The whip-wielding female avenger Hunterwali is a frequently recurring character in South Asian film, going back at least as far as Fearless Nadia’s initial turn in the role back in 1935. This 1988 version is a Pakistani take on the legend fronted by one of the day’s biggest stars of Pakistan’s Punjabi language cinema, the generously proportioned Anjuman. Also on hand are the two other of the day’s biggest stars of Pakistan’s Punjabi language cinema, Sultan Rahi and Mustafa Qureshi, who, along with Anjuman, were teamed together with such numbing frequency that it sounds like it was near impossible to see a movie in which the three didn’t appear.
Still, summary aside, the most important thing that I need to communicate to you about Hunterwali is that it is the most yelling-est movie ever. During its first act it seems as if not a moment passes without someone pointing a finger and bellowing defiantly at someone else, usually with that someone else in turn pointing their finger and bellowing back. It’s as if every man and woman in the film were played by 1970s-era Dharmendra, but a version of 1970s-era Dharmendra who has somehow been fused with the great and powerful OZ so that every one of his full-throated utterances comes equipped with its own cavernous reverb. In keeping with this, Hunterwali as a whole, while not as sleazy, shows much the same commitment to subtlety as Haseena Atom Bomb, complete with an absurdly profligate use of shock zooms and frequent thunderclap sound effects to denote important plot points.
The film does calm down a bit after the first act, settling into a middle bit rich with masala melodrama. At this point it might seem like the movie was less concerned with Hunterwali’s exploits than it is with the question of whether she will settle down and become a dutiful wife and daughter. To underscore this, Hunterwali is provided with a twin sister, Bano, who, by contrast, is every bit as demure and devout as Hunterwali is aggressive and hoochified. (Needless to say, Bano always keeps her head covered and her body hidden underneath loose fitting garments.) Those used to Western portrayals of these type of fantasies of female vigilantism might be forgiven for thinking at first that Hunterwali intends to celebrate its heroine’s flaunting of gender norms. However, the deep conservatism of the film soon becomes apparent, demonstrating that, while the makers may not be above using Hunterwali’s scandalous behavior to titillate their male viewers, they also clearly intend to show that a heavy price must be paid for it.
This price comes in the form of a handsome young fellow whom Hunterwali falls for after he helps her fend off a gang of would-be rapists. In defiance of her father, who has already arranged for her to marry a family friend, she runs off with the man, only to find that he is far from the honorable gentlemen that he initially seemed. In communicating the depths of this guy’s depravity, the movie uses an interesting moral shorthand. Of course, we already know that things aren’t going well once he takes Hunterwali home to reveal that he lives in a cave lair. But once he is revealed to be in cahoots with the gang of would-be rapists we notice only too late that that cave is lined with magazine pinups of Madonna, Brooke Shields, Jennifer Beals and -- hey, is that Phoebe Cates?
Hunterwali manages to escape from the rape gang, but, because she has disgraced her family, feels she has no recourse but to commit suicide. However, her father then shows up on the scene and prevents her from doing so, preferring to handle the job himself by putting a bullet in her head. Bano then also makes the scene and throws herself between Hunterwali and her father, taking the bullet meant for her sister. Dad then turns the gun on himself and blows his own head off. This jaw dropping sequence comes to a close with Hunterwali promising the dying Bano that she will take her place, which will entail playing wife to Bano’s new husband, a righteous police inspector played by Mustafa Qureshi.
As might be expected, the combination of married life and the business of being Bano quickly starts to chafe on Hunterwali, and she is soon back to her vigilante antics in full force. This happily leads to a final act chock-a-block with violence, gore and absurd animal stunts as she hunts down the members of the rape gang one-by-one and shoots out their eyes before hanging them from the rafters of their Rape Cave.
As well as another fine addition to the South Asian Animal Stars Hall of Fame and some truly amazing -- and shiny! -- outfits worn by Anjuman, Hunterwali boasts an ear-hectoring, Bappi Lahiri-esque disco score that will keep you tapping your toe right up to the very moment you shoot yourself to make it stop. What can I say, this movie really is the whole package… of what, though, I have to confess I’m at a loss to say.
