Welcome to Zombie Strains, the podcast where we watch every zombie movie ever produced. Yes, all of them. How many is that? The current total is more than 600, and we will try to watch them in order of release date, with a few flash forwards for fun. We look forward to watching zombie cinema evolve and become what it is today. I'm John, and I'm joined by my co-host Andy and our producer Brad. Join us for this journey to see which of us makes it to the end alive. Hello, Andy. Hello, Brad.

Hello, both of you. Good morning.

Hey, is this the most excited we've been to watch a particular movie? I think it might be so far because we cheated, or Brad threw us a bone rather.

He did, yes. Although I have some thoughts about that.

Yeah, I would like to hear them. But I should probably tell everybody what we're watching first, which is Shaun of the Dead from 2004, and just to spoil the end of this podcast, when Andy asked me if Zombie fan should watch this movie, my answer is going to be, if you're a Zombie fan, you should have already watched this movie, and if you haven't, you have to to call yourself a Zombie fan. So anyway, Kara, carry on.

Yeah, you should probably watch it even if you aren't really a Zombie fan, quite frankly.

Yeah, I watched it with my wife, and she said, this is the first, who does not like horror movies at all, and she said, this is the first and last Zombie movie I'm gonna watch with you for this podcast.

Well, I'll point out the box office charts list this under comedy, not horror.

Yeah, I watched this with my teenager. They had not seen it before, and I don't think they've seen anything in this, I know, sort of Simon Pegg universe. So this was a fun first for them.

Yeah, I can tell you, the spot where my wife laughed the most is when they were initially being attacked, they were sort of figuring out the zombies came, and Simon Pegg screams, he's got an arm off, and my wife thought that was the funniest thing she heard.

There's a lot to catch in this movie, and there's a lot, I think it merits a second viewing to look for the little gags that you missed. So this is as good a time as I need to say, John, I suspect this is a movie that most of our listeners have seen. I mean, it is 20 years old, so there is that. I might be forgetting that young people haven't seen all of the films I did, but I think most of our fans, or our listeners here have probably seen it. So in my viewing, I did try to focus a little bit more on the zombie bits, and I tried to resist the siren call of just jotting down every great gag because there's so many. Because there's just so many. So that's my little preview of how I'm going to approach this film.

Yeah, and I think that's our mission. If there is a particularly good gag we love, we should call it out, but really we're talking about this as a zombie movie in the context of other zombie movies. Or that's the goal anyway.

Watching this was a delight because it's a great movie, but it did make me think that I think I've kind of grown fond of our terrible, low quality, low budget zombie films.

Oh, interesting.

And it was honestly a little disorienting to watch just like a competently executed, no major flaws modern film.

That's really interesting.

Looking back through my notes, an awful lot of my notes reference or are based in some way on something the film is doing wrong or poorly. Because that often is an avenue for discussing what it's trying to do or why what it's doing isn't working. But with this one, I'm not saying it's a perfect movie, but it's pretty darn good. There's certainly not a lot of major flaws to kind of dig my teeth into.

Yeah. All right. Well, what should people watch out for in this one?

Yeah. Well, really not too much. The movie itself, this is where I usually provide some content warnings, which is to date has often included a warning about racism and other bad things from the 30s and 40s.

Right.

But Shaun of the Dead is gory, but otherwise pretty clean fun. Okay. So hey, Brad, do you want to tell us a little bit about when this movie was released and who's in it?

Shaun of the Dead was released on September 24th, 2004. It is rated R for zombie violence and gore and language. The top grossing movies in 2004 were Shrek 2, Spider-Man 2, The Passion of the Christ, Harry Potter, The Prisoner of Azkaban and The Incredibles. As John mentions in our opening, prior to 2000, 200 zombie movies were released and after over 400.

Yes.

Shaun of the Dead and Donna of the Dead from our first episode are both at the beginning of this boom.

Yeah. I'd like to say one thing about movies released this year also. If I'm looking at the list of 10 that you put together, Brad, just out of curiosity, what movie would each of you pick if you could pick one movie to watch again in five minutes? You have to watch it right after we're done recording. What are you picking?

Well, for me, there's three that are easy to watch, The Incredibles, National Treasure and Born Supremacy.

Yeah, I was going to pick Born Supremacy. That is the exact kind of action I like, that visceral yet still realistic action that feels like it could actually happen. I love this, Born movies.

Really, no one went for Shrek 2?

I know, I'm sorry.

Timeless, truly a timeless classic. My list would be Born Supremacy, Incredibles, and also I'll never say no to Spider-Man 2.

That's a great movie.

Of those original Spider-Men, that's a good one. I think we've even talked in this podcast about that delightful hospital horror scene where Sam Raimi reverts to his type.

Yeah, sorry to interrupt you, Brad.

No worries. Edgar Wright directed Shaun of the Dead and wrote it with Simon Pegg, who stars. This is the first movie in their Three Flavors Cornetto trilogy. The other two films are Hot Fuzz and The World's End, Cornetto being an onscreen gag seen in all three films. In this film, you see Shaun buying or Cornetto Cone after a night of drinking.

Yeah, which Ed, which by the way, his roommate Ed eats, which we'll talk about.

Was Simon Pegg on the radar at all when this came out, or was this his first big mainstream?

I think he was in England, right? He was in Space, which I think was a big hit over there.

Simon Pegg had done a lot of television, including the show Space, which I've actually never seen. And it was there that he brought on Edgar Wright to direct.

And I think that this movie actually has a very spaced vibe if you have seen it. Not exactly, but it is about two sort of like slacker Gen-Xers. It is about people who are probably too old to be living in a very childish way or still living that way. So, yeah.

The cast is filled with well-known comic and genre actors. We mentioned Simon Pegg, who's been in Star Trek and Mission Impossible. Nick Frost plays Shaun's friend Ed. He was in all three Flavor Cornetto trilogy films. He was also in Attack the Block. Lucy Davis, who plays Diane, played Etta in Wonder Woman. Bill Nighy has been in a ton of stuff, including Love Actually, Pirates of the Caribbean, Dead Man's Chest, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part One, and Underworld. And sort of my favorite of the cast is Penelope Wilton, who plays Shaun's mom.

Yes.

She is known for playing Lady Crowley in Downton Abbey and Harriet Jones in Doctor Who.

Yes. As a staunch Downton Abbey watcher, I was like, hey, and my wife didn't remember her at all. But she remembers the character, but not the actress. It's a thing.

Well, once you see her face, you remember.

Yeah.

I do. And lastly, Peter Serafinowicz plays Pete, and he was in Guardians of the Galaxy, John Wick Chapter 2, and he was also the last live-action tick.

Oh, okay.

Oh, no way.

Yeah.

So it's a great cast. The movie received positive reviews, and it only made 13.5 in the US box office, but worldwide it made 30 million. Which is six times its production budget.

That's always good. And I'm curious about, like, before streaming took over completely, I would be curious about Shaun of the Dead DVD sales from, like, 2006 to 2014 or whatever.

It does feel like a word-of-mouth sort of movie. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So let me tell you where we are in the world and what's happening. So we're going to talk about this a lot for all the movies made 2002 and later, but the big thing, and I'll include some minor things, is this is definitely a post-911 movie. I think, though this movie is English, first of all, and a comedy, I think there's something about zombie movies. I think it's not all 911, and I have some thoughts on that that will go as we go through the movie, but I think that's a big thing. Now, other cultural context. People have cell phones, but there are no smartphones yet, right? Other little things. This year is the year Oprah gives away 300 cars during her show, which I love. And this is when Facebook launches. So we've had some things like MySpace, but social media has not entered the general consciousness yet either, right? There's nobody in this movie looking at their phone or checking Facebook posts or anything like that. They still have to get their news from the TV and that's just sort of how it works. So I'll say one other thing as I'll add to your trigger warning. This is a trigger warning for Millennials specifically, but this film is made by Gen Xers and it's about Gen Xers and it contains the dangerous thought that at some point in your life, you have to stop playing video games and grow up. So I don't want to traumatize anybody when we thematically discuss that, but I was offended by that personally and I assume most of her.

