Ghosts in Pakistan: ‘Zinda Laash’

When Dracula invented Aab e Hayat and damned his soul to science

Horror season may have officially ended with October, but as true fans and believers will tell you: the hauntings care little for what page the calendars are turning. Much like the age-defying monsters under the bed, Zinda Laash is an atmospheric homegrown horror that prolongs the spooks long past Halloween.

Directed by Khwaja Sarfraz and produced by Habib, upon its 1967 release, the film became Pakistan’s first X-rated film, noted for its impressive attention to detail in horror, with imported fangs, cliché costumes, and immersive sound design.

Aside from the horror, equally contentious was its scandalous embrace of textbook eroticism. Even though its temptations are more implied than acted upon, Zinda Laash interjected mainstream cinema with a raw sensuality not entirely misplaced given its premise. After all, few acts are more carnal than the vampire’s kiss.

More than fifty years later, Habib and Sarfraz’s risky (or risque) endeavour has donned the mantle of a cult classic. It is both impressive and juvenile, reminiscent of a golden uninhibited past. Despite Pakistani cinema’s relative obscurity, one might expect some lone cinephile to add the film to their annual Halloween marathon. But does Zinda Laash merit a spot on such devoted lists?

Behold the great past

When Professor Tabani (Rehan) devises his Aab e Hayat (the elixir of life), he envisions immortality as its greatest promise, not its gravest peril. Lauded today as seminal horror viewing for Pakistani cinema fans, Zinda Laash begins with a curious disclaimer for a horror film.

“Every soul will taste death,” Habib wisely recites the oft-quoted verse from Surah Al Imran. He then reminds the audience that life and death are solely in God’s control and that no being, well or ill-intentioned, can challenge this divine authority.

The film goes on to feature three elaborate dance sequences led by women out to tempt men, women, and the cinemagoer with delirious abandon. Of these, one follows a vampire bride luring in her victim, heaving sultry sighs to an instrumental backdrop. For garden variety General Zia critics, for whom a glorious past is never empty nostalgia but always a prelude to imminent resistance, Zinda Laash is the ultimate fantasy.

How could one living in 2024’s Pakistan not wonder about the possibility of such a film being made today? Amid its underlying religiosity, even more fascinating is how the film’s women are neither victims nor villains. Damned to desire more, these women are surrounded by men of reason who blame their transgressions on the source of evil: man as the mad, ungodly scientist.

While didacticism has always been a hallmark of Pakistani Urdu cinema in the ’60s and ’70s, Zinda Laash’s invocation of higher powers is both instinctive and distracting—reminding us that few things stir a primal belief in the unseen like facing its horrors. Divine intervention comes as the final recourse, tapping into a long tradition of science’s failure to defeat lurking demons, monsters, and spirits in fiction.

The Exorcist (1973) famously summons the Catholic church after doctors are unable to correct a demonic possession whereas Purana Mandir (1984) seeks solace in Lord Shiva to vanquish an evil magician. But Zinda Laash takes it a step further. Both its villain and hero are well-meaning men who dared to believe—only one turns to science while the other to god.

The fate of cult

On account of being one of the few better-known Pakistani ‘oldies’ aside from Aina, Maula Jatt, and possibly Andaleeb and Anjuman, a serious viewer is compelled to visit Zinda Laash with reverence.

The film was released on DVD by the American-based home video label Mondo Macabro in 2003. The release featured extras, including an audio commentary by British producer Pete Tombs and filmmaker Omar Khan—creator of the 2007 comedy-horror Zibahkhana—along with a behind-the-scenes documentary and an episode of Channel 4’s Mondo Macabro series, South Asian Cinema.

Tombs’ interest in Zinda Laash is arguably a testament to the film’s cult status. Co-founder of Mondo Macabro, his label committed to archiving obscure exploitation cinemas from all over the world in 2002. Khan, too, has generously devoted himself to establishing a local urban cult circuit with HotSpot Cafe, his B-film-themed ice cream parlour franchise.