Dawn of the Dead, 1978 – George A Romero
 
 
I didn't see Dawn of the Dead until I was 19 and the reason was because it was banned in the [Mary Whitehouse] video nasty cull. It did the rounds of my school under the desks but I never saw it, I never got a copy, but I remember hearing all about it and having certain parts of it recounted to me – like the helicopter decapitation and the music at the end. Everyone was talking about the music at the end which is one of the most beautiful pieces of character scoring, ‘The Gonk’. We used it in Shaun of the Dead at the end.  

I eventually managed to get a sort of slightly edited version of it on Channel 5 video from Bristol University in the late 1990’s and watched it in my university living room. It was everything I kind of hoped it would be and it just didn't disappoint me in any way; it was such a great movie. It’s oddly amateurish in some respects because George A Romero was working with not very much money and shooting in just a hall at night but there's no doubting the film making heft behind it: it’s a brilliant movie.