I was playing a video game until about two minutes before we all met up for this recording.

So I think that the fact that it's made by Gen Xers is a thing and I think, yeah, so we'll talk about that more as we go.

Maybe a good place to start would be to take a quick look at the movie poster, John. Do you have that in front of you?

Yes, I do.

So John, will you describe the poster and then maybe what is your quick impression of it? What does it make you think you're going to get when you start watching this?

It's pretty clearly a zombie movie. Somebody had the clever idea of they took a movie poster which features our heroes, Nick Frost, Simon Pegg and Kate Ashfield, Ed, Sean and Liz, but they are on a movie poster which is being held by a bunch of zombies. And in fact, one of the zombies is holding up a little card underneath the poster that has a quote on it that says, an absolute blast. So you know you're getting into a zombie movie, but what I think that tells me is you're getting into a comic critique of zombie movies.

Yeah. The one I'm looking at even says a romantic comedy with zombies, which is a pretty good explanation of the film. There is a way of posing for a zombie movie that I think suggests if it's going to be more funny and over-the-top or terrifying and grisly. And this has them all, the three main characters standing boldly facing the camera. It definitely does not look like it's going to be a serious, into-the-heart-of-darkness type of film.

Right. And unless you are... For those of you not into cricket, Simon Pegg is holding a cricket bat. For people who are wondering what that long, flat bat is that Simon Pegg carries around.

I had a brain hiccup while watching this, and I was trying to remember what sport that bat was for when it appears in the film. But we can get to that, I suppose.

And they might not even call it a bat. They might call it a mallet, but we'll let our English listeners call it a mallet.

Then I need... That can't be a mallet.

That can't be. It's got to be a cricket bat.

Okay. All right. So, John, would you say it's time to jump into the film?

Let's do it. Where do we start?

Well, we open with date night at the local tavern with Simon Pegg's character, Shaun, and his girlfriend, Liz. And this scene sets up the stakes and the trajectory that the movie is going to take. As Shaun and Liz are having a heart to heart conversation, or at least something like that, about Liz's disappointment with where their relationship is. She needs Shaun to step up and be a little less passive, and spend more time with her, and just generally make some sort of plan or develop some sort of ambition for his life.

They're at the place they always go, which is one of the primary complaints here at the Winchester, which is the pub they always go to. And one of my favorite bits, like I said, we can't talk about every joke, but it starts with Liz and Shaun talking about all their friends, and then as they mention the friends, they cut to those friends who turn out to be sitting next to them. So Liz is a couple that she's friends with, and then they start talking about what a problem Shaun's friend Ed is, and then you cut over and there's Ed standing right there. So in great English fashion, you're drawn into what has suddenly become an awkward conversation.

Yeah, I agreed that we won't go into every gag, but the timing of the camera reveal that the friends are sitting right there next to him is just so good. And they do a version of this gag a couple of times later in the movie, too. And it makes me laugh every time.

It does.

It's maybe worth talking about the other major character here is his friend Ed. And how would you describe Ed, John?

So the older I get, the more irritating I find Ed. Like Ed is never serious. He's always sort of looking for trouble in a very sort of immature kind of way. Right. Somebody will say, hey, stop doing that. And he'll say, course. And then he'll mutter under his breath, but not really quietly like stupid idiot. Like he's always trying to sort of antagonize people. However, Shaun finds him very funny, but almost nobody else does. Yeah.

I don't know if you've had this experience, John, but I think most of us can probably relate to that, that kind of time in your life when the things you and your buddies find incredibly hilarious.

Yeah.

It turns out maybe your girlfriend and your coworkers at work and stuff find them quite a bit less hilarious than you do. It's part of growing up, right? That realizing that, okay, like we can't just be stupid all the time, right?

Right. We can't make inappropriate jokes in the middle of the office. Yes. Ed has not learned this, and Liz really wants Shaun to learn it. I think he's part of the thing here. Yeah.

And Shaun is in between, I think Shaun is grown up enough to realize that Ed is pretty annoying, and Ed isn't doing him any favors, I guess, as far as life and career go. Right. But he does feel that loyalty to him, and that's going to be a tension throughout the film.

Because he still genuinely likes him, because Ed does stupid stuff and he still laughs all the time.

And some of the stupid stuff is funny. Yes. Even at my middle age here. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. So they have this heart to heart, and Shaun promises, I would say pretty unconvincingly, that things are going to change. And he is going to prove that things can get better. He says he's going to book dinner at a nice restaurant for them tomorrow. So you can already probably guess what's going to happen here. But this is Shaun's chance to show Liz that he's serious and that he can grow up and be a big boy. And then we get the credits. And the credits are pretty fun. John, do you remember the credit sequence?

I do. It's very good. It starts with like the next morning, it's Shaun waking up and he's sort of shuffling forward, and then he does this big yawn, and then you cut to like the supermarket, and everybody's just sort of staring off into the distance. And my wife actually said, wait, are these zombies? And I'm like, no, I think the implication is that, and this is part of the other theme, kind of theme I wanted to talk about that's starting to emerge. I feel like it's the suggestion that people are sort of becoming more consumery, and we're sort of drifting through our life, like zombies consuming and just sort of running this rat race without any sort of purpose. And it sort of suggests we're the zombies, actually, kind of, you know what I mean?

Yeah, exactly. It's kind of a fun twist on if an awful lot of zombie and horror movies are asking, who's the real monster? Maybe man is the real monster. This movie is kind of winkingly, but somewhat seriously suggesting that, yeah, maybe man is the real zombie, right?

Yes, they're not doing anything monstrous. It's not like a montage of people doing horrible things to each other. It's a montage of people floating through their daily lives without thinking about it.

Yeah, standing in line, or sitting at the bus looking lifeless. And this movie, by coming out a couple of years before everyone had cell phones, it obviously missed a very obvious opportunity to comment on these social situations where everyone's just staring at their phone like a zombie. But that's a couple of years.

There's a couple of good cell phone jokes in the movie, but yes.

Yes. So the credits wrap up, and we get our first zombie gag. Well, no, I guess the credits were an extended zombie gag, but it opens with a shambling figure. We pan up from its feet and we hear groaning noises, and we wonder if this is a zombie. But as the camera pans up, no, it's just Shaun. He's groggy because he just woke up. And John, I wanted to say, do you remember the other movie we've watched so far in the podcast that had a gag about a person being mistaken for a zombie?

I do not. What was it?

It was in Wanga. If you recall.

Oh, that's right.

One of the characters is tackled out in the jungle because he's moving around suspiciously and two of the other characters think he's a zombie.

So they try to put salt on him because that's what they think is good. Yes, I remember that now. I hadn't made that connection. That's awesome. Yes, exactly.

So I don't know if that's the first time that particular zombie gag has been used in film, but it does make me kind of curious.

Yeah, it's pretty funny.

So we are in Shaun's apartment, and he is roommates. Ed, his roommate, is there, and they have another roommate, and his name is Pete.

Yeah, it's Pete.

And Pete is... So these are three kind of stereotypes here, I think. Shaun is like the guy who is on the verge of growing up, but isn't quite there. Ed is thoroughly trapped in his adolescence still, despite the fact that these guys are all in their late 20s, it seems. And Pete is like businessman. He's already grown up. He has no patience at all for Ed and not a lot of patience for Shaun. And he says this a lot.

