At last! a blog entry about something other than Romero!
Tho' it still features zombies but I guess you can't have everything.
Zibahkhana (Slaughterhouse, AKA Hell's Ground. 2007)
Dir: Omar Ali Khan
Cast: Kunwar Ali Roshan, Rooshanie Ejaz, Rubya Chaudhry, Haider Raza, Osman Khalid Butt, Najma Malik, Sultan Billa, Salim Meraj and Rehan.
You are on the road to Hell, my children.
On the road to Hell!
Isn't it always the way? Pakistan's biggest dance festival is about to start and wouldn't you know it, it's gonna be taking place on a school night!
But if you think that going to stop our motley band of
Islamabad based teens having a wild night of music, mental dancing and muddy boots then you've got another thing coming.
Living, breathing Bratz doll Roxy (big haired bad girl Chaudhry) has it all planned, her buddies are going to sneak away in a colourful van and tell their respective parents that they're studying at each others houses.
What could possibly go wrong?
Accompanying her to the groove-some (as opposed to gruesome) fest are drugged up horror geek Vicky (Roshan), binman's son Simon (the Pakistani Daniel Radcliffe Raza) and the sweetly sexy to a point of almost being librarian-esque (as only good girls can be) Ayesha (Ejaz) alongside designated driver and token older guy OJ (Butt).
So, who's your cash on surviving to the final reel then?
Ejaz: scrumptious.
After a few coffees (and an encounter with some scarily saucy transvestite hookers) our merry band head off toward their dance-tastic destination, stopping only to visit Deewana's world famous tea shop.
What do you mean you've never heard of it?
A sign of spooky things to come occurs when Vicky is convinced that the Bruce Willis vested Deewana is actually the cult actor and star of The Living Corpse (AKA Dracula in Pakistan) Rehan, although the creepily hairy backed tea legend angrily denies this. He's more interested in why such good Muslim kids aren't preparing for evening prayer.
Freaked out by all this talk of praying and curses our heroes grab some tea and buns before making their excuses and leaving.
Jonathan and Jane: the wilderness years.
Could things get any worse?
Well after all that tea and cake poor Vicky seems to have developed a dodgy tummy and begs his buds to pull over so he can go vomit in a lake (as one would) but even before he's managed to wipe away the shame from the corners of his mouth he's attacked and bitten by a crazed, green skinned tramp.
Who also steals his stash.
Thieving undead bastard.
Simon, being the heroic type, offers to go search for the drugs (and the scary knee biting pikey) whilst Vicky sits huddled in a corner sweating and rubbing his leg in the hope of getting some female attention.
Bless.
Who's sari now?
Simon returns with the drugs (and in one piece) and, after a wee bit of
shall we shan't we? the gang decide it's probably for the best if they just carry on toward the festival and hope one of the first aiders has a plaster and a junior aspirin for Vicky victim when they get there, which would be a fine course of action if OJ hadn't taken a wrong turn when hurriedly leaving Deewana's tea shop and gotten them all lost.
In the woods.
Surrounded by the living dead.
There's only one course of action left to our heroes and that's to sit in the van and scream like wee girls as the zombies excitedly devour the contents of an abattoir bin next to the road.
Luckily OJ remembers that they're in a van not a shed, and drives away before the zombies can attack, or at the very least scratch the paintwork.
After driving what seems for hours and needing something to break the monotony of Vicky's vomiting and the girls screaming, the (at this point not so) merry band pull over at a big tent in the middle of nowhere in the hope of getting directions to the festival and maybe a few bottles of Lucozade to keep them going.
Have they never seen Bio-Zombie?
Obviously not, nor the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre by the looks of things seeing as they happily offer a lift to a mad as a bag of spanners bearded type named Baley (Meraj, being scarily more like Bill Moseley than Moseley himself) who, after squatting on the floor of the van and demanding water starts shouting
"I will drink the blood from your veins!" before pulling a severed head out of his man-bag.
