10 Things You Might Not Know About... Shaun of the Dead.

Get ready to feel old movie fans! This week we’re celebrating the whopping 10 year anniversary of Simon Pegg’s masterpiece, Shaun of the Dead!

We can’t believe it either, the first film of the “Blood and Ice Cream trilogy” was originally released a whole decade ago, so to celebrate, here’s ten things you might not know about this fabulously funny, all-brit, homage-filled classic. Enjoy!

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1. Repetition is key. Throughout the film, a number of phrases are repeated or mirrored, including “Sorry Shaun, no... I’m sorry Shaun.” and “Top left, reload, I’m on it! Nice shot!” which is something Alfred Hitchcock used to do in order to build suspense or give the audience suspicions about a character, Edgar Wright uses a number of horror movie conventions for comedy purposes. The most obvious of which comes in the form of quick cuts of short actions which usually implies a hasty retreat or preparation for war but in Shaun, they just make a cup of tea or go to the car. Genius.

2. It’s one of many techniques that was honed by Wright when making Spaced way back in 1999 and the movie was inspired by an episode of the series in which Tim (Pegg’s character) stays up all night and begins hallucinating, seeing zombies from the 1996 Playstation game, Resident Evil.

3. Whilst we’re on Edgar Wright, he also appears briefly in the movie, one of many cameos included in the film. He’s the one who falls over in the “Remebering Z-Day montage, right at the end. Other cameos include Chris Martin from Coldplay (appearing both as a zombie and himself) Julia Deakin AKA Marsha the Landlady (the only person to appear in all three movies in the “Cornetto Trilogy”), Michael Smiley (Tyres the pill-addled courier) and Attack the Block director, Joe Cornish.

4. The Italian restaurant, Fulci’s is a reference to Italian horror director Lucio Fulci, the “Godfather of Gore” who is responsible for such frightfests as“Zombi 2” and “The Beyond”.

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5. The reason Shaun doesn’t like the “Zed-word” is an homage to a number of classic zombie flicks such as Night of the Living Dead and Resident Evil in which the horde are never referred to as Zombies. (There has been another suggestion that it might be in response to Danny Boyle’s insistence that his independent Z-movie, 28 Days Later is not a Zombie Movie...)

6. The film also digs at 28 Days Later (amongst a host of other films of the genre) when we hear one of the many proposed causes of the outbreak being belittled on a news report: “Claims that the virus was caused by rage infected monkeys has now been dismissed as bu...”.

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7. Mary, the girl in the garden, is an employee of Landis supermarket, a combinatorial homage to both the British chain of shops and comedy director, John Landis, who created 80’s hits Coming to America and The Blues Brothers and went on to feature Pegg in the 2010 film, Burke and Hare.

8. Dylan Moran’s character has a last name, though it is never used in the film. His full name is David Fastidious.

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9. “Pickle” is what Edgar Wright’s mum calls him. He’s included it in a number of his productions, most notably in Spaced.

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10. Number 10 already? How’s that for a slice of fried gold?! Fried Gold was initially made up during the filming of Spaced, what started as a jokey phrase soon became the cast’s synonym for a good scene or particularly witty dialogue and has gone on to feature in all three movies in the Cornetto trilogy.

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So there we have it film fans, we hope you learnt something new about this utterly magnificent comedic masterpiece, celebrating its 10 year anniversary today (eeeeep!). If you haven’t seen it for a while, we seriously recommend you give it another go for old time sake, preferably whilst wearing this awesome Shaun of the Dead T-Shirt....

What are your best moments from this amazing Brit film? Do you know any other coo Shaun of the Dead facts? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

Kthxbai!

xoxo