I would describe Pete as like the corporate drone of the group, right? He's got like a nice shirt and he's going to an office job where he's... Well, first of all, Ed is not going anywhere. He's going to sit around and smoke and play video games all day. And Shaun is going to go work at an electronics store, where at 29, he is by far the oldest employee.

Yes. So there is a funny sequence of Shaun heading into work. And the camera kind of follows along in a long shot as he walks through the neighborhood and down the street to the supermarket and then on to work. And this first shot, everything is going fine.

Yeah, somebody's washing his car.

There's a couple little hints in the background that something might be going on. It's not dramatic. You see some shots of people looking sick or coughing a little bit.

Yeah.

And there is one brief shot where he sees somebody collapse. But the gag of this is that Shaun is pretty oblivious to his surroundings, and we're going to replay this scene later in the movie when things are much worse. And he's just as oblivious as he is now.

Yeah. It reminds me a little bit of the of the Dawn of the Dead, the Zack Senator Dawn of the Dead we watched, which the apocalypse happens and the primary protagonists just miss it because they're doing other stuff. But here is played much more for comedy. Yeah.

So he's the acting manager, notably because the real manager is Cus-Caldin Sick. I think that's a nod to the zombie outbreak that's about to happen.

Right.

He's at this degrading electronics store sales job. Amusingly, as he's showing off some TVs, all the TVs are tuned to news channels that are reporting signs of an outbreak or a disaster, and no one notices or pays any attention. Yes.

They keep flipping away. Like frequently in this film, like he goes to the news, he's like, no, that's dumb. Let's do something else. Like he's willfully as oblivious as possible.

Yeah. So in this scene, we get introduced to another character. This is Shaun's stepdad, Phil.

Played by Bill Nighy.

And there's a brief scene with them there, and we learned that Shaun and his stepdad really don't get along very well at all, although Shaun is very fond of his mother still.

Right.

But there's some funny stuff here where they kind of poke at Shaun's age compared to the other employees at the store.

Yes. And Phil tells him he had better bring flowers when he comes to see his mother, because the flowers become, throughout most of the movie, a gag, but also actually sort of have some emotional resonance right at the end. Yeah.

And you know, in this kind of movie, anytime someone is told that it's really important that they do something like schedule the dinner for date night or bring flowers to the mom, you know what's going to happen, right? So unless you wanted to say anything else about the scene, John, I'll just wrap it up by saying, the big thing here is we learned that Shaun has screwed up and has not made the reservation for date night.

Correct.

Yeah. And we know that while he's at work, Liz calls him and says, oh, instead of seven, can we do eight? And they had sort of set up earlier that Ed never writes down anybody else's messages. He just clears the machine. So we know where this is going. This is going to be a disaster for for Shaun.

So on the way back home, we see more signs of the pending apocalypse. We see some people in the background that look to be pretty zombie-esque, I would say.

And there's some sick people on the bus. He's riding home and there's like a woman who's clearly like turning into a zombie, but isn't yet as like falling asleep on his shoulder and he's like, oh, but he totally misses that she's turning into a zombie.

So when they get home, they have a confrontation with Pete, the stuffy roommate, and we learn that something has happened to Pete, that if you've watched even one zombie movie, you know is probably pretty ominous. So let's hear what happens when they confront Pete during an argument.

Start with your hand, man.

I got mugged on the way home from work.

By who?

I don't know, some crackheads or something. One of them bit me.

Why did they bite you?

I don't know.

I didn't stop to ask them.

I do love the why did they bite you question. That's so cool.

Yes. That showcases Ed having no clue what's going on. In that implication, I think Ed is saying, did you do something that made them bite you?

Exactly.

I think he's just trying to needle Pete at every opportunity.

So what this has done is it's established in the back of your head, you know that Pete has been bitten. So as things get worse, you know that that's going to come back to haunt them.

Yeah. And actually, can I contrast this with Dawn of the Dead for a second? Because the movies came out in the same year. This is the Sex, Night, or Rebite remake. That movie goes to great lengths to spell out how zombie infections happen. And it spells it out for you if you've never seen a zombie movie before. And Shaun of the Dead is clearly saying, we assume you've seen a bunch of zombie movies. So all these little things we drop, you're going to pick up on and that creates the tension. They haven't figured out anything about zombies yet, but you as the listener or you as the audience knows, Pete's been bitten. So there's tension now where I have to worry about when Pete turns.

Yeah, exactly. There is a funny line where Ed says at the end of that argument with Pete in which he reveals he's gotten bitten. The last line of the argument, Ed says, next time I see him, he's dead. So the next morning, Shaun is very groggy and he does that walk back to work again. And we follow him through the city streets. But this time, it's total dystopian apocalypse.

Yeah, the car that was being smashed is now, or the car that was being washed now has a hole in the windshield. It's the same scene, but clearly there's bad stuff happening.

There's wreckage and debris all around. There's zombies shambling in the background. When he gets to the convenience store, there's blood splashed all over the place.

Which he slips in, but doesn't look down to see what he's...

Yeah, so the continuing gag that he's just utterly oblivious. Yes. He heads back home. I guess he wasn't heading into work, I guess. He was just heading into get some...

No, he's just getting a soda and ice cream...

.a soda from the grocery store. When he gets back home, Ed is there, and they are flipping through channels. Let's hear what is playing on British TV as they flip through the channels. I should tell you if it's not clear from the audio here, the gag here is that every time something important is about to be said, Shaun flips the channel to something else.

Correct.

Let's hear it.

Although no one official is prepared to comment, religious groups are calling it Judgment Day.

There's panic on the streets of London. As an increasing number of reports of serious attacks on people who are literally being eaten alive.

A witness reports a sketchy. One unifying detail seems to be that the attackers in many instances appear to be dead excited to have with us here a sensational chart to think about. A more ideological connection between those committing the atrocities, and perhaps more alarmingly.

Yeah. So what's great about this, yeah, as you said is that as soon as they're about to say something about the zombies, they flip to an entertainment channel. But like in that first bit, the newscaster is saying something seriously and you cut to the Smiths singing panic on the streets of London. So yeah, that's very well done.

Yeah, it also is interesting. This is like well-trod cinematic language, I think, for zombie movies. At this point, we don't need, generally speaking, we don't really need it explained what's going on. We just need, I mean, think about how many movies use news broadcasts like this as a shorthand way of saying, you know what's the deal is, civilization is collapsing, zombies everywhere, right?

Yeah. But they still don't figure out.

They still don't know what's going on. Yeah. So we have our first genuine zombie encounter though, right after this. There's been a few zombies in the background as gags, but there is a woman in their backyard who they think is drunk. She's obviously a zombie, although they don't get it. And only when Shaun pushes her way, and only when she falls and impales herself on a pipe, and then gets back up and starts lurching after them, do they realize that something is very wrong. There is a fun shot here we've seen in other zombie movies. I'm just a sucker for this, of the camera looking through the hole in the torso of the zombie. Yeah, I know, that's kind of a fun little piece of gorg.

Actually, it reminds me of something, which is, this is not a very high-budget movie. I think it has a quarter of the budget of, again, Dawn of the Dead that came out the same year. And there aren't a ton of big effect shots, like, there's no crowds of thousands of zombies. There's no shot from the top of a tower in London showing the whole city on fire. But there are a couple of well-placed, high-quality effect shots, and this is one of them where she impales herself and then you look through the circle.

Yep, absolutely. So another zombie appears, and so they hustle inside to try and figure out what to do. And so they turn on the news again, this time maybe ready to listen. And they are told just very straight away what the deal is and what to do about zombies.

