Simon Pegg’s 2004 zombie spoof ‘Shaun of the Dead’ was an instant hit, but has been criticised for its treatment of zombies as one-dimensional characters with no autonomy, intellect or artistic sensibilities.
His sequel, Operation Raise the Colours, features an even more devastating mass infection event with a twist: the zombies hoist flags on lampposts to mark their territory.
‘We wanted to show zombies as real characters, you know, with hopes and dreams and ladders and flags’, Pegg allegedly told reporters. ‘These zombies can sort of speak – they can string a few words together, it’s gibberish, but it’s their gibberish. Obviously, they’re brain-dead, but they can still function a bit. And tie flags to lampposts.'
The zombie leaders are particularly abhorrent. The one they call ‘Nigel’ leaves a trail of ash and roubles everywhere he walks, and can make women vomit just by speaking to them. The rival zombie leader, ‘Tommy’, is a midget with a pronounced tic, as if he’s done too much coke. In the final climactic scene the two zombie leaders fight to the death, and are buried with full military honours, draped in flags – Nigel in a Russian flag, Tommy in a Union Jack handkerchief.
Image credit: perchance.org
Overweight and under-educated Englishmen have confirmed their intention to continue providing unsolicited wisdom to a world which barely deserves them.
‘Stands to reason, dunnit?’ said one obese cretin whilst painting a Cross of St George on a mini roundabout. ‘British Empire - greatest empire the world has ever seen. Hovercraft, penicillin, jet engines – the modern world wouldn’t exist without Ingerland’.
The EU has expressed ‘deep gratitude’ for the continued dispensation of sage advice from the morbidly obese. ‘We know we don’t deserve you’, sobbed Ursula von der Leyen. ‘We have our own wise men, naturally, but nobody can say it quite like a seventeen stone plumber’s mate with an arsecrack the size of Belgium. Deep down, we all know you’re right and we’re just a bit . . . foreign’.
As well as being demonstrably unforeign, the English patriots can erect flags at heights of up to eight feet, paint red crosses on a white background and display their own flag upside down – skills which would bamboozle Johnny Foreigner. They also have an intuitive grasp of the subtle nuances of football, including ‘why the current England manager is shit’, ‘why your team is shit’ and ‘why everything foreign is shit. Fancy a curry?’
Final word goes to Barry, halfway through his third mini-roundabout this week. ‘It isn’t racist, it’s just a flag, innit. Orford Lane? Nah, place is full of darkies, they’d kill us if we tried to put our flags up there’.