Ranga Khush, one of many dacoit films that Joginder starred in during the 70s, actually draws its title from his earlier film Bindiya Aur Bandook. Like Ranga Khush, that 1972 film was a low budget independent production - in this case produced by Joginder, but directed by Shibu Mitra. However, Bindiya Aur Bandook was also a film that surpassed all expectations by becoming a surprise mainstream hit, having such an impact that the catchphrase uttered by Joginder's character, "Ranga Khush" (which basically translates as -- in anticipation of Amrish Puri's famous line from Mr. India -- "Ranga is happy"*), went on to become part of the popular lexicon. (As an aside, Bindiya Aur Bandook also boasted a plot that was similar enough to the later Sholay that Joginder was moved to sue G.P. Sippy for plagiarism.)
In the film, Joginder portrays -- who else? -- Ranga, a bestial bandit chief with a wild, yeti-like appearance. To be honest, I bought the VCD of Ranga Khush because the pictures on its sleeve lead me to believe that it was a monster film. And, indeed, Joginder's character does appear to be as much a supernatural being as he is a man, for, in the end, much as in Pyasa Shaitan, it takes the combination of a laser-firing Krishna, Jesus Christ, and Mohammed -- not to mention a physical beat down from Hanuman himself -- to slow him down.
In grand low budget movie tradition, Ranga Khush depends more upon talk than action to advance its story. As such, without subtitles, it provides little to sustain interest among non-Hindi speakers, save, perhaps, for the sheer hypnotic force of Joginder's bizarre performance. In his role as Ranga, the actor punctuates his dialog with an assortment of shrill chirping sounds and gibbering, high-pitched shrieks, coming across like some kind of helium-gorged Tourettes sufferer, while serving up the visual aspect of his portrayal in the form of near-constant eye rolling and gnashing of teeth.
Despite these tics, the Ranga that we see terrorizing the countryside is indeed fearsome. But when he returns to the supposed sanctuary of his cave hideout, it's a different story. Here it becomes clear that he is under the sway of Ginnibai (Chandrima Bhaduri), a black robed sorceress who may in fact be the wife of the original Ranga, who in turn sustains his presence by way of a snarling statue given a place of honor in one of the cave's more well-lit corners. It seems that Joginder's Ranga was kidnapped as a child by Ranga Sr. and raised as the bandit's own, with the intention of him assuming the Ranga mantle once the elder passed on. Now that this has come the pass, the younger Ranga, as far as I could surmise, is under the hypnotic power of Ginnibai, whom he obviously lives in mortal terror of. This arrangement has left Ranga a total wreck, prone to fits of unhinged chattering and self-pitying crying jags -- in other words, less of an evil madman than a pitiable loony, and perhaps even a bit on the challenged side.
What is also clear from our view of the cave is that, in his time in charge, Ranga has turned it into something of a baby farm. This is thanks not only to the presence of a retinue of toddlers captured from the neighboring villages, but also to a new addition bore him by Devi (Nazima), a young village girl who has become the bandit's unwilling bride. Devi's situation has left her brother Karma (Vikram) determined to free her from her imprisonment, a circumstance that, in a normal Bollywood film, would make Karma the hero of our story, if not for the fact that Joginder, despite his relatively low billing, was hogging so much of the screen time. Thankfully for us, Ranga's stable of captive females also includes Aruna Irani in the role of Kasturi, which provides for a fair share of diverting item numbers to take our minds off Joginder's weird ululations.
By the time Ranga has had his soul awakening smackdown with the combined deities of world religion and set out to make things right -- only to find himself hunted like an animal by the forces of the law -- it has become painfully clear that he is meant to be seen by us as a tragic figure. Of course, long before that point, Joginder has made sure to play him as such a freakish caricature that it is completely impossible for us to do so, much less take him -- or Ranga Khush as a whole -- seriously on any level. Still, there is something so hysterical about that portrayal and the film that contains it that it is easy to see why Ranga Khush became such a cult item in its day. I'm confident that proper subtitling would reveal a whole treasure trove of quotable lines to us ferangi. Until then, the only way I can pay tribute to its late, great star is by gibbering incoherently like a rabid spider monkey with half of its head caved in.
This broader view of Hanks' work also really underscores just how much his inspiration was fueled by fantasies of vengeance. His attempts at conventional, plot-driven narrative tend to be cursory and prosaic, and it is only when depicting his villains' nihilistic schemes and the karmic retribution they provoke that his imagination really takes flight, pouring on the perversely elaborate detail with obvious relish. What also struck me particularly with this volume was the staggering isolation of Hanks' heroes. With the exception of a few serially-imperiled damsels, there are seldom sidekicks or supporting players here, and while there is the occasional villain with an actual name and recognizable countenance, these never hold their place on the stage for very long, with the hero's nemesis just as likely being depicted as a faceless horde, often seen only in long view as insect-like huddles drawn with no attention to individual detail. It is almost as if the presentation of any kind of one-on-one interpersonal relationship was beyond Hanks' capabilities.