We should get out of there. No, no, no, no, we should stay inside. Come on, we can take them. The man said to stay indoors. Fuck the man. Look, as long as they're out there and we're in here, we're safe.

The attackers can be stopped by removing the head or destroying the brain. I'll repeat that. The attackers can be stopped by removing the head or destroying the brain.

Nice. That's very nice. And so it cuts to a very funny little bit of them throwing household objects at the heads of the zombies that are gathering in their backyard in an attempt to destroy them. They're not throwing anything that would actually destroy a head or a brain, which is the gag. There's a good gag here where they're throwing some records at the zombies and they're going through the record collection, picking out which ones they can afford to throw. I am the exact correct age to get these jokes.

It's a first pressing of Blue Monday.

I owned the Prince Batman soundtrack and also found it unlistenable. I got the Stone Roses gag about how he liked their second album. That may fade with time, of course, but the sentiment, I guess, is probably pretty time-lost.

How do they end up killing these two? Because they do manage it. They do.

They go into the shed after throwing all these household objects and they do more damage to their house than to the zombies. They go into the shed and they emerge with a shovel and what I'm going to call a cricket bat.

Okay.

Good deal. They are able by hitting the zombies a whole lot of times, they are able to subdue them.

I think it's important here that all the gags around combating zombies here are predicated on the fact that the zombies are all slow zombies. There are no fat, in fact, they're comically slow. They regularly walk or jog by zombies and the zombies don't change pace, which I think is important. It's still a slow zombie movie, which I think sets up a lot of the gags. If there are fast zombies, I don't think they have time to do all this comedy.

Yeah. An awful lot of the gags rely on the zombies moving imperceptibly slow, so that they can do lots of joking around.

Yes.

I mean, here's a question for you, John. At this point in the movie, did this feel tense? Like how much of this feels like a funny comedy and how much of it feels like a horror movie at this point?

So far, it feels very much like a funny comedy. Like even the bit where she impales herself, Simon Pegg and Ed, excuse me, let me use your character name, Shaun and Ed's reactions are like screaming hysteria, which I have to say, no one kind of does better than Simon Pegg. He goes from zero to like, oh my God, in like six seconds. And it's always hilarious when he does it. But the only tension I feel, actually, I'm not sure I'm feeling tension about it. The only thing I know is that Pete, we haven't seen Pete yet. Yeah. Right. But the whole bit with the records and stuff really took any tension out. Like those were last designed to remove tension. And you see that these zombies are very slow. So I'm not feeling tense yet.

Yeah. There are. I do think we'll get to it. You know, I do think they it is going to start. The stakes are going to start feeling a little bit more dramatic as we head into the movie's second half. But as of right now, I agree with you. It's all pretty jokey right now. So back inside, Pete has been zombified. We don't need to go through all the details of the scene, but Shaun realizes he needs to call his mom and there's a very funny bit where he asks her if she's okay and if she's been bitten and she says no, but your stepdad got bitten. And their reaction is, oh, you all, phew.

But you're okay. Yeah. And then they concoct these plans, which actually kind of cracked me up.

Yeah, tell us about this part, John.

Yeah, so he keeps doing this. It seems like a plan that somebody who doesn't know what a plan would do. He'd be like, okay, we get in Pete's car, we drive to Liz's, no, we drive to my mom's house, we kill Phil, we then pick up my mom, drive to Liz's, and I don't think they've decided where to end up. I think maybe they say they've already decided on the Winchester. I can't remember.

They go through a couple of iterations of this plan, and at first they're going to come back to their apartment where they are right now, but then they ultimately decide, well, you can tell us.

Yeah, they decide to go to the Winchester, but what's wonderful about this bit is that it becomes sort of less patient and quicker as they describe it. They're like, okay, get to your mom's, kill Phil, go to Liz's, like it just makes me laugh. So they decide they're going to go to the pub, the Winchester, because that's the place in the whole world where they that is most familiar and they feel the safest.

Yes, and there's also a little funny gag. There is like a rifle hanging in the Winchester, and so maybe that's a real working rifle.

Yeah, it's an old-timey Winchester rifle, right? Like a, what do you call it? Not a bolt action, like you have to cock it with a handle.

Yeah, yeah.

Nobody makes a rifle like this anymore. It's like from the 1890s or something. Yeah.

So they get in the car, and there's starting here and through a couple of other scenes, there's kind of a gag where Ed is driving and he's a maniac. You know, he's just running down zombies, just playing heavy metal music super loud, just being completely ridiculous. Long story short, they make it to Shaun's mom's house, where his mom is fine, but indeed his stepdad is clearly on the verge of turning into a zombie.

One of my favorite bits here is, so they pull up to the house, Ed decides he's going to stay in the car and tells Shaun, so Shaun's going to go in and get his mother, and just off-handed, Ed goes, don't forget to kill Phil. You know, like...

There is a nice kind of serious emotional conversation between Shaun and his mom here.

Yes.

You know, Shaun has never really made peace with his stepdad's presence in his life, and his mom, you know, wishes Shaun would get over it.

Again, that sort of goes back to the Gen-Xer thing. Like, this is definitely a Gen-X theme, divorce and stepdads and stuff. Feels like we could be back in ET or something. You know what I mean?

Totally, yes. So, there is a scene that it leads you to think it's going to be that kind of classic zombie movie scene where you have to put down a loved one because they've been bitten. As Shaun is sort of working up the courage to kill Phil, but then he doesn't do it. And there's a very, the scene ends with a kind of comical thing where Phil, the stepdad, is saying, you know, if you were a man, you'd step up and do what needs to be done. And then it immediately cuts to all of them heading out towards the car, including Phil, because at this point in the movie, Shaun is not enough of a man to do what needs to be done. So even though Phil has been bitten and is going to turn into a zombie any minute, they bring him along with them in the crowded car.

And we should note that they take the Jaguar because Ed decides to smash the car they are driving, which is not his either, that's Pete's car. They decide to smash it so that they have no excuse but to take the Jaguar, because Ed really wants to drive it. That's how they end up in the Jaguar.

So yes. So they pack into this car, they head over to Liz's...

They played a lot of heavy metal music.

A lot of heavy metal music. And there's a lot of zombies gathering around Liz's apartment building. So Shaun climbs up, we saw him do this earlier in the movie. He climbs up the trellis or whatever on the side and comes into their apartment through a window. And inside is Liz, and then Diane and what's his name? And David. Her friends are...

We call them Daves a lot of the time, but it's David.

Friends or roommates. John, you want to talk real quick about Diane and David?

Well, it's clear that they don't like Shaun. It's also clear that David kind of has a crush on Liz, who is not his girlfriend. And they're sort of indecisive, and they think going to the Winchester is a dumb plan, right? And while this is going on, Shaun and Liz are arguing about, you know, romance stuff, too, like about their relationship, because at this point, Liz has dumped Shaun after he failed to secure the dinner and do everything. You know what I mean?

And this is a scene, I think this is the scene where we see the first glimmer of Shaun growing up, of taking that step, taking responsibility for himself. And let's hear him as he presents his plan to Liz.

Listen, I tried calling, I really did, but I couldn't get through. I had to come up with the plan.

Oh, you're in a plan?

Look, I don't care what the telly says, all right? We have to get out of here. If we don't, they'll come up here and they'll tear us to pieces. And that is really going to exacerbate things for all of us. Shaun. Look, Liz, this is not about you and me, all right? This is about survival. We need to be somewhere more secure, somewhere on the ground, somewhere we can stay alive.

So even though Liz is clearly not entirely convinced, this is Shaun for the first time evolving towards becoming that sort of leader that you see in all zombie movies where one person steps up and is sort of the leader of the band of survivors, right?

