The Incredibly Strange Cinema Club

We always had an idea that we would love to share our passion for cinema with others denied opportunities to watch movies that fell on the wrong side of the mainstream.  We relished the chance to screen cinematic gems from the past, even the silent era, Jamaican films, North Korean Monster movies,  Soviet films, and Trash Films – all sorts of films that were normally off the radar in pre-internet Pakistan.  We had a handful of screenings off and on.  It was gratifying to meet like-minded people interested in films other than the summer blockbuster kind and young people appearing to watch movies made decades before their time in Black & White.  Many years later, meeting people who said they were introduced to the films of Martin Scorcese or David Lynch or Mojica Marins, John Waters, Dario Argento or Ed Wood through The Hot Spot was always gratifying to hear.  Alfred Hitchcock’s films were normally well-attended.

Remember, these were days before the city had even one single cinema.  When cinemas started to appear, our screenings shrunk further, and we strictly avoided playing movies less than 20-plus years old.  We found ourselves in a niche we always wanted, which was to be a Retro style Cult Movie Club, but even that was made redundant when movies of even the most obscure kind were available online.  Regardless, our job was done.  We had already pointed a generation towards cinema other than the Summer Blockbuster kind and exposed kids to the wonders of the great directors of the 1970s and made.  We helped put Blacksploitation, Cheese, Splatter and Cannibalism on the map and felt it was for the betterment of the community at large.  Musically too, people were unused to all sorts flying off in their direction upon arriving at The Hot Spot in times to come.  And when we started to include some of our favourite dialogues and scenes from magnificent Punjabi films, customers turned purple in embarrassment or mostly burst into laughter when they caught on to what they had just heard.  The problem with having a sense of humour is that there are always those who will take offence, which has caused needless and pointless headaches occasionally.  Like when we were taken to court for the humour on the Pakistani Posters we had used as décor because people felt they were obscene!  The State has already approved and cleared these 30 to 50-year-old film posters—an unbelievable energy loss and drama over nothing.  The cops and reps of the judges duly arrived to check out the “obscene immorality that was endangering our innocent lamb-like youth to corruption”.  Even they had to laugh and went home with a story to tell at the next dinner few dinner parties for a few days. 

In the early days, I recall finding a note or two from a concerned mother who felt she had to cover her child’s eyes when entering The Hot Spot as there were often gruesome horror movie trailers playing on the screens and the picture of Linda Blair in full on possessed mode was more than horrifying and positioned right at the counter where everyone would see it.  Oops, bad move.  That picture was retired, but the trailers remained the same, especially as most were PG-rated trailers, even if they were for horror films.  In any case, most toddlers laugh at horror films made all those years ago, don’t they?  Maybe not.  We had been completely green when starting The Hot Spot experiment and oblivious to local laws.  Nor did we expect to be causing anyone a nuisance for one second due to hordes of people showing up in the evening.  This was never a plan, it just happened, and we were unaware.  Some perfectly justifiable points were presented, even if in a slightly catty style in a local paper which we did respond to.  I would have accepted the relevant concerns as being 100% justified today.   I would have apologized and informed them that we had started looking for a suitable outlet and would be winding up sooner rather than later.  What the letter claimed was completely right, even if they added a few untruths to make their story more enjoyable to read!

Let’s get back to how the Incredibly Strange Cinema Club came to be.  In a nutshell, there were a few components to the whole enterprise.  Firstly, there was no cinema in Islamabad.  Melody had recently refurbished after years and reopened amidst huge excitement, while Nafdec has been rubble for a while and now lies like a fossil in the city’s heart.  Some would say that Nafdec’s situation is symbolic of much that has gone wrong in our society.  Secondly, our collection of cult films and horror films was reaching a bursting point, and this was before the days of the internet.  We felt we should be sharing some of these classics, such as Reefer Madness, The Creeping Terror, Trog, along with true gems like Apocalypse Now, Raging Bull, The Last Picture Show, and Targets, with those who might or might not crawl out from the comfort of their homes to watch.  We also decided that all the profits from the screening would be kept aside for The Edhi Foundation, and I would personally go and drop in the payment occasionally at their Aabpara Office.  Yes, we could read the copyright, but to right that wrong, we created a Club where members had numbered cards and the like.  Our attempt was not to exploit the films to benefit our pockets – the money went to Edhi, and receipts would be displayed at the F-7 branch for those who would be smirking in disbelief. 

