Night 26 of "The 31 Nights of Halloween Film Fest"

I've joined in the fun over at Domestic Witch's October Blog Party. You can find a list of participating blogs that are having fun celebrating the season of Halloween. When you're done here take a broom ride over to her site and you'll see the list of blogs on the right side bar.

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Here at The Lounge we will have a "31 Nights of Halloween Film Fest". Check back each day to see which movie is featured and some days you may get more than one. They will be a random selection of my favorites. You can see all past selections on the sidebar.

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Make sure to leave a comment for each movie as one lucky person will win their choice of pendant from Laughing Vixen Lounge at the end of the film fest. Please see rules at end of post.

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Night 26...."Shaun of the Dead"

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Directed by Edgar Wright (Spaced and Hot Fuzz) and released on September 24, 2004 by Focus Features. Shaun (Simon Pegg) and Ed (Nick Frost) are happy to spend their days at dead end jobs and their nights at The Winchester Pub. That is until Zombies threaten their safe and comfortable lives. Now they must try to save their friends and family from the undead masses.

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This is one of the best movies to come along in a long time. It is a perfect blend of witty and smart comedy and outright horror. These guys are such huge Romero fans that the jokes are loving and the horror is spot on. There are plenty of inside jokes for those who follow the Living Dead/Horror genre movies but lots of laughs for the casual viewer too. I could go on and on but you know what I'm talking about. And if you don't know...go watch it now!

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Some trivia about the movie...

1. Frequent references are made to Big Al's claim that dogs can't look up. This is a reference to the commentary to the second series of "Spaced" (1999) in which Simon Pegg (Shaun) and Edgar Wright talk about Nick Frost (Ed)'s claim that the difficulty in shooting a scene with a dog was due to the fact that dogs can't look up.

2. The zombie that Shaun (Simon Pegg) and Ed (Nick Frost) find in their garden is Mary, the checkout girl from the film's credit montage. A short story detailing her transformation into one of the undead was featured in issue 1384 of the classic British sci-fi comic 2000AD. The issue went on sale 7 April 2004. The strip was called "There's Something About Mary" and was written by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright (the film's co-writers) with art by Frazer Irving.

3. Because of the timing and the indisputable similarity of the names, the distributors were forced to hold the film back until two weeks after Dawn of the Dead (2004) was released in the UK.

4. While Shaun (Simon Pegg) and Liz flick through TV channels, a voice can be heard saying that claims that the epidemic was due to rage infected monkeys have now been dismissed as b... Liz turns off before the voice can finish the sentence. The voice is referencing 28 Days Later... (2002), another British zombie movie, in which the word zombie is never used, and, perhaps, Braindead (1992) ("Dead-Alive") from New Zealand as well.

5. When Shaun and the group are running out of Liz's flat they are all carrying weapons of some kind, but only Shaun actually hits any zombies. This was because only the cricket bat that Shaun was carrying was a padded fake, all the other items were real and would have hurt the extras playing zombies if they had been hit with them.

6. John and Bernie run the Winchester. These are the real names of the landlord and landlady who used to run Simon Pegg's local pub, the Shepherds in Highgate. John used to make toasted sandwiches for regulars, hence the reference to "the Breville out back." Pegg and Nick Frost were regular attendees of the Shepherd's Thursday night quiz, hence the line "we do the quiz" when Shaun is knocking on the Winchester's door. Chris Martin of Coldplay, who plays a zombie in the film, also used to attend quiz night.

7. Shaun berates Ed for calling the creatures zombies (which they are, of course). This may be referring to the fact that many zombie movies (including Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Resident Evil (2002)) never mention the word "zombie" at all. More likely this is a reference to Danny Boyle, director of 28 Days Later... (2002), and his insistence that it isn't a zombie movie.

8. When Shaun walks to the shops before heading to work when everything is normal, Shaun passes a road sweeper. On the road-sweeper operator's radio one can hear a news bulletin detailing how a space probe called Omega 6 entered Earth's atmosphere several days early over the southwest of England and broke apart over a well-built area. This a direct link to Night of the Living Dead (1968), in which a space probe breaks up over a small town in the USA, and the resulting radiation causes the dead in the local graveyard to come to life.

9. Night of the Living Dead (1968) director George A. Romero was given a private viewing of the film near his home in Florida. During the scene in which Ed (Nick Frost) yells into the phone, "We're coming to get you, Barbara," Romero was oblivious to the fact it was a direct lift from his film Night of the Living Dead (1968) and only found out later after a phone conversation with director Edgar Wright.

10. According to writer-director Edgar Wright in the DVD commentary, when Ed attempts to cheer Shaun up at the Winchester with plans of binge drinking, he is actually summarizing the events of the next day (Z-day) entirely in drinking references.

11. George A. Romero, creator of the films that this movie pays homage to and lampoons, was so impressed with Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's work that he asked them to appear in Land of the Dead (2005), the fourth part of his Dead series, in cameos as zombies.

12. In the scene where Shaun discovers the Pete zombie in the bathroom, Shaun is talking and says the words "join us" - a well known quote from Evil Dead.

13. There are also multiple references to the scenes in Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness (i.e. where Ash replaces his severed hand with a chainsaw and dismembers Evil Ash respectively), where quick edits focusing on important objects (i.e. the chainsaw, the chains, etc.) are used in order to speed up and intensify the actions taking place. In the film these edits are seen when Shaun makes breakfast, whenever he uses the toilet, etc

14. Shaun tells Liz that he's going to take her to "the place that does all the fish". When he opens the phone book you can see that the restaurant is literally called ‘The Place That Does All the Fish’.

15. First part of Simon Pegg's and Edgar Wright's "The Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy". The other two parts are Hot Fuzz (2007) and The World's End (2010).

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Rules for pendant giveaway...
(1) comment about a movie per movie.
(1) extra entry by following this Blog and (1) extra for following on Twitter (You can only take the blog and twitter entries once for the whole contest).
(1) extra entry for Tweeting about this. Please use this message -Check out the "31 Nights of Halloween Film Fest" to win your choice of pendant from @LaughingVixen http://bit.ly/33Nprn -- 3 Tweets a day max and no more than 1 an hour.
(1) extra entry for guessing the next film. I will tweet hints on Twitter about the next days movie and you can post your guess as a comment. Doesn't have to be right just your best guess.
Make sure to post each entry as an individual comment on any of the movies comment pages. You can comment on past movies. Make sure you can be contacted from your post.