And I love that the exacerbate line is a joke from the very beginning of the movie where Liz uses the word, and he's like, I don't know. And he's like, no, I mean, I don't know what exacerbate means. So, you know, it's like that's a sort of signaling that he's matured because now he knows what the word means, right? But it's very funny.

So they all do decide to go along with Shaun. And so just as a recap, their goal is to go from here and to go to the Winchester where they're just going to hold up until this all blows over, right?

Like what could be better? You're going to have a pint.

Right. Exactly.

Until it's all over.

So they all pile into the car and there's now, you know, well, how many people do we have in our band of survivors here?

We have seven people now, right?

OK.

And wait, hold on. It's Simon Pegg. Sorry, Ed. Yeah, it's seven.

OK. And one of them is Phil, who is now is really turning into a zombie. So there's a little brief touching moment between Shaun and Phil. And just so you can picture this, you know, they are jammed into this car and with a person who's turning into a zombie.

Just to go meta for a second, I can't imagine that they were able to do this without cracking up constantly, because they're literally like three inches from each other's face. Phil is starting to look like a zombie. And he's giving Shaun this very moving speech about how he always loved him and he's sorry. He felt he had to be hard on him. And Shaun is like sobbing. You know, like it's amazing. I actually like this scene. It's both funny and moving.

And Ed is alternately playing, you know, heavy metal music on the radio. So Phil turns and in a very funny scene, they end up like just having to abandon the car because they all they all scramble out of the car and they lock Phil in the zombified Phil in the car.

With all their weapons, right? They have a cricket bat and a shovel and like other stuff they could use, but it's all in the car because they get up to it's a total disaster.

They've just they've just given up all of their assets.

And I kind of love that. It feels like like a normal movie would try to get you to create tension by giving up all your assets. And this movie is just like they panic and forget them all and leave the car. And now they don't have any. Yes.

So I think, John, this is our first character that we kind of care about who turned into a zombie. Yes, we had Pete. But Pete was kind of telegraphed to us as a jerk. Whereas Phil, the stepdad, kind of a jerk, but he kind of has his little redemptive moment there. So I think I'm going to count him as our first survivor who dies. Does that sound about right?

I agree.

So having left Phil trapped in the car, they head off kind of unarmed. They still need to make their way to the Winchester. And but now they don't have a car, so they're going to have to cut through neighborhoods on foot to get there. And so they start traveling through this sort of maze-like series of backyards and over fences and that sort of thing.

And there's a lot of gags. They, you know, Shaun goes to jump a fence and it just falls over.

And yeah, there's a very funny scene where they come across another band of survivors. The person in charge of it is Shaun's ex-girlfriend, I think.

Yeah, she was. Did you see who her current boyfriend was? Martin Freeman.

Yeah, that's right.

Like I thought when Martin Freeman showed up, he would like become part of the movie. It's been a while since I've seen it. I'm like, no, he literally has a cameo with like one mumbled line. And then shortly after he goes to be in Sherlock and The Hobbit and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Black Panther, like he's clearly today the biggest star of anyone in this movie. And he is literally just an extra here.

Yeah. The gag here is that this other party of survivors is an exact mirror of theirs. And there is each character in the main group of survivors has like a version of themselves in the other party, including a slacker looking person who looks a lot like Ed.

And Ed's slacker, Ed's doppelganger is way younger than Ed is. I'd also like to point out, he's like 17.

Yes. So they have a problem though. The Winchester is surrounded by zombies. And so they have to make a plan of how they're going to get through the zombies to the Winchester. John, do you want to talk about this?

Well, there's one crucial thing we got to talk. So as they go by, they walk by a house where Barbara knows somebody and that person comes out and attacks them and they ended up spearing him with a pole. What we sort of suspect, but don't know yet, is that Barbara is bitten in this encounter.

Oh, right.

And she starts to progressively look worse all the time. But the other thing is, Diane, at this point, since they've got the pinned zombie who is still alive but can't move, they decide they have to sneak to the Winchester as if they're zombies. And Diane leads them through an acting exercise because she's a failed actress, according to Ed. So she is trying to coach them all on their inner zombie so they can act their way into the Winchester, which is hilarious.

This is a very funny sequence. This is like a much less gory, more silly version of in some other zombie media, like The Walking Dead does this. There are a number of times where people will like smear themselves with gore or something like that to pass by zombies without triggering them.

Yeah, we had this in The Girl with All the Gifts.

That's right, The Girl with All the Gifts.

They wear the stuff and they've got to sneak through the...

Yes...

.which is much later than this. But yeah, it seems to be a trope that we haven't talked about much, but now we've seen it in two movies, and I bet we see it in a bunch more.

And this one is done very comically, though, as they all are doing these theatrical zombie groans.

Yes.

And so this works for a while, and they're able to push their way through the crowd, but when they get to the front door of the Winchester, it's locked and the zombies are kind of on to them. Ed continues to be oblivious, like he takes a phone call, a loud phone call this time, and that sort of thing. So it's suddenly looking pretty bad.

And Shaun and Ed argue about this for the first time. This is another indication of Shaun's growth. He's like, Ed, grow up. There's other people here. What are you doing? He was just chatting on the phone with his friend. He goes, hold on a second, and takes this phone call.

So to provide a way for them to get into the Winchester, Shaun does a really heroic thing. He volunteers to lead the zombies away. So he makes a kind of diversion. He calls attention to himself and runs off in the zombie horde. And I would say this is in the vicinity of being a horde. It's a lot of zombies. It's not thousands or anything, but there's...

It's hundreds, though.

Yeah, there's a lot of people here. So Shaun draws them off while the others get into the... break into the Winchester. Right. And so...

By smashing a window, unfortunately, which is going to come back to haunt them.

Yes, exactly. Which most of the characters realize is a bad idea, even as it's happening.

Yeah, thanks, David. Yeah.

So inside the Winchester, so Shaun is gone and we don't know if he's going to come back, or at least the survivors don't know if he's going to come back. So in the meantime, who is going to try and take charge? And that is David. This is the roommate of Liz's who has a crush on Liz, and he doesn't like Shaun.

And he's dating Diane even though he has a crush on Liz.

Right. He's kind of a jerk. And here is where he makes a heel turn, I think. And yes, he basically is telling them Shaun's gone. In taking charge, he's trying to basically remind them what a loser Shaun is. Right. Yeah. Like Shaun's not reliable. It didn't seem like he was doing a very good job of being the team leader. And let's listen to a little bit of his speech to the other survivors.

And there's that bloody great hole in the window.

You did that, you twat.

Somebody had to do something. I don't know if you noticed back there, but we were in a spot of bother. Somebody has to take control of the situation. And if none of you are prepared to accept that responsibility, then perhaps I should.

Will Shaun be gone now?

He'll be back soon.

How can you know that?

Don't think he'd leave us, Staffs.

Wouldn't he? Lizzie, how can you put your faith in a man you spectacularly binned for being unreliable? A man whose idea of a romantic night spot and an impenetrable fortress are the same thing? This is a pub. We are in a pub. What are we going to do?

So he's kind of taking charge, although most of the other survivors don't seem to not like him very much, right?

Yeah. And the big point of contention is he wants to board up the window that he smashed so the zombies can't get in.

Yes.

So he wants to barricade it. And they're like, well, how will Shaun get in if you do that?

