The ‘Exploitation Movie’ of ‘Religious Versus Literary Controversy’ [International Gorillay (1990)]

From http://www.nanarland.com/Chroniques/internationalguerillas/jaquette.jpg

Dir. Jan Mohammed

Pakistan

Film #30 of The ‘Worst’ of Cinema

This review has been long is gestation, since last year before this season came about; I have even read the Salman Rushdie novel The Satanic Verses, central to the existence of this film, to give me background to this infamous ‘Lollywood’ film from Pakistan. When author Rushdie first published The Satanic Verses, a magic realist story that tackled the divide between someone of West Asian descent and a secondary identity of being British, and of the divide between religious belief and doubt, he provoked outrage from Muslin communities for the book, particularly a segment based on the prophet Muhammad where lines are added into the Islamic rulings of there being three goddesses who can be worshiped, the ‘satanic verses’, which are pulled out of the scripture by the messenger of Allah immediately afterwards. Along with other aspects that could be seen as damning or undermining Islamic belief, he would eventually have a fatwā placed on his head for his death by the late spiritual leader of Iran Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. A film like this, when you review it, would make it difficult for some to hold their tongues about their religious beliefs or the concept of freedom of speech, but in hindsight I may have over researched for this review. Rushdie’s novel was exceptional, and it helps to know the book that caused such an outrage it lead to a murder and attempted assassination attempts, but International Gorillay is far from a serious film despite its background and the hatred within it for Rushdie. It was made merely as a commercial film and the idea of cashing on the controversy as it did makes it a true exploitation movie. It’s also demented.

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1rJV3ND8iMQLzEHIMREJ8KFMxIKP599uiQzi1HO9fWOPaRDB7nQjbbM07UBZSmq81OzkUouBdzKIC2uY5XVoHxfG1AzKIosLHMKtIXaB4pSkY0SoSFBZtTE_piESeSQqzjBKf5FffNs-P/s1600/IG07.jpg

When the Islamic world is terrorised by the evil Salman Rushdie, a Bond-like villain in sharp clothes, his own personal army of goons and torture techniques including forcing the Muslim prisoners to listen to The Satanic Verses in audio book form in jails, three Muslim men of the same family, after relatives are shot down by corrupt policemen during an anti-Rushdie protest, go abroad to kill Rushdie for the sake of the Islamic (and Pakistani) people. When the title credit, in a two and a half hour film, appears fifty minutes in, you realise International Gorillay is very different from other films. It’s condemnation of Rushdie, in the countless proclamations against him to his face, may actually be awkward even for Muslin viewers who were offended by his novel, and when it’s in the content of a Lollywood film, where there are musical numbers even during the final confrontation with the villain, and action scenes that would make Italian genre films like Strike Commando (1987) look like Twilight, and it causes more problems with the message. Make the film as erratic in the technical side as it is and in the ideas onscreen as well and your brain turns into the consistency of mash potato. The version of the film I saw was atrocious, a video rip which had moments where it seemed the frame had to be fixed like one would see happen by accident in a cinema, but technically this film is off as well. This is especially the case in the editing; seconds in the narrative pace seem to be missing, where it transitions into the next explosion without any establishing set-up, and a protagonist is suddenly in another place or switches from having a gun to a crossbow to mow down henchmen. The repetition of footage in-between ongoing sequences is almost avant garde but it also baffles and undermines how one puts together images to create a juxtaposition. It’s on the opposite side of Ninja Terminator (1985), the first film reviewed in this blog season, in that the placing together of images in the film actually undermine the concept of editing and scrambles how you a as a viewer connect images to create a succession of narrative. It is the film where everyone gets a reaction shot every time something significant happens, usually with a smash zoom to their face. It is like a high budgeted version of Turkish Star Wars (1982) with far more action choreography – explosions, motorbike chases with rockets, helicopters – and even has a ‘rip-off’ aspect by having the protagonists, for no reason, attempt one of their raids on Rushdie in homemade, Adam West-era Batman costumes.

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXE7JLq9SBaASTAYoj8cE6xqo-GGkGSm5378KdH9dyi8g4vz7KrwnNdCl1TLqiPv3QOkTX-x-i7tLmBWZTPd2Z1zHRcydnu0rBmrvJSCFnbh-Rj9MDV3ROb3oufd9xF1JAYl25abfBqq-v/s1600/IG02.jpg

International Gorillay and its exploitation cinema mentality against its reverence with the Islamic religion do not mix very well. It is a film where Rushdie has in his arsenal identical versions of himself, musical numbers about the ‘bullet of love’ with a gun being fired as part of the chorus percussion of one song, and guitar hot licks from the American, straight-to-video action films made around this time. This does not gel with the praise of Allah and His Prophet Muhammad at all, as would happen in a Western film which tried to have this type of tone with a heavy Christian message, or any message that is supposed to be taken seriously. The film even has comedy relief in the form of a bumbling Saudi Arabian sheik and his right hand man who work with Rushdie and have comic hijinks, including someone having giant, yellow glasses with miniature windscreen wipers on them. It doesn’t help though as well that the film is anti-Semitic, with a Jewish femme fatale with psychic eyes and her brother on Rushdie’s side, adding unnecessary fire to the real life conflict between Judaism and Islam, within a pulp film. Even something like Turkish Star Wars managed to avoid this, celebrating the virtues of Islam and Turkish heroes while not trodding on other religions for cheap effect and going as far as having Christianity part of its mythology. The ending, which I won’t spoil, is on YouTube, but its moment of divine intervention does not fully impact you unless you’ve seen the whole feature, seen the musical number beforehand proclaiming the virtues of Allah and seen it in its proper context. Then it feels like, regardless of your religious and political beliefs, like you’ve been struck by lightning yourself.

