Customer Reviews

Hell's Ground

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

By "lower your expectations", I don't in any way mean that this is a horrible film. I liked it a lot. But don't expect that it's going to be a zombie/gore film to top all others you've seen. It's more a fun homage to zombie/gore films of old, given a Lollywood/Bollywood twist. A bunch of young folks have procured a van and lied to their parents about their whereabouts so that they can attend a concert 5 hours away. They procure a hideously decorated van with lurid murals on the side for their trip, and of course, they HAVE to try a short cut, run out of gas, etc., in an area where polluted water has turned the locals into flesh-eating zombies. They do escape that area and wander into something much worse though, for there's a sort of "Leatherface" character running about the woods slaughtering, but the twist is that this character is wearing a "burqa". One of the young girls finds an old woman and tells her of this character but the woman tells her "that's silly, men don't wear burqas". So it's a WOMAN? Eeek!

Lots of fun music to this, plus a appearance by one "Rehan" whom one of the young folks (OJ) identifies as "Dracula" from "Zinda Laash" (The Living Corpse", although the man denies it. It really is the actor that played him though. But OJ's friends just think he smoked too much hash.

Don't expect too much from this...I liked it but you have to take it in the spirit in which it was made, a fun homage, not the gore film to top all others. Yeah, it's kind of cheesy & derivative, but so what? It's also lots of FUN, and that's why I watch a lot of movies. 4 out of 5.

Just saw this movie, this is an awesome thrill ride in Pakistani settings. Being a horror fan, I would say this is one of the best. I was shocked to learn that the budget for this movie was well below $100,000 which is mind-boggling to say the least. Can't wait for the next flick by Omar Ali Khan.

Well Pakistan now getting with the times for it has been a very long time that this country has tried its hands in HORROR the first time was in 67 with the DRACULA/DR.JEKYLL story ZINDA LAASH. Here we have HELL'S GROUND which I watched but not in English which did make the story hard to follow but did my best with visuals. Teenagers in a van ala TEXAS CHAINSAW are going to a show when they stop for gas a teenage girl gets out and confronts a man who reminded me of the old guy from FRIDAY THE 13TH ("It's got a death curse!!!") we get back in the van and leave just to get lost and stranded on the road (hey folks it had to happened) we then get served up Zombies Paki style (and if you thought the tambourine player was funny in D.O.T.D. you ain't seen nothing yet :) our teenagers have to fight off not only zombies but a craze sicko in a burqa. Is it a man or woman for only woman are suppose to wear burqa's? Anyway the killer has a weapon that would make GO-GO go crazy over from KILL BILL.
This movie was directed by Omar Khan and it is obvious he loves HORROR films especially from the 70's (my personal favorite decade) and by mixing TEXAS meets NIGHT OF THE you get a good movie to watch. The pluses for me on this movie was the background being Pakistan-the 70's style directing (great for I am tired of the MTV-CGI style of directing we are getting from U.S.A.) there are humorous moments in this like the one kid having a bunch of MONDO films and we get a version of Paki/Dracula on the t.v. (man I tellz yaz that vampire is everywhere's)
anyway I enjoyed this and am happy that Amazon has a english version of this. So try some SPOOKY from diff. country.

Start to finish, this one is a classic. It really does have everything you are looking for in a quality Horror film. The acting was good,the atmosphere was great, and the gore was killer. Once they enter "Hell's Ground" is when the real fun starts. Lets see, gypsy ladies in the woods, mutated people roaming around, and a spooky guy running around the woods with a sheet over his body carrying his weapon of choice..Dont want to say too much more but I was blown away and after it was over, I popped it in again! Just great. Oh yea there's Homages left and right here, one being Lustigs' Maniac(one of the kids has the movie poster in his room, and later on in the film we get treated to Pakistans version of Savini's shotgun/car slo mo car scene,just a little differant but the influence is there). This has made my top 3 this year, and I might even watch it again tonight.

I saw Hell's Ground in the cinema and the audience reaction was fantastic - a mixture of laughter and some genuine scares. This is an excellent first outing for Omar Khan and he taps into the youth of Pakistan with a freshness and authenticity that has not been explored yet. The film is a homage to the old horror classics but is rooted firmly in Pakistani cinema. And most of all it is not pretentious playing out as a fun filled, gore fest that is made to entertain. Great fun, a good DVD transfer and some excellent extras. Hells ground is a breath of fresh air.

Strung together with the usual shoestring budget and threadbare plot, "Hell's Ground" is a laughable gorefest that shows that bad scare flicks are truly universal. Get a bunch of teens in the woods. Strand them. Bring on the monsters. The only real difference is that the shrieking is done in Urdu (as another reviewer noted, my DVD came w/o subtitles, too) and the occasional bit of English (huh?).

