Three Flavour Cornetto

A zombie infestation, accident-prone village and the end of the world; we find out what’s inside the Cornetto.

Much like Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Trois Couleur series of films, Blood and Ice Cream (or Three Flavour Cornetto) is a franchise that is made with a running theme and by consistent creators. But that’s where the similarities end. The Cornetto films bask in a love of cinema and pay homage to well known American genres continually. This allows for a far more diverse franchise with multiple character arcs that never allow the audience to become bored with one particular group or lead character.

A piece of advice on how to kill zombies in Shaun of the Dead is, “removing the head or destroying the brain,” which makes it more surprising that the film with the most decapitations isn’t the horror spoofing first film. Instead, The World’s End, which has a total of 36 decapitations, dwarfs Hot Fuzz that has 3 decapitations and surprisingly even Shaun of the Dead which has 0. The World’s End has the most as the robots, or ‘nobots’ as they are nicknamed, have easily detachable heads that allow them to be continuously and reasonably easily removed in fight sequences.

Being the Cornetto franchise the most important stat we wanted to know was how many cornetto’s are eaten. Hot Fuzz wins the title with 3 eaten during the film and Shaun of the Dead has a lonely 1. The lowest amount eaten occurs, or rather doesn’t occur, in World’s End where none are eaten at all. In its place is a wrapper visibly left at the end of the film that acts as an obvious reference to the previous appearances. This is a good compromise as during the story the only place to have one would be at very start before the pub crawl; Edgar Wright leaves the audience waiting for this moment as it was undoubtedly going to be mentioned for hard core fans to enjoy.

One visual aspect that Wright brings to his work are his quick montages that allow him to show a passage of time extremely quickly. Hot Fuzz has the most of these with 11 because it fits perfectly in the film’s action genre spoof where these types of quick sequences are most commonly used. However Shaun of the Dead starts the franchise off boldly with a total montage count of 10; Shaun of the Dead lays the franchise-foundations and by the last film they have reduced the amount to 6. The use of these is well placed in Hot Fuzz as they allow the audience to think that action packed scenes are going to kick off but instead something mundane such as paperwork is shown that helps trick the audience and keep them on their toes. In The World’s End there is far more action than any previous film so the quick pace could be slowed down by overuse of montages. With more action the build up of montages for comedy value is also not needed.

This franchise is a brilliant blend of loved films for its generation due to a great respect for works such as the Scream franchise, the Indiana Jones franchise, and Spielberg films and makes the whole thing relatable with continual homages to British culture. Shaun of the Dead is the highlight of the franchise as on it’s release it was original in it’s non-stop referencing and nerdy humour. Due to this originality Hot Fuzz was also brilliant but didn’t provide much that was new expect an all-star cast. World’s End doesn’t make the same mistake as the creators took time out to work on larger Hollywood films which shows through in the bigger, more action packed affair of the final film.