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ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - September 24th

"SHAUN OF THE DEAD" released in 2004

Shaun (Simon Pegg), a 29-year-old electronics shop salesman with no direction, decides to get some kind of focus in his life as he deals with his girlfriend, his mother and stepfather, while at the same time having to cope with an apocalyptic zombie uprising, in Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead!

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Shaun (Pegg) is having one of those days - his younger colleagues at the electronics store don't respect him, he has an estranged relationship with his stepfather Phillip (Bill Nighy), and his housemate Pete (Peter Serafinowicz) is fed up with Ed (Nick Frost), Shaun's vulgar, unemployed best friend still sleeping on their sofa after three years. Later, Shaun forgets to book a table at the restaurant he promised his girfriend Liz they would go to, to - belatedly - celebrate their anniversary, but when he suggests they go to his favorite pub, the Winchester for the date, Liz angrily breaks up with him. Shaun drowns his sorrows with his best friend Ed at the Winchester and as the two head home at 4am to play music, an enraged Pete — suffering from a bite wound he received earlier — confronts Shaun on his flaws, telling him to sort his life out. Hangover the next day, Shaun and Ed fail to realize a zombie apocalypse has overwhelmed the city, until they encounter two zombies in their backyard! Learning more about the outbreak by watching the news, the pair head outside to kill the two zombies (and another that walked through the front door) with blows to the head, and then briefly discuss a plan to rescue Shaun's mother, Barbara (Penelope Wilton), and Liz, then wait out the crisis in the Winchester. After taking the now-zombiefied Pete's car and rescuing Barbara (and, relunctantly, Phillip too), Shaun then collects Liz from her flat, bringing her two flatmates, David (Dylan Moran) and Dianne (Lucy Davis) along as well. As the group make their way to the Winchester on foot (having abandoned the car after Phillip reanimated into a zombie), they find the streets surrounding the pub are overrun, so the group pretends to be zombies to sneak past them. Successfully making it inside - after a few slight "incidents" - Shaun's plan to "wait until it all blows over" falls apart as the zombies besige the Winchester. With only a handful of gardening tools, a pair of pool cues, and an antique Winchester rifle hanging over the bar to defend themselves, Shaun attempts to reconcile his relationship with his mother, his girlfriend, and his best friend while dealing with an entire community that has returned from the dead to eat the living!

Shaun: [about Ed] He's not my boyfriend!
Ed: [handing beer to Shaun] It might be a bit warm, the cooler's off.
Shaun: Thanks, babe.
[winks]

Top and Above:   After a night of heavy drinking, Shaun (Simon Pegg) and Ed (Nick Frost) are oblivious to the fact the zombie apocalypse has began!

Having collaborated on a short lived television sitcom, Spaced, director Edgar Wright and actor Simon Pegg were inspired to write the screenplay for Shaun of the Dead after one of the Spaced episodes where Tim (Pegg), under the influence of amphetamine and the video game Resident Evil 2, hallucinates that he is fighting off a zombie invasion. When Wright and Pegg began pitching the film, Film4 Productions showed interest in it, but then, Film4 significantly cut back its budget, leaving the film without a production company for a while. But since Wright was still hoping to get the film made, he held off on taking other directing jobs while searching for new financing for the film, and ended up having to borrow money from his friends (according to Wright, Pegg still hasn't allowed him to pay back the money he owes him from those lean times!).

Spaced also had a major influence on the casting of Shaun, with major and minor parts being filled with actors from the series;  Nick Frost (who played Mike in Spaced) has a starring role as Ed, with Pegg's Spaced co-star Jessica Stevenson playing Yvonne, the leader of another group Shaun runs into on the way to the Winchester. Also appearing in Shaun was Peter Serafinowicz and Julia Deakin – who played Duane Benzie and Marsha in Spaced – as Shaun's roommate Pete and Yvonne's mum, respectively. The remaining cast features a number of British comedians, comic actors, and sitcom stars, most prominently from Spaced, Black Books and The Office, including Bill Nighy, Dylan Moran, Martin Freeman, Tamsin Greig, Reece Shearsmith, and Matt Lucas. Many other comics and comic actors appear in cameos as zombies, including Rob Brydon, Paul Putner, Russell Howard, Pamela Kempthorne, and Coldplay members Chris Martin and Jonny Buckland also having cameo roles in the film (apparently Pegg and Martin attended quiz nights at Pegg's local pub, the Shepherds in Highgate - which was the basis for the Winchester). All of the newsreaders and television presenters are real people portraying themselves.

Shaun: If you get cornered...
[hits himself on head with cricket bat]
Shaun: ...bash 'em in the head, that seems to work - Ow!

Top and Above:   Finding the Winchester surrounded, Shaun and the group pretend to be "zombies" to make their way past them!

Shaun of the Dead began filming in May, 2003 on a budget of £4 Million, with many of the zombie extras being, in fact, fans of the TV series Spaced and were recruited through the Spaced Out fan web site to be in the film. In homage to George A. Romero (among many, many other homages in the film!), the non-featured zombie extras were paid the princely sum of £1 a day for their troubles, which Romero also paid his extra zombies for Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Day of the Dead (1985). In fact, Romero was later given a private viewing of the film near his home in Florida, and while watching Shaun, Romero was oblivious to the fact that in the scene where Ed yells into the phone, "We're coming to get you, Barbara," was a direct lift from Night of the Living Dead (1968), and only found out later after a phone conversation with Wright. Romero was so impressed with Wright and Pegg's film, that a year later he invited them to the set of Land of the Dead to cameo as a pair of Photo-Booth Zombies.

Intended as the first part of the Cornetto Trilogy - the other two parts being Hot Fuzz (2007) and The World's End (2013) - according to Edgar Wright, the reason that Cornettos appear in the film is because he once ate a Cornetto to get over a hangover, and thought it would be funny if Ed, did the same after a night of drinking. Shaun is also notable for Wright's kinetic directing style, and its references to other movies, television series and video games.

TRIVIA:   When asked by an interviewer why they chose to have slow moving zombies instead of running zombies, Simon Pegg simply replied, "Because death is not an energy drink."

Top:   Director and co-writer Edgar Wright;

Above:   Simon Pegg on set

Because of the timing and the indisputable similarity of the names, the Working Title and Universal Pictures were forced to hold Shaun of the Dead back until two weeks after the remake Dawn of the Dead was released in the UK. However, on it's release Shaun took £1.6 million at 366 cinemas on its opening weekend, and earned $3.3 million in it's opening weekend in the US, taking seventh place at the box office despite a limited release to only 607 theaters. Shaun would eventually gross over $30 million worldwide and received almost universal critical acclaim. Nev Pierce, reviewing the film for the BBC, called it a "side-splitting, head-smashing, gloriously gory horror comedy" that will "amuse casual viewers and delight genre fans", with Peter Bradshaw giving the film four stars out of five, saying it "boasts a script crammed with real gags" and is "pacily directed [and] nicely acted." Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes' critical consensus was, "Shaun of the Dead cleverly balances scares and witty satire, making for a bloody good zombie movie with loads of wit", with cult filmmaker Quentin Tarantino having dubbed Shaun one of his top 20 films made since 1992. Given the success, Pegg and Wright considered a sequel that would replace zombies with another monster - with a proposed title of From Dusk til Shaun - but decided against it as they were pleased with the first film as a stand-alone product, and thought too many characters died to continue the story. But with a working title like that, it's hard to imagine which "monster" the filmmakers had in mind!

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   92%

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