Fantasia Dispatch 3 -- Hatchet vs. Zibahkhana (Hell's Ground)

[It was another full day spent with the enthusiastic crowds of cinemaphiles here in Montreal. For example, a thoroughly demolished print (apparently the only one in the world) of a 1981 Taiwanese revenge picture (Lady Avenger) complete with subtitles that were 30% illegible (white cars and white shirts in the film, damn you!) played to a packed house with only half a dozen or so folks sneaking out minutes before the gloriously inverted giallo ending of the film to jog across the way for Adam Green's low-budget splatter-slasher Hatchet.]

Ever felt like you were the only one in the room not to get something? That was the experience last night as Hatchet played to a packed house of delirious slasher fans. As a long fan of the genre that got a real charge out of Scott Glosserman's Behind the Mask, I find myself asking where exactly the appeal is in a bombastic and repetitive affair that begs the audience to feel smugly superior to the material. This is nostalgia at its most base.

Set in a pre-Katrina New Orleans, the film opens with a lot of breast ogling as Ben and his college friends take in the 'sights.' But Ben, recovering from a break-up with his longtime girlfriend, is determined to be a spoil-sport and wants none of the mindless partying and requisite vomiting (something Hatchet has on its mind as much as the titty). He decides to drag his friend Marcus on a tourist-trap swamp tour with a collection of stock dysfunctional types: two busty 'actresses' making a soft-core film with a 'director'; a square middle-aged married couple; and a mysterious local girl who stays silent in the back. Of course the swamp has a legend in the vein of Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers. Victor Crowley was a deformed mutant kid who grew up with his loving dad in the swamp before meeting a gruesome end. The a result of the tormenting from the local teenagers and a hatchet to the head. After several years of living alone in the swamp off of animal carcasses, Victor is fairly enthusiastic about tearing trespassers limb-from-limb. One crashed tour boat, et voila.

Now, it is not my intention to pick on a film that was obviously made with a lot of gumption, blood, sweat and tears (not to mention very little money). The cast is game to the material and slasher icon Kane Hodder who plays father and son Crowley gleefully tears through the participants. But did the whole affair have to come across like a carnival fair haunted hay-ride? The old-school prosthetic effects are certainly welcome compared to typical CGI overkill, but if you are looking for hand-made hilarity, Peter Jackson was doing far better in his parent's house making Bad Taste in mid-1980s. Twice warmed over frat-boy humour and "What's the number to 911" jokes should not be given the gold seal of comedy either. Something as paint-by-numbers, regardless of the energy put into the brushing, as Hatchet should not be getting a pass from the horror fan community. Give Adam Green an E for effort and his Boy Scout merit badge, but please don't hail this as the next coming of horror cinema. The fact that genre veteran Tony Todd brings more class to the film in his 4 minutes of screen time (even given a cringingly-obvious scene) than anything else on display is a testament to how far things need to go before Hatchet even achieves 'mediocre.' Being one of the last of the genre websites to come to the Hatchet party, I'm baffled why this is being embraced with such enthusiasm. Has American Studio horror gone too far with PG-13 remakes of Japanese, Korean and Thai films, the fetishization of torture and fly-by-night spoofs? Yes. But does this require that anything, else will get a pass (note the equally baffling 1408). I think a factor in Hatchet's festival success is director Adam Green himself who is a born orator who delivers and anecdote with gusto. The post-screening Q&A was 10 times the entertainment the actual film provided. Life inspiring stories of encounters with Twisted Sister front-man Dee Snyder, being forced to make local pizza and car-dealership commercials and stealing camera equipment to make short films clearly prove he can pace a story. Humourous observations such as "Hit someone once with an axe and it is scary, hit someone 13 fucking times and it becomes pretty funny" shows a certain wit. It's too bad that so little of that is on screen.

Similar to Hatchet, such that plotwise you know exactly what to expect, is Pakistani gore-slasher-zombie-psycho pastiche Zibahkhana (The English title is Hell's Ground although the literal translation is apparently Slaughterhouse). The film could easily have been titled Islamabad Morningstar Massacre. If the no-budget production could afford to cough over royalties, they should be posted to Tobe Hooper, Lucio Fulci and Sam Raimi, stat. But here is the difference. There is much more atmosphere, character and style injected into the proceedings. The result is something that should feel old-hat is born again surprisingly fresh.

A van of urban Pakistani teens attempt to escape the affluent prison confines of their upperclass existence to go on a road trip through the countryside with the end goal of rock-concert bliss. Oblivious to the poverty and rampant environmental toxification around them, they inhale catchy local pop tunes along with a joint or two and effortless switch back and forth between Urdu and English. If it wasn't for the pre-credits horror sequence, I would have thing I was watching Lollywoods answer to Y Tu Mamá También. There is the self-absorbed sexy bitch, the smooth faced stoner (who here is such a dead ringer for Orlando Bloom it is actually unsettling), the uptight organizer-in-charge and devout muslim Ayesha (Ash for short, natch) who is along for some much needed independence more than anything-else. It is not long before these tough talking but inexperienced kids fall prey every horror cliché in the manual. They buy food from the spooky locals who cackle loudly and warn them they are on the "Road to Hell," they take the forest shortcut, pick up a hitchhiker of sorts, run out of gas and investigate creepy houses in search for help, before being picked off by either the local zombies or the inspired hick-lunatic in a torn and bloody Burqa. Yes. Forget the hockey mask of Jason Voorhees or the skin-graft nightmares of Freddy Kruger or Leatherface – BurqaMan should be over-the-top-funny, but ends up being the real deal.

Sure this is very much kitchen sink filmmaking -- I've neglected to mention the Evil Dead 'spirit cam' the EC Comic influenced interstitials or the overbearing mother-figure from Psycho (and was that a visual nod High Tension buried in there?) -- but the added masala from director Omar Ali Khan gives Zibahkhana rich and welcome exoticism to world audiences while giving teens from Karachi a film to call their own. Khan is an expert on Lollywood Horror from the 1960s on up and is equally well versed in the American and European stuff too. Touches like vintage hand-painted poster art on the side of the teens van to featuring horror-icon Rehan twice (A clip from The Living Corpse played on a TV at one point and as this films official cackling man) show that this is not exoticism for exoticism sake (a complaint leveled at many a countries exported cinema product) but rather a loving hug to a rich B-cinema past.

[A past that was brought to vivid and hilarious life in a 20 minute reel combining several movies and commercials from 60s era Lollywood B-film. Dracula, The Wolfman, Spaghetti Westerns, House of Wax, The Brain that Wouldn't Die and ads for Johnny Walker all filtered through a Pakistani sensibility that is reminiscent of the off-the-wall grade-Z craziness of 1960s Mexican horror, but still original in its own right. This reel was probably the most entertaining 20 minutes of the year for me and not only does it make me wish to scavenge YouTube to find Omar Ali Khan's posted clips, but also to seek out some of these gems of sheer insanity.]

Watching Hatchet and Zibahkhana back to back, it was startlingly clear that the latter approach to paying tribute to the memory of a budding cinematic obsession was the superior one.=

Hatchet Trailer (Embedded Flash)
Zibahkhana Trailer (Embedded YouTube)
Lollywood/Bollywood Vintage Horror (Scroll down for many Embedded YouTube Clips)