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Simon Pegg

Simon Pegg on George A Romero's 'Dawn of the Dead'

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  • My favourite film is 'Dawn of the Dead' George Romero's 1978 zombie classic. There are a lot of different kind of zombies in cinema, but these zombies are the best ones if you ask me: they are the walking dead - they are us reanimated. The thing about a zombie is they're rubbish as a monster: they just sort of walk around. You can run away from them because they're really slow and they're very weak. But if you get cocky then you get bit and then when you get bit you die, and then you become one. It's a brilliant kind of take on consumerism and class and materialism. The zombies take over the shopping mall because that's what they remember from when they were alive. This whole thing about I shop therefor I am becomes I shop even though I'm not! The acting in the film I really love. I think it's great and it's corny at times but the four main leads are very good. There's a great scene when they've just managed to kill all the zombies in the shopping mall and put them all in the freezer. They're mucking around in the mall and they're playing video games and you almost forget that the zombies are outside until Peter is playing tennis on the roof and he knocks one of the balls off the roof and it rolls and you follow it into the car park. It hits the car park and lands next to a dead body and the camera pulls out and the whole car park is just full of zombies. These bikers come along and they smash the mall open, letting all the zombies back in, and they ruin everything. They throw custard pies in their faces and you feel really sorry for the zombies and you want them to eat the bikers and rip their arms off, which eventually is what they start to do. But I just think it's a brilliant, very under rated, intelligent film which also features people getting shot. You know it's a winner.

    TAKEN FROM BBC ONLINE (10/2/00)