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3B11IdP12YxZV4NocLMxfRiVbQLLW5sjRoclZSqsko4uqTDzR9aXqj9CaA92dtuITOzWc2CY1iXsvoCZonCwuygZgSj2Y4tD1v6kXmzLNIK0f5t8VQ8TMDsfIzHSxwSL2LYiDi4jirc-G/s1600/IG01.jpg

The British Board of Film Classification banned this film from being released in the United Kingdom at first, but it was Salman Rushdie himself who persuaded them to change the ruling, under the belief of freedom to speech even for works negative of him, and because the film was so abstract from reality that no one would take it seriously. In The Satanic Verses, one of the two protagonists is a megastar of Bollywood cinema, and while this is a Pakistani film, International Gorillay feels like something Rushdie could have created for the story depending on where the plot of that book would have went to. Historically, despite the fatwā placed on his head and protests against his knighthood in the 2000s, Rushdie is an acclaimed author, while I only found out about this film because of The Satanic Verses controversy, the only large group who think about this film a great deal being a French website called Nanarland, which I wish I could read in its French text, who celebrate ‘bad’ cinema. This review could easily, by accident, become an insulting and patronising take on Islamic religion, but while the historical background of Rushdie is important to get more out of it, International Gorillay, while trying to give some cathartic entertainment to offended people, was never meant to be taken seriously and cannot be taken seriously. It’s entertaining, certainly, but it’s also bizarre, in its own unique world regardless of its context as a mainstream film from Pakistan. It’ll be impossible to forget it from all the films I’ve seen from this season.

From http://s3.amazonaws.com/auteurs_production/images/film/international-guerillas/w448/international-guerillas.jpg?1308262039

“You are on the road to Hell my children.” [Hell’s Ground (2007)]

From http://horrornews.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/hells_ground_2.jpg

Dir. Omar Khan 

Pakistan-UK

Originally intended to be a film for the Halloween 31 For 31 in October, I am happy to have seen the first Pakistani splatter movie in existence finally. It is a flawed film, but in keeping with my belief that film viewing is a geographical and culture expedition in celluloid form, this nightmarish West Asian horror film fits that idea greatly while spilling goo and blood. On their way to a music concert, a group of young adults end up on their way to Hell, an area of countryside that, after significant pollution problems, had become a place of death. Zombies roam the long grass and a white burqa-wearing killer awaits them as well. From this premise, it is clearly a mix of pre-existing horror iconography – Lucio Fulci, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) etc. – but it has a delirious charm to the whole work. Tonally erratic it may be, it adds a sense of unpredictability to the film emphasises the hellishness of the characters’ situation. It also helps that, despite being a lower budget, shot on digital work, the director and his director of photography actually attempted to add some visual distinctiveness to the film. When night rolls through for the main crux of the film, it feels atmospheric, most of the screen completely swallowed in black and with fog clouding areas of the image, giving this low budget film a character. Even before these scenes it helps that the sense of space is conveyed and that, despite being something all directors should know, the camera is actually pulled back from the actors once in a while and the scenery is allowed to be seen; that later point is utterly ridiculous to say, but it is amazing how many films, mainstream and straight-to-video, have the camera jammed up an actor’s nostrils all the time, or are locked by the cookie-cutter editing, resulting in visually flat looks. Combined with the appropriately intense music put together by musician, cult cinema writer and author Stepher Thrower, and Hell’s Ground sticks out.

From http://s3.amazonaws.com/auteurs_production/images/film/hells-ground/w448/hells-ground.jpg?1303225408

There is the issue that, by viewing this film because of it came from a different country, and celebrating it for this, can inadvertently become patronising and dubious. With Hell’s Ground it cannot be argued against though that, while its very influenced by the West, being a Pakistani horror film, with clear differences from the likes of American splatter films, is a factor in why it’s a lot more interesting a film. It’s not because it’s merely from a different country though that this is the case. The diegetic music for example, continuing with the sonic virtues of the film, is very different in sound, regardless of its country of origin, to the kind of music used in Western horror films, the distinct, vinyl-like sound to most of the songs adding a dreamy quality usually non-existent in this sort of content and helping the film greatly. It’s more downtrodden locations, of massive water pollution part of the plot, lower class population and transsexual prostitutes, in such a close proximity to the countryside and thick forests of trees is very different from the many Western horror films too with the obvious exceptions, as is the obvious cultural differences and the occasional references to (Islamic) religion. It is not merely that Hell’s Ground stands out for the better because it’s from a different country, but because the distinct differences from Western horror cinema, separating nationality from them, offer new perspectives on such repeated material. Hell’s Ground is still your basic gore film which is loose and ping-pongs through numerous sub-genres without a fully coherent story, but this crazed flippancy with its uniqueness feels fresh and invigorating for me compared to a lot of redundant horror cinema elsewhere.

From http://shenanitims.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/hells-ground-burqamans-knife-is-the-star.png