So, anyway, at the end of our last very lengthy installment, I said that I was interested in seeing Among Us so that I could gauge the progress made by SOV horror filmmakers the Polonia brothers between the time of making the frankly laughable Feeders in 1996 and Among Us’ production date of 2004. Well, it turns out that the most noticeable special ingredient that the brothers have added to the mix this time around is a sense of ironic self awareness and a willingness to parody themselves. Of course, these are far from unique attributes for a horror film to have in this snarky, post modern age, given that such postures are an ideal refuge for the lazy or simply incompetent filmmaker, of which there are sadly quite many. (Hey, don’t you get it? It was meant to be bad, dude.)
And to be honest, I feel kind of bad about this. Don’t get me wrong, though. Feeders is a movie that is absolutely impossible not to make fun of. And, furthermore, I think that to make fun of it is the appropriate reaction -- certainly more in the spirit of things than to solemnly condemn it for its shortcomings. But the thing is, Among Us gives me the impression that, somewhere along the line, all of the mockery and criticism somehow got to John and Mark Polonia, leading them to adopt the chitinous shell of irony that we see here. Fortunately, they muck that up a bit, too, which allows for a few faint glimmers of the fun that could be gleaned from the earlier film.
Among Us begins with a series of laughably executed scare sequences in which a fellow in a clumsy Bigfoot costume attacks various campers. This instantly ceases to be laughable once it is revealed that what we are seeing are meant to be clips from the works of B Horror film director Billy D’Amato (Bob Dennis). You see, they’re supposed to be bad. Among Us repeats this same fake out over and over throughout its first hour, to the extent that every one of its potential horror movie moments is ultimately revealed to be ersatz. As a result, audience goodwill is totally exhausted by the time, during the movie’s final third, when D’Amato and his film crew travel into the woods and encounter Bigfoot for reals. The Polonias don’t help matters much by including among their party a fey crypto-zoologist played for broad comedy by co-director Jon McBride. Combined with all of the shaky POV camera work employed during this section, McBride’s performance has the odd effect of forcing you to contemplate what Blair Witch might have been like had its cast included an over-the-top comic relief character of the type found in a Mexican wrestling movie.
I remember Keith, in one of his Teleport City reviews, mentioning how one of the cardinal – and frequent – sins of these SOV movies is how they try to compensate for their glaring artificiality by having characters constantly say things like, “This isn’t a movie man. This is real!” Hey, he was right! I honestly lost count of how many times characters in Among Us said things like, “This isn’t a fucking set! This is life.” Or, “Isn’t that what they say in the movies?” On the other hand, I must say that Among Us’ script, in terms of its attention to character and attempts at believable dialog, is indeed a vast improvement over that of Feeders – even if that only results in it achieving the kind of serviceable blandness that ultimately makes it less entertaining than its lovably off-base predecessor.
In the end, Among Us is an uncomfortable watch due to the way that it so violently wrestles with its own limitations. The problem with these type of films is that, even at their most technically refined, the best they can hope for is to look like a Korean soap opera, and no amount of screaming at the audience that they are, in fact, a real movie – or, more poignantly, real effin’ life, man – will change that. What’s more, the relentlessly knowing, self-referential tone of the film comes across as an attempt by its makers to dictate what their audience’s response to it should be. And that strikes me as being something of an imbalanced exchange. The audience of a film like Among Us should be as free in responding to it as the film’s creators were in making it. Working well outside the restraints of the studio system, the Polonias presumably made exactly the movie that they wanted to make – within their limitations, of course – and hopefully with little regard for what others might think. We who choose to watch that film should in turn be free to make of it whatever we want, without having to feel the filmmakers’ over-controlling fingers all up in our brain pans.
After all, if we are strangely transfixed by a movie like Feeders, it is not just because of the ineptitude of its makers, but also their audacity. The vast majority of people in the Polonia brothers’ place would, despite their enthusiasms, consider their combined lack of means and ability and – granted that they even indulged themselves in contemplating the possibility at all – turn their backs on the project of making their own films. In deciding otherwise and following their desires, the Polonias stuck their heads up out of the foxhole of conformity, effectively making themselves targets for derision and the condescending judgment of those many who took the easier path. In judging them myself, am I really going to fall down on the side of conformity? Of risk aversion? Of catering to mainstream opinion?