But Shaun makes it back at about this time. It turns out there is a back door into the Winchester, which is going to be important again in a few minutes. And so Shaun is back and they decide that they need to get the power turned on. So Shaun heads down into the basement to turn the power on. He does, but while he's down there, we've discovered that the horde of zombies that he led away has followed him back here to the back door of the Winchester. So there's a horde outside the back door, basically, the basement back door. And they are hammering and trying to get in because now they know there are humans in there. So Shaun heads back up and he's trying to kind of explain the situation to Liz. When a number of things happen, Ed turns on the jukebox really loudly, which is pretty funny. And so this riles up all of the zombies, including the ones outside the front of the, which there's more gathering around the front. And then there's some trying to break in to the basement. So the tension is starting to go up here because it's looking like they're trapped, right?

And just to clarify something, I think the back door is not actually the basement because they do escape to the cellar later. So I think the back door is just in back.

Okay, all right.

You know what I mean?

That makes sense, yes.

I don't think they have basements like we do in Michigan. Most cultures are smarter than Michiganers and don't have basements that flood.

They are attacked by a zombie, the zombie of the Winchester owner.

Who's gigantic. Gigantic man.

And so he's, this giant zombie is shambling around, and they're fighting him, and this is, this is my single favorite gag in the movie, John. They, the jukebox turns on and starts playing a song by Queen, I think. Yeah.

Don't stop me now.

And they, the group of survivors is armed themselves with pool cues, and they are all taking swings at the zombie. And as they do so, they start sinking their swings to the beat of the music. It's, it maybe doesn't sound so funny, but when you see it, you'll.

It's pretty funny.

It's pretty great. So they managed to subdue this zombie, and they discover that that rifle hanging on the Winchester sign is a real working rifle, and they have like two dozen bullets or so with it.

But I thought they were going to do more attention around the number of bullets.

Me too.

And it does come up at the end, but it's not like, it's not super well managed, I guess I would say. At the end, they're just like, yeah, we just got a couple left.

But I agree.

I thought the opposite, that there was going to be no tension, because when Shaun asks Ed how many, Ed shakes the box, looks in, and a split second later says, 29. I mean, it's like, we got 29. We're good.

I do like, Shaun calls them bullets, and then Ed whispers, like, call them shells. But the zombies outside are really riled up, and they are starting to press in. This is, I think, the moment where Shaun really steps up. They're starting to panic, and Shaun takes charge with a great rallying speech. So let's hear his speech.

As Bertrand Russell once said, the only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation. I think we can all appreciate the relevance of that now. What's that on the back of a beer mask? Yeah, it's Guinness Extra Cold.

I won't say anything.

Thanks. Yeah, we don't call them beer masks in this country, so for our American listeners, it's a coaster that have a little saying on it. So yeah, I think that's kind of great.

So Shaun is armed with the rifle. Unfortunately, though, we have the movies, I think, most seriously dramatic moment here.

Yeah, it gets dark very quickly. So a couple of things happen here. One is Shaun starts shooting at the zombies with the rifle, and he is not a crack shot. He misses all the time. Like, I think he only takes out one or two in this entire sequence, but they essentially sort of back off after a little bit. But additionally, this is where it gets really serious. And they finally realize, even though it's been telegraphed to us, the audience, Liz realizes that Barbara, Shaun's mother, has been bitten. And it's a very sweet scene at the start where Barbara's like, well, Liz, you're wonderful, even though, again, like a bad boyfriend, Shaun has never brought Liz over to meet his mother. But now there's a love fest between them. But then Barbara dies. Yes.

I was waiting for the joke here, were you?

And there wasn't one.

There is no joke. Yep. She just dies and she is going to turn. And David starts angrily yelling that they need to shoot her to put her down.

We'll go through this at the end with our Pillars of the Zombie movie, but this is our tough moral choice that we were introduced to in Dawn of the Dead, right? Like there's survivors, there's a choice you have to make. And I think you said it super well, and I'm going to ask you to say it frequently, like how much of your humanity are you willing to give up to survive? You know?

Yeah.

And that's this moment in the movie.

These scenes are always, they will always work really well for me. This scene works well for me, because the guy demanding that they shoot, you know, the loved one to put her down, he's correct, and everyone kind of knows it. But you also feel their outrage at how awful of a suggestion that is. I like that in any movie, any zombie movie where this scene comes up, I could just live in the tension of this sort of exchange for a very long time, I think.

Yeah, and worse, Shaun says, no, I'll do it. You know, so Shaun volunteers to shoot his mother, who he's recently become reconciled with. He sort of got everything he wanted, right? Like Phil's gone, he's got his mom back to himself, he's introduced his girlfriend, like life should be good for Shaun, but then he's gotta do this.

Yes, and this is where I was waiting for the gag, because there's a long scene where Shaun is taking aim at his mom's head and she's standing there, she's clearly looks like a zombie. And I don't know, I was waiting for her to like cough or something and say, oh no, I've just got bad allergies or something like that. But no, he shoots her in the head and she dies.

Yeah, it's brutal.

And with that, I would say this movie takes a relatively non-comic turn into genuine, high tension, deadly stakes territory for the remainder of the film, which is, and we're coming up on the end here.

Yeah, and there's a couple of gags, right? Like at one point, you know, he sets the bar on fire to defend themselves, but he accidentally left the bullets on top of the bar. Like, there's some gags like that. But in general, it's pretty serious.

Yeah. So in the immediate aftermath of this, they get into kind of an argument. And long story short, David, David tries to shoot Shaun. David gets a hold of the rifle, right? And it's out of bullets. So it just, it just clicks and he realizes what he's done. Everybody yells at him and he makes a move to head out. Like, he's just going to leave. Yeah. And everyone is yelling, you know, that that would be suicide. Stay here. Apologize to Shaun. And he is about to swallow his pride and apologize to Shaun when you note he has he has been walking really close to a window in the open window. And the goriest, grossest scene in this movie, I think this is where the rest of like the special effects budget. Yeah, the zombies break through the window and pull David out. And then they rip him to pieces.

Yeah, specifically, they spent a lot of time ripping out his guts literally.

And which is a call back to Dawn of the Dead.

Yeah. And I, I knew it was coming. So I was like, you know, I told my wife, I'm like, don't watch this part because I knew it was the goriest part of the movie. And she's like, can I look at it? I'm like, nope. She's like, it sounds pretty bad. I'm like, nope, no luck.

This reminds me. So one of my first exposure to the zombie genre, I think, was on like cable TV one afternoon. I was flipping around and I flipped to the end of what I didn't know at the time. But what I now know was Day of the Dead by Romero. And the scene I saw has been burned in my brain ever since. Because as a young impressionable child, there's a scene at the end where like kind of the bad human guy gets trapped by he's been he's the villain of the movie, but he gets trapped by the zombies and he is torn in half in a scene, an awful lot like this. And it is very gruesome and disgusting like this scene. So I don't know if they were really calling back that scene exactly. But that is a horrible to me. That's part of like the visceral horror of the zombie that not that you'll get bitten and turn into one, but that they'll get you while you're still alive and then tear you apart like this.

Yeah. It's bad and that you're still alive when it's happening, right?

And watching and aware.

Yes. Yes. And so Diane at this point, having seen David get ripped apart, runs out to try to save him. And so we assume that she dies as well.

Yeah. She's out for the rest of the movie. So I think we have to assume she died here. So this is it. This is the final battle. The zombies break in and there's a bazillion zombies here. They're completely outnumbered and they take refuge behind the bar. Ed makes some Molotov cocktails.

And we find out Ed has been bitten. He's bleeding pretty bad.

Yes. And yeah, this is in this sequence, Ed gets bitten while fending off. Amusingly, their stuffy roommate Pete shows up.

That's right. Pete bites him.

And so in the scuffle with Pete, Ed gets bitten. And so we now know that the clock is ticking for lovable, immature Ed, right? So we are down to just... So Ed is still alive right now, and Shaun and Liz are the only people still alive at this point, right?

