The shlocky horror picture show

The shiny, spanking new version of Dawn Of The Dead may have mindless, fairground pace and an impressive splattering of Grand Guignol in it’s favour, but when it comes to horror movies, it’s hard to get rabidly excited about Hollywood’s franchise spawning efforts. With a couple of notable exceptions (The Shining, The Exorcist) there’s something decidedly unseemly about any would-be genre contenders costing more than a trophy-wife’s latte money.

So what if Dawn ’04 has that Jay Leno bit – if it doesn’t have a demented Cormanesque boy-wonder director in the mould of Tobe Hooper, Robert Rodriguez or Eli Roth, and a role for Bruce Campbell, then it’s not the real deal. And that’s why we’re far more thrilled about Shaun Of The Dead, a low-budget comedy zombie flick from the makers of sci-fi, slacker TV hit Spaced. As with most movies featuring legions of the undead, Shaun comes replete with squelching dismemberments and ironic social commentary.
However, the film does deviate from type through its preoccupations with pub-life and girlfriend troubles, thereby inspiring (if that is the right word) the horrid marketing handle ‘rom-zom-com’. Neither of the movie’s creators – Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright – is prepared to accept responsibility for this unholy use of wordplay, nor indeed the title, which they insist happened entirely by accident.
Predictably, the biggest artistic decision facing the pair involved the dilemma that has plagued zombie-kind for ages – to shuffle or not to shuffle – whether the creatures should plod Romero-style, or be fleet-footed and menacing in the manner of Herk Harvey’s nimble monsters.
“It was no contest in the end,” explains Shaun screenwriter and star, Simon Pegg. “Our benchmark was the original Dawn Of The Dead. We always felt that there was something more creepy about the fact that they were slow – it’s an odd thing, but because they’re not fast it engenders this arrogance in the zombie survivors. They just think – ‘Oh, it’ll be no problem getting away from these guys’, so inevitably they don’t.”
“It also means that you can have scenes where the protagonists and the zombies co-exist,” chips in director Edgar Wright. “That just can’t happen in 28 Days Later or the new Dawn Of The Dead. When the zombies arrive it’s like a piranha attack. It’s a bit of a cheat. It makes it into more of an action film. But what I always liked about the old Romero films was that they had their own creepy nightmarish logic to them whereby the zombies just keep on coming in greater numbers.”
Apparently this tribute to George Romero’s Living Dead trilogy has gone down well with the man himself, and no wonder – you have to think that watching a post-zombie apocalypse movie with a siege set in an English pub would appeal to the cannibal-meister’s sense of humour. And so it proved, for the boys found themselves having a praise-from-Caesar moment down the phone just days earlier.
“He fucking loved it!” declares Edgar giddily. “I think he was quite taken aback. He probably saw the title and thought, ‘Oh no, some student film’, and then Bill Nighy pops up. But he was really lovely and said he was immensely flattered.”
The movie’s marauding, zimmer-frame paced hoards are populated largely by recruits from Spaced’s internet-orientated fan-base. Edgar and Simon insist that the use of their presumably more somnambulist acolytes as zombie extras is in no way a comment at their expense.
“We put an ad on the Spaced website for zombie extras,” offers Edgar, “And most of the zombie extras – over seventy percent – came from there with a few circus performers thrown in for good measure. I have to say that I have particular respect for the extras who pawed the frosted windows for hours and hours for the scenes where the pub is under siege, because you only get to see their shadows.”
“Actually the weird thing about the Spaced fan-base is that they seem less intense than is the norm for fan culture,” adds Simon. “Most of them seem pretty down-to-earth and they’ve just got the show and like it and want to talk to like-minded people on the Internet. We drew on them cause we thought we might get a couple of extra zombies, but we ended up with 800.
With the monstrous details out of the way, the lads were free to focus on Shaun’s more whimsical, Ealing-ish aspects, in particular the titular hero’s endeavours to win back his girlfriend (the formidable Kate Ashfield), lest he fester forever in front of the Playstation with his even less marriageable mate (played by fellow-Spacer Nick Frost).
“We wanted to make something that was both funny and scary,” says Simon. “We didn’t want to have to sacrifice one element in favour of the other. Our template was An American Werewolf in London. We didn’t want to send horror up or do a spoof horror, we wanted horror to come crashing in like an alien force into this comedy. American Werewolf was a big jumping-off point for us, cause when you watch that film it’s both very funny and very disturbing. Like when you see the character that’s the comedy cop suddenly getting his head bitten off.”
I mention that the film is more than a little Buffy-ish – particularly where fight-scenes are involved. As a self-proclaimed geek, it’s little surprise that Simon is happy with the comparison.
“I’m a huge Buffy fan, so some of the fight posturing was just me wanting to be Sarah Michelle Gellar.”
“I haven’t seen much Buffy – I wasn’t there at the start, so then I never really got it,” admits Edgar, somewhat shockingly.
“I had that exact problem with 24,” interjects Simon. “Because I missed the first episode, I just never got the other 23 hours.”
With a cast that includes Dylan Moran, The Office’s Lucy Davis and Nick Frost, Shaun of the Dead will almost certainly further the myth that the current crop of edgy, British comedians all reside together on the same street, so they can wander in and out of each other’s projects.
“That’s absolutely the case,” proclaims Simon, (and having chalked up appearances in The League of Gentlemen, Brass Eye and I’m Alan Partridge he’s done more of the aforementioned wandering than most). “We all live in a big house with all the inner walls knocked down. It’s just like with The Beatles. It’s a weird thing, because we are a large group of people working towards the same end, and inevitably there are crossovers, professionally and socially. Because if you are making a comedy in this country, you have a huge source of talent to draw on. And they should all be making films. They’re not just for telly, these people.”
Speaking of which, did they find the absence of spontaneity required for film writing very restrictive?
“That was difficult,” says Edgar, “Shaun Of The Dead is not a big-budget movie, but there’s more money involved than for Spaced and there’s a lot of pressure in terms of schedule and timing, and being aware of things like film stock. There’s just less room for mucking about.”
And does their quasi-autobiographical geek-boy comedy style ever land them in difficulty with their nearest and dearest?
“Occasionally, someone narrows their eyes at you and says, ‘That seems very familiar’,’’ admits Simon. “But the autobiographical things tend to just be the germs of it all – they just ensure that the stuff feels real. But we tend to greatly embellish these things. I would hesitate to cull an entire episode from my life and put it up there on screen. Well, apart from that time I got attacked by zombies down the pub.” b

Shaun Of The Dead is released on April 9