Cult movie heroes Mondo Macabro make the leap from distributing weird DVDs from around the world, to producing Pakistan’s first-ever splatter flick. In a familiar scenario, five fun-loving teenagers sneak away from their parents, aboard a Scooby-Doo style Mystery Machine van, for drug-addled jaunt through the woods. Sinister roadside vendor, Deewana (Rehan) warns “you’re on the road to hell”, although movie buff O.J. (Osman Khalid Butt) is puzzled why the guy who played Dracula in The Living Corpse(1967), is selling drug-laced sweets in the middle of nowhere.
Shortly thereafter, hordes of flesh-eating zombies swarm the group, while a mad, babbling priest brandishing a severed head proves the wrong guy to ask for directions. Inevitably, the van breaks down. Cool kid, Vicky (Kunwar Ali Roshan) explores a dingy, deserted shack and comes face to face with a maniac dressed in blood-splattered burqa, wielding a nasty spiked ball and chain. Chaste heroine Ayesha (Rooshanie Ejaz), goodtime girl Roxy (Rubya Choudhry) and road sweeper’s son, Simon (Haider Raza) flee into darkness. Who will survive and what will be left of them?
With a screenplay co-written by Omar Khan and Mondo Macabro head honcho Pete Tombs, this is a Pakistani riff on mid-seventies horror. Over the years, Tombs has been an invaluable force as genre film scholar and distributor, which makes it somewhat disappointing his first production favours slasher film clichés over anything more distinctive or eccentric. Local genre icon Rehan plays “Crazy Ralph” and a few zombies chow down on entrails while electronic music (composed by former Eyeball scribe Stephen Thrower) mimics Goblin’s famous theme from Dawn of the Dead (1978), but the most obvious borrowings come from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1973). From the teens stalked by crazy backwoods family scenario, Khan’s sweaty mise-en-scene (ambient sound effects, cutaways to creepy-crawlies, dead animal décor), the loopy priest playing Edwin Neal, and Pakistan’s transvestite answer to Leatherface, it comes perilously close to being a carbon copy.
That irritating, conservative streak common to American slasher movies is even more pronounced here. Dope-smoking O.J. and surly, foul-mouthed Roxy (who is mean to her mum) might as well have “victim” rubberstamped on their foreheads, while even good girl Ayesha is marked guilty for lying to her parents and ignoring her faith. When Deewana says they are on the road to hell, he’s being both literal and commenting on Pakistani youth. Such po-faced moralising is par for the course in this genre but still hard to take. In terms of plot and subtext this is too messy to inspire repeat viewings, with fumbled subplots including Simon’s relationship with his dad (who hates his hardworking son for trying to better himself), mass protests about water pollution and the whole zombie virus angle - which winds up nonsensical.
On the other hand, Hell’s Ground is laced with some clever touches and subtlety, with the villain’s appearance foreshadowed by a scene with transvestite hookers. Khan fumbles the pace during the gory killings, but his visual trickery invokes a palpable sense of menace with skewed angles and sinister décor. His use of comic book panels between scenes proves fun, even if it leaves viewers slightly unsure whether this is meant to be camp or not. Kudos also for the scene featuring a shameless plug for Mondo Macabro DVDs. The spirit of exploitation filmmaking is alive and well.