That's right.

They... It looks really bad, but they discover a kind of back crawl space that they can get out through.

Yeah. This is the part in the cellar.

That's right.

They go down to the cellar through a hatch, and they realize they could get up back up to the street with like a lift, basically, that I presume the pub uses to, like, bring barrels of beer down under the pub or whatever.

Yes. And this is a very serious scene, because this is Ed's farewell scene. So, the three of them are down there. They're all sure they're going to die, and Ed, we know, is going to turn into a zombie.

Well, to know that Ed has not grown... To point out that Ed has not grown at all, he makes the same fart joke on Shaun that he made at the beginning in the movie. It's a joke where he says, I'm sorry, Shaun, and Shaun says, for what? And he goes, no, I'm sorry, Shaun. And then they both smell it, and Shaun laughs, and they say, I'll stop doing it when you stop laughing. Which is exactly what happened at the beginning. So it's sort of like, yes, this is a tearful farewell, but Ed is still Ed.

Yes. So they discover a way to get out of the cellar. But Ed insists on staying behind because he's doomed anyway.

So they say, you know, they sort of agree, and it's a little dark that like, okay. You know, they say they have two bullets left, and they're like, well, I wasn't, Shaun says something like, well, if we could get all the zombies to line up, I could get a bunch of them with one. And Liz says, I wasn't thinking about the zombies. So they've sort of decided that if it comes to it, they're going to shoot themselves. And they have a discussion about, well, now who should shoot first? Like it sort of gets into this little bizarrely comic thing. Like Liz is like, I don't think I could do it if I shot, you know, like, yeah, it's, it's, it's quite bleak, I would say. Yeah. Yeah.

When Shaun says, I can't shoot my mom and my girlfriend.

That's right. That's right. And that's how they sort of, this is the romantic comedy coming back in like, oh, am I your girlfriend? I guess I am.

Oh, right.

And they sort of really get back together at this point, right? But, but they find the lift of the street, and they decide to leave the rifle with its two bullets with Ed.

Yes.

Right. So he can do what he needs to do if he wants to.

So when they get up to the street, it looks like things are bad, but then the military shows up. So we get this little montage of soldiers rushing forward and just in very gory, some more special effects here, just mowing down all of the zombies with machine guns.

The only survivor, the person who called the army is Yvonne, and all of her party died, but she managed to get to the army and bring them to the rescue.

That's right. Yes. So Liz and Shaun are rescued. It is funny. When they had passed Yvonne's party earlier, she was friendly, but she seems skeptical of Shaun's plan to go to the Winchester and wait till it blew over. And so she, I guess, in today's world, this would be the start of a franchise, and we would have whole spinoff movies following Yvonne's adventures to bring the troops in, right?

Yeah. But that's at the end. We do have a little epilogue.

We do. We have a touching epilogue, and it's six months later, and Liz and Shaun are back at Shaun's apartment, happy and content, and they're watching the news. In another series of sort of news cuts, we are updated on the state of the world six months after the uprising. So John, why don't you tell us about that?

So unlike a lot of zombie movies, the world hasn't ended. The zombies have sort of, a lot of them have been killed or captured, and so now they're using the zombies to do prison laundry, and they're using them for menial labor, and it's service jobs that are these sort of zombified service jobs. And then they cut to like a talk show, which has like a tacky guest on it, who's describing that she loves her ex-zombie boyfriend, so she keeps him in a cage, so she can keep him around. And of course, the audience is aghast that somebody would do this, yeah.

It's a funny gag, but it's also a little grim, just the joke of like, we've made the zombies push the carts in the shopping mall parking lot, like sort of thing.

Yeah, it's a little dark, but I find the actual, the final epilogue dark myself, and I'm curious, why don't you tell us about it and then tell me what you think about it.

Shaun asked if he can go back out to the shed, and he does, and we're thinking, what does he need to do in the shed? The last time we saw the shed was way back at the beginning of the outbreak. It's where they went in there to get the weapons that they used. So he goes back in there, and who is in there? But it's Zombie Ed.

Zombie Ed chained to the wall with his big metal collar.

Yes, and Shaun sits down, and Zombie Ed is mindlessly playing video games in there with Shaun. And then that's the movie.

That's the end. And my wife exclaimed, any ending but that. She thought that was so dark. I didn't feel like it was that dark. I thought it was petty, like Shaun finally wants his turn playing video games. So he's got Ed chained up so he can be successful at video games. But what did you think?

I didn't think of this as like a super bleak ending. I did not think that was the intent of this scene.

I don't either.

I mean, there's a couple of jokes going on here, I guess. Living Ed was very much a zombie type person just sitting around drinking beer, playing video games, not doing anything at all. I mean, part of the joke is there's not much difference now with Zombie Ed than there was with Five Ed. I guess it's a little harsh on the character of Ed because now he'll never mature, right? He is forever stuck in that mindless phase, whereas Shaun, at the end of this movie, is living his best life.

Yes.

So did you have a different thought? Did it seem... I mean, I can see how that's a little bleak. I think mostly you're supposed to laugh.

Yes. Yeah, exactly. I remember the first time I saw it, for some reason I thought, and this was wrong upon the rewatch, that Shaun couldn't beat Ed in the video game, but that's not actually what happened, so he chained him up so he could win the video game. But it was a two-player game, and it's just Shaun didn't have time to play it. So now Shaun can sort of separate that less mature part of himself, go play the video games with his friend Ed, and then come back to the house and be an adult. Yeah.

And I think that's the right metaphor to go here. That immature video game part of Shaun is still there, but he has found the right place for it, and it's something he can go indulge in from time to time, but that's not his life anymore, but he always comes back out of it to where his real life is. And, you know, it's a nice message.

I like it, and I teased people about playing too many video games. Like, I still play video games. So I think this is why it feels like a Gen X movie. I think my generation was the last generation where some people sort of still think that video games aren't something that an adult should engage in, but that doesn't really play well anymore. All the... I know many people between the ages of 30 and 40 who have adult grown-up jobs and just play video games. You know what I mean? We've proved that it's not something that holds you back, I guess is what I'd say.

This reminds me of the ending of the movie Babadook. So I guess if you haven't seen Babadook, plug your ears or skip ahead 60 seconds. But that movie, not a comedy in any way, shape or form. A very serious movie. But that movie also ends with the idea of like, we didn't eradicate the threat. We didn't wipe out the evil. We haven't gotten rid of the darkness, but we have placed it in the right kind of proportion in our life, the right place. And it's something that we can get in touch with when we need to, but that is not the defining feature of our life anymore.

Yeah, I think they can pull that off in this movie because they actually take great pains to specifically not tell us how this all started.

Yes.

Right, like they don't go into detail about the cures or anything. It's just we cut to a world where zombies are sort of menial servants now, and we don't really know what happened or how it ended.

In fact, there's a little gag I forgot to mention at the end when he and Liz are flipping channels and we are learning that zombies have been repurposed as menial workers. There is a little gag where one of the clips says that the announcer is saying, it turns out that all of this was caused by and then Shaun flips the channel.

And then they flip away. Yeah, exactly.

Okay, so that's a wrap on Shaun of the Dead, unless you had anything else you wanted to mention, John. Otherwise, I figured we could go into sort of our post-movie question.

Yeah, let's go through those.

All right. So, John, was this a movie with a band of survivors?

It was. We still had Shaun and Liz survive and Yvonne survived. And a lot of people, like a lot of the newscasters and stuff we see again later, talking about the experience when they're flipping through channels.

Chris Martin from Coldplay survives.

Chris Martin from Coldplay survives.

