Hell's Ground DVD Review - A Pakistani Movie that Proves Horror Teens Are Dumb in Any Culture
Pakistan is probably the last place on earth from which you'd expect a bloody, bruising, gut-crunching horror flick to emerge, but June 24 sees the domestic DVD release of Hell's Ground, a movie that has become Pakistan's most infamous motion picture export. Ice cream mogul and Pakistani film historian, Omar Khan, made this gory Texas Chainsaw Massacre-meets-the-Taliban flick on Hi-Def video with money from the Mondo Macabro video label, which specializes in rescuing Indonesian, Bollywood and Filipino horror films from obscurity. The film is overflowing with burqa-clad, mace-swinging lunatics, zombies and a gaggle of teens who head out to a rock concert and take a detour that leads them... into hell. Stuffed with old school Pakistani actors (such as Rehan from the 1967 musical version of Dracula, Zinda Lash) and soaked in gore scored from local butcher shops, this movie shows a side of Pakistan you won't find on CNN or the Discovery Channel.
Shooting during the rainy season when the Pakistani countryside erupts into radioactive green, with wild marijuana plants growing up to 10 feet tall, Khan managed to round up an impressive cast and crew for his flick, most of whom were eager to do something new. The plot is bare bones simple: Five teenagers who want to go to a rock concert hit the road in their Mystery Van. A protest against polluted drinking water is blocking their way, so they take an ill-advised detour through the countryside. Turns out that the problem with the drinking water is that it's been turning people into zombies. On top of that, there's a mysterious killer hidden inside a bloody burqa racing through the forest who wants to introduce his cast-iron mace to everyone's face. As buckets of blood fly from the screen, we learn an important lesson in geopolitics: Teenagers in horror movies are dumb in every country and in every culture.
