- Bonus Disc
- Posts
- Shaun of the Dead
“We weren’t making a comedy zombie film, but a zombie film and a comedy.”
Shaun of the Dead is an early 00s British comedy that happens to be lovingly paying homage to the oeuvre of zombie movies. It;s produced (unknowingly) during the twilight years when mildly successful television actors could get funding to make a cheap comedy sold off the back of cult fandoms. They also managed to get their foot in the door of making a movie with zombies before the zeitgeist overindulged on zombie fiction and they became passe.
That’s two fancy French terms in one paragraph. I’ll get a gold star at this rate. As we approach the Halloween season, let’s sink our teeth into the first movie in the Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy.
What is Shaun of the Dead?
Shaun, a 20-something nerd, is living life on cruise control. He holds down a pseudo-management position at a retail store, he shares a house with two college friends, and he has a girlfriend. After letting his cruise-control manchild impulses potentially ruin his relationship, Shaun wakes up dedicated to turning his life around. Unfortunately he also awakens to a Night of the Living Dead-styled zombie apocalypse
The secret sauce to SotD lies in Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s unabashed love of the sandbox they’re playing in. It’s not a parody or satire of the zombie genre.
“We never wanted to make the film into a spoof. We didn’t want it to be a mickey take or in any way irreverent. The whole idea of the horror aspect of it was totally true and faithful to the source material, otherwise it wouldn’t have worked. We weren’t making a comedy zombie film, but a zombie film and a comedy.”
It’s exactly what the poster says: a romantic comedy. With zombies. The zombies are inherently important to Shaun’s character arc, and the unrelenting background horror of a shuffling zombie horde acts as the perfect acidic zing to punch through the rich flavor of rom-com shenanigans.
Problematic?
I’ll level with you: this one comes with a warning. Nick Frost’s character Ed is supposed to be a giant manchild, still acting like a teen in his 20s and hopped up on pop culture. While I don’t feel the need to make excuses for low-level offenses like him saying “alright gay” as a dig at Shaun wanting to save his girlfriend, I do feel it necessary to point out there’s a scene where Ed rolls up with a getaway car just in time to save people, climbs out of the driver’s seat, and exclaims “what’s up [n-word]?”
There are no Black characters in the movie. Nothing is said about this to admonish Ed. One could make the tenuous argument that it’s part of how much of a loser Ed is that he’d believe saying it without a “hard R” is cool or permissible, but it’s still just a white English nerd saying a slur and the movie does nothing with that.
What’s on the disc?
I’m just going to spoil it right up at the front: Shaun of the Dead might be one of the best DVDs ever produced. True, I fundamentally enjoyed the movie and have since grown attached to the careers of several people involved, but there’s something vibrant and special about this disk.
I am firmly of the opinion that the special spark in SotD lives in the fact Wright and Pegg are giant movie nerds in a world not yet fully poisoned by the notion nerds have to ironically enjoy something to be profitable. These are men who had already spent far too much money on home video and DVD releases of movies for nerds, making a movie for nerds.
While Shaun of the Dead doesn’t have a hour-long Sky Captain-esque behind the scenes documentary, what behind-the-scenes footage exists is extremely well-presented. In what feels like a licensing nightmare today, the BTS footage is edited with backing tracks from the movie’s licensed soundtrack. Usually behind-the-scenes content is scored with one or two tracks from the film’s OST. SotD’s DVD makes frequent use of tracks like I MONSTER’s The Blue Wrath. The soundtrack to this movie owns. There’s a reason I started doing my “guess the next issue’s DVD” contest with Shaun.
The Basics
The main and sub-menus are fun illustrations of the inside of the pub the characters frequent, zombies silhouette on the outside windows by cracks of lightning. A background track of moans fits thematically. Hitting Play Move causes a zombie to pop up and a video game-esque first person view of a shotgun rises into frame and fires. The ensuing blood covers the fade from menu to the black beginning of the movie file.