Problem is, the movie is utter nonsense, homage without context. As the teens promptly decide to try a shortcut through the woods, they pause long enough to stop at a stream. There, they are promptly set upon by flesh eating zombies. This would be fine if the zombies had anything remotely to do with the bulk of the film....but they don't. The teens race off in their van (which sports some sort of "Mystery Machine" paint job) and flee deeper in the woods.

Oh wait, there's a family ahead! My guess is they warn the teens not to go into the big bad woods (again, no subtitles) and the teens ignore them. Before you can say record Exxon Profits, the van runs out of gas and there's a "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" reference. Cue the Bloody Burka killer (who could have been the entire focus of "Hell's Ground" and made it an infinitely more viewable movie), packing up the body parts and swinging one wicked mace. General rule concerning safety in numbers ignored as now screaming in indiscernible languages teens scatter and meet various bloody demises. Seen it all before? Of course you have. Tack on a twist that you could see from the back of a pachyderm and you get Hellhound Millionaire...oops, Hell's Ground. At least they didn't do a Bollywood Zombie Dance number at the end.

This was just beautiful! Not only was this Pakistan's first splatter film but it was a GOOD splatter film! It had everything from cross-dressing cannibal freaks to flesh-gobbling mutant zombies infected by a mysterious virus! What really hooked me though was the authenticity of Hell's Ground; it was an honest-to-goodness Pakistani production, not some weak-kneed American smell-alike slasher clone. Omar Ali Khan's characters face real issues confronted by Muslim youth today, including their struggle to maintain their individuality while also doing their best to honor and observe some of the strict religious traditions of their families. This flick felt real, honest and it was fun to boot!

No jokin', I haven't had chills run down my spine during a zombie sequence since Fulci's Zombie and Khan's zombie sequences gave me a full-blown case of `em! I actually played one sequence over and over again just taking in all the freakin' awesome zombies! Everything from the throbbing score to the shambling guru just smacked of Italian gore and Romero's best work. Lovely.

Now, the film wasn't perfect. Khan mixes zombies and backwoods cannibals and, in my opinion, didn't mix them all that well. I wanted more zombies until the psycho shows up, then I wanted more psycho until the next zombie showed up! The balance between the two just wasn't effective enough for me. You get what you get though. Hopefully Khan's next effort focuses more attention on one or the other instead of both. Super sweet horror!

Admittedly, this is not an art film by any means, and not particularly cerebral or innovative. Really sort of a Pakistani contribution to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre genre (with a little Romero zombies thrown in for good measure), and as such quite a good one. The highlight of the film is Burkaman, a truly unpleasant and threatening mad killer in a blood-soaked burka. In this sense, Hell's Ground taps into some imaginative and interesting local angles that add something genuinely original to a rather trite genre. Well worth watching for fans of this type of film. Now, we need another effort that takes more time to explore the horror possibilities of this menacing figure. Omar Ali Khan deserves credit for giving us the first really original slasher monster in many, many years, one that could well develop into a classic of its kind.

You have to be drunk or high to give this film anything higher than a 1 rating. Too bad I could not give it a zero. It was a piece mealed bunch of clips jerkily strung together. English is spoken sporadically and there are some English sub-titles. If you have ever seen one of those horrible India tv/movie shows where they dance/sing/chant and you were bored out of your mind, welcome to this Pakistan film. No singing/dancing in Hell's Ground but the result is the same. Total complete, absolute, no holding back, mind numbing boring film. Do NOT buy this film. Go to your library and inter-library order it to view it before buying it. You will be glad you did.

My response to the comment below: I most certainly watched the film. I actually inter library loaned it because I read the other poor reviews and didn't want to risk buying a dud. My eyes were desperately trying to stay open and my mind wondered in total boredom so if I forgot about the subtitles this commenter is so proud of, so be it. Based on the comment, I watched it again and it was worse the second time around. Subtitles or not, it doesn't negate the fact this movie is crappy.

Wow, are my eyes deceiving me?? Who in their right mind would give this HORRIBLE film more than 2 stars? Apparently a few people out there have. How they could do that is absurd! I suppose they wanted to like the movie so much they convinced themselves into doing so and ended up writing very misleading reviews about it. OK. After watching the trailer I expected this movie to be entertaining and gory, it was neither. The story is so ridiculously cliche and overdone that I can't believe any film maker in this day and age would still try to pull it off. This film brings nothing new to the table. It's not scary in any sense, the zombies look so bad I could have done a better make-up job. Gore is seldom seen in this slow paced film. Common sense is thrown out the window and the villain runs while swinging a mace around her head, do you know how heavy a freaking mace is? The kill count is so low and the deaths are not worth sitting through the movie to get to. This was one of the most over-hyped horror films in recent memory. Save your money, there are much better foreign horror films than this one. Anyone with good video equipment could have done a better job than this. The promotion and packaging for Hell's Ground fooled me, don't let it fool you.