Well, I know this is obviously a long time later than the other movies we watched in this podcast. But in the movies we've been watching in the 30s and a little in the 40s, we have not yet seen that motif of the band of survivors against the zombies, right?

No, we haven't. It's like they're a party of people trying to survive together where a lot of the tension comes from. Like, for example, we'll get into it with the pillars in 30 seconds or so. But a lot of the tension that we see in a modern zombie movie is based on this idea that's a group of survivors that are trying to survive together and the tensions that create.

Yeah, they have different motivations and things that come into conflict with each other. So yeah, so we did. We started with the hero party of seven to survived and then I guess Ed Quasi survived. Yes, as a zombie, right?

We'll count Ed as a survivor, two and a half.

So John, do you want to talk about your pillars of zombie films that you've and how they fit into this one?

We have our four pillars of the zombie movie, and I think my hope is that we come up with some others or modify these, but this is the ones we sort of started working with. So first up, Apocalypse, right? Clearly, the world doesn't end in Shaun of the Dead, but I think for most of the movie, you think it's going to. So I would say it takes that box. Agreed. Contagion, right? If you get bitten or get blood on you, depending on the movie, you become a zombie. And then Loved Ones Turning Against You is the third one. And we saw that with Phil, who is not particularly beloved, but he definitely turns against you. And then we see it with Ed, right? He gets bitten. And that leads to the fourth one, which is the real tough one, which is tough moral choices when we see when Shaun has to shoot his mother. So I think it takes all the boxes. I think what's different about this than Dawn of the Dead from 2004, The Girl with All the Gifts, is that it sort of assumes you already know these. I think this whole movie goes in with this assumption of like, you understand zombie movies, we're just going to do all those things. Whereas Dawn of the Dead sort of highlights them. You know what I mean? This one is just like, yeah, well, this is a zombie movie. These things have to occur.

Yep. Agreed. John, would you survive? We always ask this. Would you survive in a world of, in the world of this movie?

Maybe. And I think the only reason I say that is, I mean, if Shaun can do it, like I feel like I could do it, he's.

I guess the question, John, is what pub would you go to to survive?

Oh, that's a good question. You know what? I would go down the street to Frazier's because it doesn't have a lot of big windows and it has like a double door, like airlock system. So I feel like I could lock those and defend the windows pretty easily. So I'd go to my local pub that's just a half mile down the street from my house. Where would you go, Andy? Do you have a plot? Where would you, if you, if it were a pub, where would you go?

Oh, I don't know. My go-to place is like a supermarket. Like if you could, that's where my mind would go.

If you can secure it.

Yeah, if you could secure it enough to get to a supermarket, then you are set for a long time. I can't say there are any local pubs here in town that would offer me a great chance of survival here.

Right.

And they're all far enough away that I don't know that I'd be able to make it there. So these zombies are slow for, partly for comedic value and stuff. But so many zombie movies, you know, individually or in small groups, zombies are almost no threat when they move this slow. But get enough of them and you are in serious trouble. And I think this movie did that pretty well, right? The zombies are mostly a gag for the first, you know, 80% of the movie. But once they're like surrounded by the horde in the tavern, the tension goes up considerably and you genuinely don't know how they're going to get out of it. I say that all to say that I probably would not really make it even in a world of very slow moving zombies, because eventually I would get myself backed into a corner by a horde and that be it.

Because they're slow moving, I'd like to tell myself I have a chance, but I couldn't guarantee it, for sure.

So the last question we ask John is, would you recommend this movie specifically to fans of zombie movies?

Yeah, I would totally. And I think it's because it's one of those movies that in a way sort of validates all your knowledge, right? If you're a fan of zombie movies, you've been collecting these ideas about zombie movies. And this on one level is a satire, but on another way, it's just to say, hey, all those things you love about zombie movies, they're all right here and we're going to add comedy to it. And sort of makes you feel knowledgeable as well as just pleasurable comedy experience. So I would.

I agree, John. And that's well put. I think that one of the reasons Simon Pegg's movies work so well for me, like I love Hot Fuzz as well.

I love Hot Fuzz. I wish we were doing the Cornetto Trilogy podcast because I actually think I like Hot Fuzz more than this movie.

I do too. And I mean, one of the reasons this movie works so well and Hot Fuzz movie works so well is they satirize the genre. But they are also great examples of the genre. Like so they're like doubly enjoyable because this movie, yeah, the emotional scene with John's mom is as emotional as anything I saw in Dawn of the Dead. You know, yeah, it works as a zombie movie. It works really well as a comedy movie. That's my favorite kind of satire, satire that lives in the genre it is making fun of.

Yeah, I would call it a loving satire, right? Like, it's not a cynical satire where they think the thing they're making fun of is stupid. They love it. They love zombie movies. And they love buddy cop movies. And then they make a satire of them. I compare it to maybe Young Frankenstein, where it's clear that Mel Brooks is making a movie about, unlike his later ones, like Spaceballs, which are a little on the cynical side, you know, Young Frankenstein is, it just loves those old movies. You could tell Mel Brooks grew up watching them, and he just sort of shares that love with you on screen. And I think these movies are the same way.

All right, well, I think the only thing that remains is for Brad to delight or horrify us by announcing the title.

We have to go back. It's back to the 40s, Andy. Where are we going?

Brad, what do you have in store for us next?

We are going back to 1941. We are going to watch King of the Zombies.

Uh-oh, all right.

And check the chat.

All right. Everybody's wearing bright rouge. The light.

Yes, they are. John, will you describe this poster?

It is a little, so Monogram Pictures presents King of the Zombies. It lists the actors, Dick Purcell, Joan Woodbury, Montan Moreland, and Henry Victor. It doesn't have any sort of splashy headlines. What it has is up in the right-hand corner, a person who looks slightly green, who presumably is either the zombie or the mesmerist, and then a couple sort of holding each other in the light of a candle that is making their faces sort of lit just from the front. Though clearly there's top lighting too. But anyway, it is drawn. It's a painting, but it doesn't make any claims about what the movie is going to be. That could be King of the Gangsters, and I'm not sure how much you would have to change the poster. You know what I mean?

Except for the green guy looking a little bit like Bela Lugosi, I wouldn't say... And I guess the candle, the candles are something we kind of associate with horror, right? Right.

But again, I could change it to King of the Mobsters and just put a gun on his hand or a flashlight, and that would still work. So I'm curious, because this doesn't make any... Like we laughed a lot at the previous few movies making all these claims about the movie. This doesn't seem to make any claim. It's trying to telegraph what it's about, just with the title and the images.

This is kind of similar in its makeup to a lot of the other posters from the 30s and 40s, in that they show you the main characters. Is the main thing you're looking at on the poster? I don't know. This is not a very... I mean, I'm looking at this with modernized. I don't find this type of poster to be very exciting. It doesn't give me any clues about what the movie is going to be about. I just know that there's going to be two attractive leads and some menacing person in it. So I guess maybe what I'm trying to say is, I miss all the posters that would promise us how transgressive and sexy the film was going to be.

Yeah, this is more like the Ghost Breakers poster, but without the silly ghost.

So all right, King of the Zombies. If you're listening, I hope you will use the time between now and the next episode to watch it so you can follow along with us. As we discuss what I'm sure is going to be a masterpiece along the lines of Shaun of the Dead, right?

Yeah, I'm as convinced as you are.

Excellent. Okay, John.

All right. Thanks, everyone. And we will see you next episode. You've been listening to Zombie Strains. We'll be back next episode to talk about another zombie movie. If you enjoyed our podcast, please take a moment to rate us in your podcast app of choice. Tell a friend. Follow us on Instagram at Zombie Strains. All of this helps like minded people find the show. See you next time.