights, as the clock strikes twelve, Rockabilly Radio breathes life into Johnny, and he sets out to take his revenge on Creeper’s gang. The present-day Sally (Julia Foster) is married to Creeper and they have a daughter, Sandra (Michelle Ryan), who finds the dress her mother wore on the night of Johnny’s death and uses it as her Halloween costume to wear to a party at the Palace, her father’s club, with predictable consequences.

Another comic book section explains the appearance of Lieutenant McKenzie (Dunaway), a one-armed Police officer from Memphis. It is no co-incidence that this she is from the home of Elvis, the King of Rock and Roll. The first scene between British detective Miller (Mark Benton) and McKenzie has a bit of a false, forced feel. Obviously the director wanted to show the awkwardness between the pair as they begin to work together, Miller clearly being of the opinion that McKenzie has come over from the States to tell him how to do his job. This section fails to look real, but McKenzie and Miller’s relationship develops well, and one of the best parts of the film is the progression of their subplot.

But the film’s main plot really begins to unravel. It becomes clear that Johnny is powered by the rock and roll and needs music to kill. You would expect that there would be fireworks when McKenzie realises that the key to stopping Johnny is to stop Rockabilly Radio. But nothing has been invested in this moment by the director, and its falls flat on its face. More pace is lost in the final scenes, what should be sharp, slick changes are dragged out. Overall, the script is seriously underdeveloped and dies an early death when it should be hurtling towards a dramatic crescendo. Given that retro chic has a whole sect of people dedicated to propagating the music, dancing and fashion, there is a possibility that Flick will gain a huge cult following but, for me, it just doesn’t live up to the hype.