Meanwhile, the internet buzzed, and we got down to uploading our first reviews on movies nobody had ever heard of.  These reviews, mostly of obscure and z grade desi horror, social or Pashto and Punjabi epics, began to develop an avid following in far-flung parts of the world.  Since those days, Zinda Laash, Haseena Atom Bomb, The Cat Beast Terror (A name we gave the film), Adam Khor, Shock Maar, Hitlar, Bala, Goorkund and others have gone on to make names for themselves as favourites among true movie geeks.  Haseena Atom Bomb has been written in volumes and spoken about in Universities.  All this stemmed from our initial reviews of these and other classic popular desi movies, the type polite people prefer not to discuss as it upsets their gentle dispositions.

Through these reviews, I got invited to serve as a Jury Member at one of the world’s most incredible Film Festivals in Sitges, Spain.  I was rubbing shoulders with my heroes and even judging some of their films!  A completely surreal and exhilarating experience. 

Suddenly, our passion for films, especially local Pakistani films and writing about them honestly was helping carve a little niche for The Hot Spot and its role in Internet Cinema.  We increasingly found ourselves writing about weird and wonderful Pakistani films time had forgotten and nobody had ever bothered writing about before. 

The main reason and the thrill of hosting a Cinema Club was to introduce films to an audience who may never be exposed to such cinema otherwise.  So we relished the opportunity to screen films like Eraserhead, Brian De Palma and Francis Coppola, Carpenter and Tobe Hooper.  Terrence Mallick and Peter Bogdanovich, Todd Browning and Terrence Fisher, and so many other wonderful masters who weren’t subjects of conversation at the coffee table or over dinner, and we wanted to nudge things along so that they might be someday.  We aimed to spread the love and joy of cinema – slightly off mainstream, from mild to fairly off-centre.—all kinds of cinema from any part of the world. 

Our speciality would always be horror films, cult films, mad films, trash and exploitation, and the truly established but perhaps more obscure films of years gone by.  The Honeymoon Killers, Freaks and Carnival of Souls are exactly the kind of film that The Incredibly Strange Cinema Club would love to be associated with—those and perhaps Troll 2, Zinda Laash, Dancehall Queen and Gundaa.

The Cinema Club took a back seat when the cities sprinkling of new cinemas springing up, especially because now films of the obscure kind that we would screen could be easily downloaded by those interested in watching them.  These people would naturally prefer to watch the movie in the comfort of their homes, which is perfectly understandable.  This, however meant that there was a smaller and smaller pool of films left to try to draw people to any screening we would host simply because the kind of cinephiles we target could easily access it at home.  So, our screenings have dried up of late, and most of the time, Live Sport dominates.  However, there is a nascent scene of young people who are thoroughly interested in cinema and filmmaking.  Hopefully, with them congregating as an umbrella group at The Hot Spot soon, perhaps the Incredibly Strange Club could once again screen films that are a world away from the films screened in our cinemas.  If we do so, and hopefully we will, the proceeds will naturally all go to Charity.  After Abdus Sattar Edhi Sahib’s demise, we donated funds from any screenings to the Ayesha Chundigur Foundation for Animals in Karachi.

There was a stage when our film collection was available for members as a library.  We hardly had any customers, maybe because people don’t have the habit of returning things on time and turn nasty when asked for a late fee, and we didn’t want to get into ugly confrontations with anyone.  It isn’t worth it.  Again, this idea of a library was driven by love to share our kind of films with others, not for commerce.  So we hardly ever bought the latest blockbuster (unless we liked it) because it would be on screens for people to watch or download anyway.  As it is, we would avoid screening anything that isn’t decades old because we do not want to take away even one person from the audience who might be paying money to support the cinema industry instead.  We are and always will be (if resurrected) a Retro style operation that screens either old films, obscure films, or films made by non-commercial new filmmakers with their 100% consent.   

Some of our biggest screening successes had come from times when cinemas were scarce, and the internet was not so wide-reaching, so this is a long time ago.  I compiled a list of films we screened that probably attracted more curiosity and seats taken than others.  In those days, a movie like Eraserhead couldn’t be found in the markets and there was no internet.  Following that, there was a phase when Japanese and Korean Horror films were screened, but soon even those were drawn into the mainstream and available through downloading, legal and otherwise.  Obscure or controversial films remain an option, but perhaps we could also host an evening devoted to local filmmakers’ work every month –  Short films, documentaries or otherwise.  It could be a great way to share their ideas and use as a platform to showcase their work, if just among friends.  Avenues are generally quite restricted in this field.  Keep your eyes and ears open for any upcoming screening from The Incredibly Strange Cinema Club or any word on the meeting of a newly formed cinema club at The Hot Spot F7 who intend to meet monthly to chat about anything and everything film-related.