Shaun of the Dead’s 5 Best Scenes
Fans of the Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy (aka the Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy) should take heart. The World’s End, the final film of the trilogy that director Edgar Wright and stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost began with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, will officially go into production in October. We’re already getting tidbits of casting news and Wright even released a teaser poster at his website.
As a fan myself, this sudden influx of news has made me nostalgic, so I did the only thing I could do: I broke out my copy of Shaun of the Dead for the umpteenth time and basked in the bloody funny zombie goodness all over again. It struck me as I was watching just how well the horror comedy is holding up as it ages. It’s a film that truly never gets old– the jokes always land, the scares always make me jump and Shaun calling Ed ‘babe’ always makes me grin.
Since I was already riding the nostalgia wave, I decided to share my five favorite moments from Shaun of the Dead this week. I know, I know ranking such a flawless movie sounds downright blasphemous, but given how Shaun responded to having to use his record collection to fend off the undead, I think he would understand.
Nothing cuts the tension quite like having a Queen song blaring in the background of an epic zombie batle. The scene at the beginning of the fight inside the Winchester is a perfect example of what makes Shaun of the Dead so much fun. Shaun, Liz and Ed whacking the poor zombified pub owner with pool cues to the beat of “Don’t Stop Me Know” is nothing short of genius, but it’s hard to top the climax of the scene where Shaun discovers that Ed was right and the shotgun above the bar does in fact work.
Even then he still insists that “dogs can look up” though.
It was nice to see Dianne get a chance to put her acting skills to use by guiding the rest of the group through a quick class on how to be a zombie 101. I never know whether to giggle or hide behind a pillow when they shuffle out into the horde of undead, but I usually settle for giggling to avoid missing Simon Pegg’s flawless zombie face.
It may take Ed and Shaun a little while to realize they’re in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, but their response to it more than makes up for the delay. Their horror when Shaun pushes a girl in their garden a little too hard and ends up causing her to impale herself quickly intensifies when she gets up. The guys then realize that her handsiness wasn’t a symptom of a night of overindulging at the pub, but rather a sign that she was a zombie.
This leads to one of the funniest sequences in the film as Ed and Shaun throw records at the zombies’ heads…but only the ones Shaun can bear to part with.
Shaun of the Dead may be the film that started the trilogy, but the brilliant partnership between Wright, Pegg and Frost goes back to a little television show called Spaced, and it includes a vital fourth member in Jessica Hynes. It’s only fitting then that Hynes pops up in the film as Yvonne, an old friend of Shaun’s.
Yvonne shows up three times in Shaun of the Dead, but her second run-in with Shaun and his gang is my favorite for its welcome silliness. We find out Yvonne has her own gang when they cross paths with Shaun as he’s leading everyone to the Winchester, and her gang just so happens to look an awful lot like his (and includes the awesome Martin Freeman and Tamsin Greig).
No one wanted to see Ed turn into a zombie, but if it had to happen it’s nice to know he’ll spend his undead years hanging out in the shed and playing video games with Shaun. After the darkness of watching Shaun and Liz say their goodbyes to Ed, the shed scene was the perfect note to end the film on.
As I said above, playing favorites with Shaun of the Dead scenes is not easy, but if you want to get in on the action, I’d love to hear which scenes would make your list in the comments.
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