6. Shaun Of The Dead
The twist: Zombies are funny! Shaun (Simon Pegg) is a twentysomething everyman: juggling his work, love life and the zombie uprising. To him, a London overrun with mindless drones isn't necessarily anything new. But it does provide the opportunity to prove himself a man; and have a rollicking good time in the process. Whether decapitating a zombie with a well-thrown record or beating an infected pub landlord with a pool cue,
Shaun introduced the element that the genre had hitherto been missing: humour. Of course, there has always been something ridiculous to behold in your typical zombie horde: slow-moving, head-cocked, arms outstretched. Yet when the film illustrates this point, it does so with affection. As the title suggests, director and co-writer Edgar Wright pays homage to Romero's heyday in true British fashion; not least in replacing the shopping mall of its near-namesake with The Winchester pub. Aside from kickstarting the (admittedly niche) 'rom-zom-com' subgenre,
Shaun's influence can be seen wherever comedy and gore collide.
Zombieland, for instance, with its deadpan narration and onscreen rules of how to survive the apocalypse, built upon
Shaun's pop-culture foundations to create a postmodern horror comedy
par excellence. There's still many a laugh to be mined from those munching on the living, but for now here's a double-bill guaranteed to gnaw on your funny bone.