A little bit last minute. And a little be local. While I’ll be taking in the live narration from one Mr. Maddin at the Royal Cinema tonite, if I didn’t have to trot back to relieve the baby sitter, I’d skip 1km north to The Bloor Cinema for 9:30pm and take in the low budget Lollywood produced Zombie/Slasher fusion Zibahkhana (aka Hell’s Ground) which is being presented by Rue Morgue as a part of their ongoing Cinema Macabre Series. It is notable that The Bloor Cinema in Toronto is also the inspiration behind the name of this Blog; it being a little known fact that there is more leg room in the third row at the Bloor than the other rows, and thus is a regular sitting locale of Row Three contributors at Toronto After Dark (which, by the way for you filmmaking types, is still taking feature and short film submissions until tomorrow)

The most blissful screening I took in at last years Fantasia Festival, in no small part due to the entertaining reel of classic Lollywood Horror clips shown before the film by the producers, Mondo Macabro. The film is a fusion of many sub-genres of horror (Zombie, Slasher, E.C. Comics) but it is the Pakistani flavourings that make this one such a delight.

Fret not those outside of Toronto (or anyone who managed to miss this on the genre festival circuit, where the film has been touring for over a year now), The DVD is forthcoming on June 24th From TLA releasing.

Under the seat are my Fantasia 2007 thoughts on Hell’s Ground.

Pakistani gore-slasher-zombie-psycho pastiche Zibahkhana (The English title is Hell’s Ground although the literal translation is apparently Slaughterhouse) could have easily have been titled Islamabad Morningstar Massacre. If the no-budget production could afford to cough over royalties, they should be posted to Tobe Hooper, Lucio Fulci and Sam Raimi, stat. While the the film mines the usual tropes of the genre, but with a surprising amount of atmosphere, character and style injected into the proceedings, resulting in something that is actually quite fresh.

A van of urban Pakistani teens attempt to escape the affluent prison confines of their upperclass existence to go on a road trip through the countryside with the end goal of rock-concert bliss. Oblivious to the poverty and rampant environmental toxification around them, they inhale catchy local pop tunes along with a joint or two and effortless switch back and forth between Urdu and English. If it wasn’t for the pre-credits horror sequence, I would have thing I was watching Lollywoods answer to Y Tu Mamá También. There is the self-absorbed sexy bitch, the smooth faced stoner (who here is such a dead ringer for Orlando Bloom it is actually unsettling), the uptight organizer-in-charge and devout muslim Ayesha (Ash for short, natch) who is along for some much needed independence more than anything-else. It is not long before these tough talking but inexperienced kids fall prey every horror cliché in the manual. They buy food from the spooky locals who cackle loudly and warn them they are on the “Road to Hell,” they take the forest shortcut, pick up a hitchhiker of sorts, run out of gas and investigate creepy houses in search for help, before being picked off by either the local zombies or the inspired hick-lunatic in a torn and bloody Burqa. Yes. Forget the hockey mask of Jason Voorhees or the skin-graft nightmares of Freddy Kruger or Leatherface – BurqaMan should be over-the-top-funny, but ends up being the real deal.

Sure this is very much kitchen sink filmmaking – I’ve neglected to mention the Evil Dead ‘spirit cam’ the EC Comic influenced interstitials or the overbearing mother-figure from Psycho (and was that a visual nod High Tension buried in there?) – but the added masala from director Omar Ali Khan gives Zibahkhana rich and welcome exoticism to world audiences while giving teens from Karachi a film to call their own. Khan is an expert on Lollywood Horror from the 1960s on up and is equally well versed in the American and European stuff too. Touches like vintage hand-painted poster art on the side of the teens van to featuring horror-icon Rehan twice (A clip from The Living Corpse played on a TV at one point and as this films official cackling man) show that this is not exoticism for exoticism sake (a complaint leveled at many a countries exported cinema product) but rather a loving hug to a rich B-cinema past.

[A past that was brought to vivid and hilarious life in a 20 minute reel combining several movies and commercials from 60s era Lollywood B-film. Dracula, The Wolfman, Spaghetti Westerns, House of Wax, The Brain that Wouldn’t Die and ads for Johnny Walker all filtered through a Pakistani sensibility that is reminiscent of the off-the-wall grade-Z craziness of 1960s Mexican horror, but still original in its own right. This reel was probably the most entertaining 20 minutes of the year for me and not only does it make me wish to scavenge YouTube to find Omar Ali Khan’s posted clips, but also to seek out some of these gems of sheer insanity.]