Reacting with a mix of utter pant wetting terror and a wee bit of mild embarrassment the group scream at the horrible hobo for a while before kicking him out the van and running him down like a dog.
Which is a little extreme methinks.
"Laugh now!"
Waiting till the screaming has died down Ayesha suggests that maybe, just maybethey should give the festival a miss a head home. Roxy (who it must be said has spent about three days trowelling on her make-up in preparation for the event) is adamant that the show must go on, only changing her mind when she accidentally sits on the severed head left on the seat by the late lamented Baley.
It seems obvious to me that he only left it there because it too wanted to attend the music fest but had no body to go with.
Sorry.
Like a whippet up a particularly greasy drainpipe Roxy jumps out of the van and legs it into the woods whilst everyone else starts screaming again.
The screaming continues for about ten minutes, with everyone in the van desperately trying to be considerably louder than their pals which means when the pals finally collapse thru' lack of oxygen no-one has the faintest idea where Roxy has gone.
Ayesha and Simon, being the clean living heroic types give chase.
OJ volunteers to sit in the van with a considerably greener and more zombie-like by the minute Vicky in case they need to make a quick getaway.
What a guy!
"Oooh....who fancies a wee
bit a mooth shite-in?"
Stumbling blindly thru' the woods, our dynamic duo come across a ramshackle house and, hoping to get help bang on the doors whilst, yes, screaming.
After a few minutes of banging and screaming (and reckoning that their day can't get any worse) Simon and Ayesha slowly enter the house hoping to find a nice old lady with a phone that they can use.
It comes as no surprise to us (but a bloody big shock to the two friends) when stomping out of the kitchen comes a giant, burqa-wearing beast of a bloke brandishing a huge spiked ball on a chain and after a wee bit of a chase, puts it in poor Simon.
And yes, before you say anything I am aware (as is Ayesha, who seems to find this the most shocking thing so far) that men don't usually wear burqa's.
But I for one wouldn't say anything to him about it.
Meow. Twice.
Meanwhile Roxy, all messy hair, smudged make-up and tearful of cheek (but still nowhere near as hot as Ayesha who frankly has become a wee bit of an unhealthy obsession by this point, sorry Ms. Ejaz if you're reading this) has been found by a sweet old lady who lives in a tent just up the road from all the carnage.
And not only that but this old dear has tea and toast!
As a minus point tho' she does have her dead hubbies corpse in a cupboard and pictures of her two sons plastered around the walls.
One of whom seems to enjoy wearing a burqa....
No, it couldn't be...
Could it?
Taller than Freddie, sexier than Jason and
far easier to dress as than either one of them.
Raise your glass for the Burqa Baby!
From the deranged mind of Islamabad Ice cream shop magnate Omar Khan comes what is quite possibly the best lo-fi horror movie of the past ten years if not the most fun ninety minutes I've spent with a teen killing mentalist for quite some time.
The surprising thing is that, on paper Hell's Ground should be little more than a run of the mill Texas Chainsaw rip off but it's kudos to Khan and his team that it's so much more than that, being at once an incredibly funny pastiche and an honest to goodness homage to the stalk and slash genre he obviously loves so much.
From the pre-credit sequence onwards you know you're viewing something extra special and it's this love and understanding of the genres conventions that soaks (bloodily) thru' every single frame and every performance on show, the cast are uniformly fantastic, with special mention to the classically creepy Salim Meraj.
Honestly his performance is so convincing you can actually smell the urine and stale sweat thru' the teevee - God help you if you're watching in Blu-Ray.
And I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the elfin Rooshanie Ejaz could quite possibly steal Bruce Campbell's crown (and heart) as the ultimate horror hero for a rapidly approaching new decade.
If nothing else she looks much sexier than the big chinned one when drenched in blood.
Sorry Bruce.
Frankly essential viewing and an essential costume come next Halloween.
Now any chance of a sequel with Burqa Baby battling an army of ancient Jinns please Mr. Khan?
I've already started on a script if you're interested.