I’ve remarked in the past upon the great extent to which my movie viewing habits are dictated by whatever dollar DVDs I’m able to find in my local junk shops. So I’ve decided to once again attempt to initiate one of my sporadically recurring features on the topic. The last time I attempted to do this was way back in May of last year, with my review of the hilariously dubbed Thai Wild-One-on-pachyderms saga Killer Elephants, so let’s hope that this time around I do a better job of keeping up with it.
By the way, while there are currently no functioning movie theaters on Mission Street, the facades of seemingly all of those that have come and gone over the years remain, repurposed as retail spaces, parking lots, etc. Ironically, it is only the one theater that I actually had a chance to attend during its years of operation, the cavernous New Mission, that remains shuttered. I have a vivid memory of my ill-fated attempt to watch The Company of Wolves there on Family Night, a monthly event that had more the air of a neighborhood block party than a night at the movies. One weekend morning a couple months back I saw a truckload of mattresses being loaded into it, so perhaps it’s now being used as a warehouse.
I suspect that Feeders benefits from my relative lack of previous exposure to shot-on-video backyard horror films. I know that other writers on the internet have taken a more proactive approach to this subgenre, and have come away from it with an aversion bordering on toxic reaction. For myself, what encounters I have had with these type of films have been, as I suspect they are for most people, purely accidental. I can vaguely remember feelings of frustration and disappointment that I would have upon bringing a movie home from the video store back in the 80s, seduced by box art that promised classic B movie thrills, only to find something that, to my surprise, looked like someone’s home video of a visit to a charity haunted house – something that, to my mind, wasn’t a movie at all.
Both Feeders and Among Us are products of the Polonia brothers, a pair of movie mad twins from Wellsboro, PA who, starting in the late eighties, churned out a truly impressive number of homegrown genre efforts. Feeders, made in 1996, falls somewhat toward the earlier end of their oeuvre, and comes complete with all of the shortcomings you might expect in a novice effort of its type. For starters, the acting on the part of the amateur cast comes in every shade of bad, from hysterically overemphatic to disturbingly dead-eyed and listless. An awkwardly expletive-laden script (at one point, a forest ranger, seeing a flying saucer pass overhead, exclaims, “I hope it doesn’t burn the fucking forest down!”) does nothing to help matters, nor do the heavy regional accents of many involved, which had me constantly anticipating someone calling someone else a “jagoff”, even though, sadly, that never happened.
On the technical end we have the Feeders themselves, a race of marauding space aliens who are realized via immobile paper mache puppets that appear to have been built up over either half-inflated party balloons or crumpled up paper bags. These make their journey Earthward inside flying saucers that are rendered via the crudest, Colecovision style computer graphics imaginable. To be fair to the brothers, they do prove relatively competent in the areas of camera pointing and editing, and attempt to compensate for these aforementioned shortfalls with a generous amount of splatter.
The film centers upon two road tripping buddies, Bennett, a nerdy comic foil in a fetching shorts-and-tube-socks ensemble played by John Polonia himself, and Derek, played by co-director and fellow SOV auteur (see Woodchipper Massacre) Jon McBride. Unfortunately, the two men’s arrival in the picturesque town of Mansfield, PA coincides with that of a vanguard force of alien invaders, who have for some reason chosen the sleepy tourist spot as their first point of conquest. The reason for the invasion becomes clear once the aliens start in on the “feeding” referred to in the title, which involves a lot of sloppy chowing down on the various nonplussed looking actors, one of whom proves himself incapable of even playing a severed head convincingly.
Various confrontations and tense close calls follow, all played out in the non-descript front rooms and garages of those friends and family members of the Polonias who were at this point still tolerant enough of their movie-bug shenanigans to allow the use of their homes. Highlights include a very Shatner-esque moment for John Polonia in which he does battle with an alien duplicate of himself, and a 1970s style “downer” ending that sees McBride fall to his knees and tear at his hair histrionically as the beginning of Earth’s final days plays out before him.
I noticed that Among Us, which was made in 2004, was singled out by a couple of IMDB commenters as being the best that brothers John and Mark Polonia had to offer, though each used heavily qualified language in setting that notion forth. I was interested in seeing what progress would be evident in the brothers’ style and technical ability eight years on from Feeders, which in itself is something of a compliment to Feeders – that, in its aftermath, I could look forward to watching another product of the same crew with anything other than dread, much less anything that could even be remotely described as “interest”.
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