PERFORMING ARTS

You’ve Got Red on You: How Shaun of the Dead Was Brought to Life

by Clark Collis
1984 Publishing. Oct. 2021. 424p. ISBN 9781948221153. $26.99. FILM
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A low-budget zombie movie/romantic comedy starring actors from and helmed by the director of Spaced, a well-loved but niche British television series, was a hard sell. Yet almost 20 years later, Shaun of the Dead is a cult classic. Collis’s book expands on an oral history he wrote for Entertainment Weekly, delving into the movie’s production and reception, contextualizing its 2004 release, and exploring its legacy in 2021. Director Edgar Wright and actors Simon Pegg and Nick Frost inform the bulk of the narrative with hilarious remembrances; Quentin Tarantino, Eli Roth, and the late George A. Romero are quoted here too. Almost everyone Collis interviewed proved to be a raconteur; the book goes deep (sometimes covering the shoot day by day) but the tone is always conversational.
VERDICT This book covers every facet of Shaun of the Dead’s production, from storyboarding to translation for foreign markets, resulting in a work that will be useful to film students and wildly entertaining to horror buffs.
Reviewed by Terry Bosky, Madison, WI , Oct 01, 2021
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