Goorkund (1995)
Starring: Badar Munir, Shahnaz, Imran, Naimat, Babra Raj
Director: Imran Khan & Shahnaz Begum
Synopsis: A shocking tale of deviancy featuring scenes of necrophilia and rape.
Reviewed by: Omar Ali Khan

The film opens with a village simpleton cycling up to the local graveyard and calling out to Goorkund Baba, the graveyard keeper cursed with a dreadful set of buck teeth and a nasty, menacing scowl. The lad informs Goorkund that a funeral procession is due later that day and suggests he prepare a fresh grave.

Later, when the procession arrives amidst much sobbing hysteria, Goorkund becomes strangely excited upon discovering that the deceased is a buxom beauty, even if she is dead and rather badly discoloured. He waits patiently until midnight before returning to the grave for a closer inspection. Digging up the body, he proceeds to have passionate sex with the corpse in a shocking and virtually unprecedented scene of cinematic necrophilia.

The graveyard festivities continue as Goorkund later rapes yet another corpse. A posse of faithful zombies then emerge from their graves and dance around—appropriately enough—to Michael Jackson's Thriller! After such a bizarre opening, the film has a great deal to live up to. Shockingly enough, it doesn't disappoint.

Badar Munir appears as the village rebel with a heart of gold, pitted against the forces of evil in the shape of the villainous Zabardast Khan and the local corrupt police and judiciary. Bombshell Shahnaz, who also co-directed this remarkable shocker, makes an unforgettable entrance that should have her fans reeling with delight. Her introduction alone is worth the price of admission, as she is perfectly cast as a wild warrior woman on a relentless quest for revenge after falling foul of the law. Nothing will deter her from settling the score—we merely await the obligatory flashback sequence.

One particularly sensational scene sees a sadistic villain preparing to burn a helpless woman alive after dousing her with kerosene. Just as he hurls a burning match towards his victim, Superwoman Shahnaz arrives and catches it in her bare fingers mere millimetres before impact. A close shave indeed! The violence is then cranked up another notch as the mighty Shahnaz administers a lesson to the would-be rapist that he is unlikely ever to forget.

Later, Badar and Shahnaz join forces in pursuit of that most elusive of commodities: justice. Poor Badar must contend with a thoroughly corrupt judicial system, and just when we think corruption is the worst the judges can offer, the film delivers a startling revelation and plot twist that should leave audiences gasping in disbelief.

Released on 1 September 1995, Goorkund is an absolute scream, featuring no fewer than five extended scenes of necrophilia at the hands of the deranged, buck-toothed graveyard keeper.

Astonishingly, the film was granted a censor's certificate despite repeatedly depicting the gruesome spectacle of corpses being violated.

There is also a wonderfully inventive murder scene in the courtroom, where the judge fires a poisoned pellet from his fountain pen, dispatching a key witness at precisely the right moment.

Yet another slice of astonishing regional cinema from an area often regarded as Islam's equivalent of America's Bible Belt.

Between the scenes of necrophilia, we are treated to the customary parade of generously proportioned beauties frolicking through rain-soaked parks, somehow managing to change costumes four times during each of the painfully tuneless songs, of which there are at least half a dozen. One occasionally wonders whether these gyrating maidens are perhaps even more horrifying than the scenes actually intended to frighten us.

A genuinely repulsive shocker in the finest Pashto tradition, Goorkund is an embarrassment from its opening scene to its closing frame. Yet for anyone seeking the ultimate slice of trashy celluloid, you really cannot go wrong with this humungous slab of crud. There is a wealth of astonishingly awful cinema waiting to be discovered here in the Land of the Pure and Virtuous—an unmatched treasure trove for devotees of the bizarre.