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The Best...movie mash-up

Simon Pegg and Kate Ashfield in Shaun of the Dead
  • Posted at 4:01pm
  • 13 August 2007
  • by RichardRees-RT
  • 1 comment

You more groovy RT-ers out there may be familiar with the concept of the "mash-up": some clever DJ chappie welds together two or more tracks from seemingly incompatible styles to create something that shouldn't work but does, brilliantly. Witness the splicing of rave-granny Madonna's Ray of Light with the Sex Pistols to produce the immaculately titled Ray of Gob - genius.

Simon Pegg has now introduced the idea of the movie mash-up, saying of his latest film, Hot Fuzz, that it's "as if Tony Scott was to guest-helm an episode of Heartbeat". It's not the first movie to get its genres in a twist, though, and while some of these mismatches have been "interesting", like chocolate 'n' cheese pizza, others have turned out more like molecular-chef Heston Blumenthal's bacon-and-egg ice cream - it seems so wrong, but tastes oh-so-good.

So, with that in mind, here's some unlikely cinematic marriages made in heaven...

Flesh Gordon

Sci-fi sex-comedy adventure. Which pretty much sounds like a 14-year-old's dream movie if you think about it. It's pretty tame by today's standards, but this 70s porno-parody of the old Buster Crabbe serials deserves a mention for saucing up space-operas, as Flesh saves the world from Emperor Wang the Perverted. Avoid belated sequel Flesh Gordon Meets the Cosmic Cheerleaders, mind.

The Producers

Nazi musical. OK, to be fair, a comedy about a musical about Nazis. Mel Brooks's 1968 film ridicules the absurdities of the Third Reich in the story of a song-and-dance extravaganza that's meant to flop but becomes a smash hit on Broadway. The film was later adapted for the stage, and Brooks surely appreciated the irony that it became…a smash hit on Broadway.

Romeo & Juliet

Shakespearean teen-flick. 10 Things I Hate about You borrowed the plot of The Taming of the Shrew but set the action in a present-day US high school with language updated accordingly. Like, whateva! Baz Luhrmann's take on the star-crossed lovers actually did the impossible - he stuck to the original text and still made the Bard sexy to teens across the globe (though Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes might have helped a bit there). And anything that can set Shakespeare to a Butthole Surfers' soundtrack must be applauded.

Any Bollywood movie

Romantic musical drama (Devdas). Dramatic romantic comedy-thriller (Fanaa). Historical romantic musical drama. About cricket (Lagaan: Once upon a Time in India). Esteemed movie critic Roger Ebert described Bollywood films as "the Swiss army knives of the cinema, with a tool for every job", and the imdb.com plot keywords alone for Fanaa ("...premarital sex...tour guide...terrorism...eye surgery...exploding helicopter...") make it essential viewing for the fan of multi-genre madness.

But the best mixed-up movie is...

Shaun of the Dead

Zombie rom-com. Proof that Simon Pegg and director Edgar Wright are the kings of, in Pegg's phrase, "self-indulgent intertextuality". Comedy horror had been done many times before (An American Werewolf in London, er, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein), but this added a romantic subplot and the suburban slackercom-style of Pegg's Spaced to the carnage to give it a uniquely British edge. Huge success both here and in the US is testament to how they pulled off such an absurd premise - imagine if had been the cast of Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps being ripped apart by Zombie Flesh Eaters. Actually, that doesn't sound too bad at all...

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  • Posted on 13 August 2007
  • at 5:08pm
  • by Guest100

FROM DUSK TIL DAWN has to be a classic mash up. One minute it's a classic Tarantino style criminals-on-the-run movie, then all of a sudden it snaps to zombie horror half way through, and funnily enough it works.

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