Haboo (1961)
Cast: Habib, Husna, Talish, Amy Minwala, Nazar
Director: Rahim Gul
Synopsis: Mystery, Romance, Cannibals, Giant Apes and sinister human experiments gone awry in this 1961 Jungle Classic.
Reviewed by: Omar Khan

A group of companions are merrily making their way on an adventure trip and are passing by the forest when beset by a tribe of bloodthirsty cannibals hell-bent on skinning them and then gorging on them with their soup for breakfast.

The men, including the dashing Habib and his comic sidekick Nazar, are ready for roasting, but a few necessary rituals, such as an intoxicating, seductive jungle dance by the local beauty queen, cause a delay. But just as her sizzling dance reaches a crescendo, there are shrieks of horror as the legendary Haboo makes an appearance, he being an Ape-Man of prodigious strength and nastiness. As the cannibals forsake their human sausages to flee Haaboo, the friends can quickly get into the forest's nether regions, where they are safe but very lost.

So when our friends suddenly turn to the left, you can see a Lion strolling along. Then they all turn to the right, and a giraffe is munching at some tall trees. They learn to adjust to the jungle and appear to be enjoying the adventure other than the odd appearance by some wild beast – footage taken from some nature film and inserted deftly into proceedings. It’s pretty magnificently shameless, and one has to admire Lollywood for the sheer gall of planning, scripting and shooting a “Jungle” movie, entirely shot in the environs of a studio with no hint of the jungle for many a mile.

The two animals that make actual appearances are a snake and a monkey in two brief scenes, but all other beasts are courtesy of being borrowed from elsewhere. Some of the sets, though are excellent, namely the Cannibal headquarters and the jungle camp. Everyone appears to be in good spirits, and soon, the group is joined by a very learned and rather dashing professor who takes a shine to one of the females along for the ride.

Life appears rather idyllic without a care in the world when Habib is drawn to the chants of some strange and enchanting voice. For days, he obsesses about the elusive woman with the voice that has mesmerised him completely until finally, they meet, at which point half the movie is over. Haaboo, the monster of the movie’s title, has yet to appear as the film’s second half kicks off.

Habib finally traces the voice to Husna, a young jungle beauty who has lived a very sheltered life in her father’s cave, where there is hardly any human interaction. Her charm and beauty floor Habib, and now the film lapses into a lull where songs follow each other with alarming regularity every few minutes. The film should be heading towards some climax. It instead meanders along with songs, following quickly one after another until there are around five or more songs in only the second half of the movie, causing the pace to suffer badly.

Then matters come to a head when the city boy and the jungle girl fall in love, but he must first convince the girl’s father, who alarmingly hangs out in full Viking regalia, with horns and all. Talish, the father, warns Habib to stay away from their part of the mountain, but Habib is adamant and besotted with Husna, the beautiful daughter, and tries to win her hand. Little does he know that Talish the Viking and his beautiful young daughter harbour a terrible, dark secret.

Will Talish be able to keep a lid on his strange nighttime hobbies of experimenting with animal and human DNA, or will the cat soon

Haboo be out of the bag? Will Habib be able to win her over despite Haboo also having eyes for Husna? And finally, who is that hairy man lying on the adjacent bed in the cave at the Viking’s home?

After a very long romantic interlude with hardly any animal action and no appearance by Haboo, things finally pick up for a gripping finale with shades of Frankenstein and the same classic elements of tragedy and pathos.

Haboo has its intense moments, especially the scenes involving the cannibals and some of the comedy, though juvenile, is not insufferable. The songs are relatively tuneful, but they only slow the movie’s tempo down to a snail’s pace in the second half when the film’s balance is tipped resoundingly in favour of romance at the expense of jungle thrills.

What could have been a genuinely great Lollywood King Kong meets Dr. Frankenstein’s mutation and is somewhat underdone by its emphasis on romantic and musical elements. The film is frustratingly short on its title character, Haboo.