Stop me when this sounds familiar: A group of kids lie to their parents, hit the road for a night full of partying, and stumble across a nightmare of monumental proportions. Sounds like your typical B-grade horror movie, right? Absolutely. Hell's Ground is an unwaveringly derivative and preposterously gory little genre concoction that borrows a lot from the finest films of George Romero, Sam Raimi and Tobe Hooper while forging very little new ground of its own. But you know what? It's still a fun fright flick, even with all its obvious touchstones and blatant inspirations. Once the movie gets the character introductions and the requisite wheel-spinning out of the way, it's a pretty energetically good time.

It's Texas Chainsaw Massacre meets Dawn of the Dead, sorta ... oh, and it came from Pakistan. Did I not mention that part? Yep, a mega-splattery zombie-strewn slasher flick from Pakistan. Shot entirely in Islamibad by a bunch of young filmmakers who clearly grew up with the same horror flicks we did. So while you're being assaulted with ideas, characters and monsters that are clearly 'borrowed' from other sources, well, it's just quite the novelty to witness Pakistan's first gore movie.

Following in the tradition of such Pakistani horror films as ... umm, OK gimme a sec here ...

Well, just because I can't name a horror film from Pakistan doesn't mean there aren't any, but however many may have come before, Zibahkhana (Hell's Ground) is the latest. This project has caught my interest specifically because it is being co-produced by Mondo Macabro, a UK-based DVD company that has released such magnificently bizarre examples of world cinema as Girl Slaves of Morgana Le Fay, For Your Height Only and Lady Terminator. And who better to co-produce a film about a zombie plague than Mondo Macabro's partner in this venture, Bubonic Films. The film is being directed by first-timer Omar Khan, who is a film historian and owner of a chain of ice cream shops.

The hot and damp Pakistani summer made for an uncomfortable shoot for the cast which was composed of veterans of the local film industry as well as some newcomers. That was part of Khan's plan all along, though. "I wanted to use heat, sweat and flies as part of the film," Khan says. "People on the crew were not used to this level of nastiness, which was very exciting for me." The story involves a group of teens who, while on their way to a rock concert, run afoul of a group of psychos reminiscent of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The film is also said to feature the world's first Muslim zombies.

The film's producers are fairly certain, that Zibahkhana will not get past their native country's censors, but they have high hopes of marketing the film elsewhere. That plan seems to be off to a good start as the film has been invited to submit to the Sundance Film Festival with fees waived.

[Via Jo Blo]

I wouldn't imagine that Michael Winterbottom (In This World; The Road to Guantanamo) is always good about getting the necessary permits and legal permissions when he's filming in foreign lands. Considering his practice of using small crews that can get in and out of locations easily, he probably works on too much of a whim. But for his next film, A Mighty Heart, which stars Angelina Jolie as the widow of slain journalist Daniel Pearl, and is being produced by Brad Pitt's production company, Winterbottom is probably going to have to follow more of Hollywood's practices with on-location shoots.

But this weekend, four security guards who were cast to play police officers in Heart, were arrested in Karachi, Pakistan, for unauthorized impersonation. Ali Mohammad, Amin, Mohammad Akram and Zahid Hussain were taken into custody by the Saddar Town police after the four men were spotted in police uniform, acting like police in front of the Sindh High Court. According to the report, the filmmakers had not gotten permission to shoot there or to have the "actors" portraying police officers.

From what I've heard, this film shouldn't be shooting yet. Considering there's no mention in the report of Winterbottom being on the scene, I am hoping that more details surface. Has the director in fact begun already? Was this a second-unit crew picking up some pre-production shots without proper documentation? And what will Brad Pitt's role be in the case? Or is this perhaps not related to Winterbottom's film at all? There is another Daniel Pearl movie, you know.

As The Da Vinci Code continues to pull in piles of money around the world, the controversy about its content refuses to die and reports of further bannings continue to trickle in. The latest news comes from Pakistan where, though the country is approximately 97% Muslim, the government has decided to ban the movie out of respect for the nation's Christian minority. According to the country's minister of culture, the fact that his own religion isn't mistreated in the movie isn't the issue. In fact, he said, "Islam teaches us to respect all prophets of Allah mighty, and degradation of any prophet is tantamount to defamation of the rest."

Additionally, the movie has been banned in five Indian states for fear it would cause unrest. Though, as with Pakistan, Christians make up a very small minority of the country's total population (less than 2%, according to Variety), there are states in which they are the majority, and several of those states experienced protests prior to the film's planned release. Though the rest of India -- including a handful of states in which Christians make up a large percentage of the population -- is flocking to see the movie (albeit with a "THIS IS FICTION" disclaimer), it cannot be seen in Punjab, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Andra Pradesh or Tamil Nadu.

Pakistan's 40 year ban on the exhibition of Indian films ended this weekend with a screening of Sohni Mahiwal, a Bollywood classic made in 1984. In addition to signaling improved relations between the two nations, the decision is also expected to provide a great lift to the domestic film industry in Pakistan. Though that result is initially somewhat counter-intuitive, the fact is that the Bollywood ban devastated Pakistan's film community - once it began, audiences, more interested in watching pirated copies of Bollywood films than going to the cinemas, stayed home. Fewer viewers meant less demand; theaters closed and fewer films were made. There are only 270 movie theaters in Pakistan today, less than a quarter of the number that existed in the 1970s, and an industry that regularly produced about 300 films a year just a few decades ago turned out only 18 in 2005.

Not surprisingly, the change in the law comes as a great relief to those within Pakistan's film industry, a group that has pushed for the ban to be lifted for years. And, while some restrictions on the films allowed in are expected to be maintain, those in Bollywood are nevertheless thrilled to have renewed access to an audience that is 162 million strong.

Even after a police crack-down, pirated DVD copies of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith hit Pakistan five days after the film opened in theaters worldwide - a huge delay, considering English-language films are usually available for purchase on the street within 48 hours of their Western release. Retailers expect to sell 50,000 copies of Sith within the first couple of weeks of its release; they're charging $2 for the film, and another $2 for a DVD containing all five previous Star Wars releases. According to the BBC, "the cinema industry in Pakistan has all but collapsed" - theater owners can't afford to import English-language films until about two years after they've already been released everywhere else - so the bootleg industry thrives despite any attempts to curtail piracy. [thanks, Babar!]