Pakistani Horror Films, 06 Jul 2012

The fourth event in the Khoj [Re]Building Project Series, Pakistani Horror Films brings together a documentary and two feature films exploring the horror genre and cult Pakistani films on horror, vampires and zombies.

Introduction to the films by Achal Prabhala

Films to be screened

Mondo Macabro: Horror and Fantasy in South Asia

Written, Produced and Directed by Pete Tombs and Andy Starke
Documentary
Channel 4, UK, 2002
25 minutes/ Colour / English

Mondo Macabro was a British television series based on the book of the same name by Pete Tombs. Written, produced and directed by Pete Tombs and Andy Starke, the series focused on cult cinema from countries not usually associated with genre product. It screened on Channel 4 in 2002. Mondo Macabro subsequently became the name of a DVD label ("The Wild Side of World Cinema") run by the selfsame gents. For more information, and especially if you enjoy "sex, violence, midget assassins and out-there cinema", see: http://www.mondomacabrodvd.com

ZINDA LAASH (1967)

Directed by Khwaja Sarfaraz

Starring: Habib, Rehan, Asad, Yasmeena, Nasreen, Talish

104 minutes/ Black and white/ Urdu

In the 1960s, even Pakistan was swinging! To prove it, here's this amazing version of the Dracula story from 1967. So hot it was banned on its original release. The only Pakistani film to be rated 'X' in its country of origin, this sizzling little gem is also the first Dracula film to include a shocking baby stealing scene!
(From the re-released Mondo Macabro DVD)

ZIBAHKHANA (2007)

Directed by Omar Ali Khan

Produced by Omar Ali Khan, Andy Starke and Pete Tombs

Starring: Kunwar Ali Roshan, Rooshanie Ejaz, Rubya Chaudhry, Haider Raza, Osman Khaled Butt, Najma Malik, Sultan Billa, Salim Meraj, Razia Malik and Rehan

77 minutes/ Colour / Urdu & English

Endless declarations about the wisdom and purity of Indian mothers. Winsome lovelies dressed in billowing saris dancing around sylvan fields. Clean-cut young men breaking into passionately lip-synched love songs on top of mountains in Switzerland or New Zealand...But what about rural midgets gobbling the entrails of freshly slain victims? Sari-wearing zombies hungry for human flesh? A burqa-clad, mace-swinging serial killer shielded from the law by his oh-so-innocent crone of a mother?

These new monsters appear in Zibahkhana, the supremely entertaining directorial debut of Omar Khan... Set in contemporary Islamabad, it depicts a bunch of college kids, many of them middle-class and affluent, who are driving to a rock show. They decide to take a short cut, but are stranded in a rural region unknown to them, one populated by all manner of ghoulish, bloodthirsty villagers.
(From the Daily Telegraph review by Sukhdev Sandhu)