A group of youngsters set off in their van to see a rock concert but get lost on the way. Soon they're being picked off, one by one, by crazed zombies and a mace-swinging madman. Nothing unusual there - most gore movies are more or less like that. But this one was made in Pakistan.
Hell's Ground, which advertises itself as 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre meets the Taleban', screened at the recent New York Asian Film Festival (NYAFF) as part of a one-night tribute to Pakistani exploitation cinema entitled From Lahore With Gore.
Few people know that exploitation cinema even exists in Pakistan. NYAFF organiser Grady Hendrix didn't, until a member of an Asian film forum he regularly logs into set him right. Not only was his online friend Omar Khan an expert on Pakistani B-movies, but he was making one.
'Omar turned out to be the leading film expert on Pakistani exploitation cinema,' says Hendrix. 'By day, he runs two ice-cream shops in Lahore and two in Islamabad. But his real obsession is Pakistani exploitation films. Omar has a big collection of Pakistani film ephemera, mainly exploitation stuff from the 1970s and 80s. He became so immersed in it, he decided to make one himself.'
The film, as Hendrix describes it, seems custom made to anger the mullahs of Pakistan. 'Five pot-smoking, boozing, sex-before-marriage kids want to go and see a rock concert,' says Hendrix. 'They pile into their van, but on the way their path becomes blocked by a protest about polluted drinking water. They take a detour off the highway and encounter some flesh-eating Muslim zombie midgets, and a family of demented hill- billies. These are savage, torturing, demented sadists who pick the kids off, one by one. But the worst horror they face is Burqa-man. He's a retarded guy who swings a mace and wears a bloody burqa.'
Hendrix says that Omar didn't have too much trouble making the film. Even the police lent a hand: 'They told the police that they were making an educational film, so they helped out a bit. But Omar told me that the police knew exactly what the film was really about. They just thought it would be fun to hang out on a film set for a bit. As long as there was a chain of deniability, they didn't really care what went on.'
And the cast and crew? 'They were all from the Pakistani film and theatre scene,' says Hendrix. 'That is very staid, as you can imagine. They relished the chance to do something different, apparently.'