Switching over to any other menu shifts the camera to a different part of the pub, all of which have some reminder of the zombies outside. As with Sky Captain, the DVD menu is built in such a way the background loop isn’t too annoying, but it also isn’t inviting you to stay super long. Watch the movie, or start some bonus content. Either way, get your business done.
The Bonus Content
Being a movie made by movie nerds, SotD comes packed with every bit of deleted scenes, casting tapes, visual effects comparisons, and cut content they could get their hands on. Two minutes of zombie makeup screen tests. A nearly seven minute edit of Simon Pegg’s personal camcorder documenting the filming process. Four minutes of table read. Ten minutes of outtakes. Two minutes of what the TV swear dub looks like during one of the movie’s most swear-laden moments (featuring Peter Serafinowicz shouting “well funk-a-doodle-do). And then, for some reason, three minute-long “plot hole” segments in which three characters from the movie narrate comic-sketches depicting what happened off-camera in three vaguely plot-hole-ish moments.
It should be noted the plot hole segments feel a bit tongue-in-cheek but are still weird in the amount of effort that went into them, given they required someone drawing a few semi-detailed comic sequences.
In addition to the bonus video content, there’s also a trivia track that adds fun facts throughout the movie, from the name of background music tracks to other movies with the same rating as Shaun of the Dead that got away with saying “cunt.” Oh, and a reference to The Man Who Would be King in the form of a short scene between Pegg and Frost but doing their respective Michael Caine and Sean Connery impressions.
The Commentaries
Oh boy, do the commentaries shine on this one.
Commentary #1: Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg
Unsurprisingly, the two have a grand old time nerding out about the movie. The first conversation after their introduction is both explaining the opening music underneath the Universal logo is music from the original Dawn of the Dead and giving props to the nice person at the Universal archive who managed to dig up the physical music for them. From there on out the nerding doesn’t stop until the credits. You’ll learn a lot about both SotD and movies the two like in general.
Commentary #2: Simon Pegg, Kate Ashfield, Nick Frost, Lucy Davis, Dylan Moran.
Recorded during the infancy of podcasting, this commentary damn near qualifies as a chat podcast. It’s no wonder that back in the late 00s I was bootlegging my own podcast experience by starting this commentary, unplugging one audio input and video feed from my TV, then plugging in my Playstation 2 to grind progress in a video game while listening to these five riff for 90 minutes. Comments are made about the movie, but it’s also five people goofing around.
During a heartfelt death scene, Davis references an Al Pacino comment about crying in a scene, setting off Pegg, Frost and Moran to have competing Pacino impressions for a solid minute of the movie.
Closing Thoughts
As with a lot of comedies from the 2000s, it hasn’t aged without blemish, but Shuan of the Dead remains a wonderful example of something made from a place of love. It’s a good zombie movie. It’s a funny rom-com. It’s jam-packed with nerdy references that respect you the viewer to figure them out without having characters simply parrot quotes at each other.
A movie in that magic middle-zone where it was quite successful on DVD, but not successful enough to necessitate tons of re-releases with various different behind-the-scenes tidbits withheld until a future Special Edition. The version of Shaun of the Dead you can pick up right now on eBay for less than $10 shipped to you door is the same as the one I have right now. And I highly recommend spending that $10 (or, even better, go dig up a copy from your local used media shop).
Time for a recurring segment here on Bonus Disc: next-issue sweepstakes! Your clue for the next movie I’ll cover is this song.
Guess the movie title and release year in a reply to this email (or DM me on X if you’re reading the web version and don’t have an email to reply to) to enter the drawing.
I’ll randomly choose a winner from the correct answers, who will receive the grand prize: A (possibly used) copy of the DVD shipped right to their doorstep.
Only the fanciest giveaways here on Bonus Disc.
Must be 18 or older, no purchase necessary, etc. etc. etc. If you’re international I’ll probably just find out how much it’d be to buy it on your corner of the internet and shoot you the money to keep it painless.
Thank you for reading this far! If you enjoyed the newsletter, please consider telling your friends about it. This is a particular favorite hobby of mine and sharing the love of DVDs with others would just be the bee’s knees. Thank you again.