Original title: Zinda Laash

The first known horror film to have been made in Pakistan has a reputation for being simply a copy of Hammer’s Dracula (1958) directed by Terence Fisher. And there’s certainly some truth to that, director Khwaja Sarfraz restaging some of Fisher’s scenes almost shot-for-shot. But there are enough new twists and turns thrown in here and there to make The Living Corpse if not exactly an essential watch, at the very least an interesting viewing experience.

With no horror tradition to speak of – and seemingly no vampire myth of its own – Pakistani cinema was free to create a whole new set of ground rules. That it failed to do so, instead relying on well-worn chestnuts from western mythology, is a cause for some regret – had Sarfraz, his co-writer Naseem Rizwani and his producer Abdul Baqi gone for it, we could have been looking at the birth of a fascinating strand in global horror which could have led to who knows where by now. Instead, the film starts with a sequence that draws not on the Hammer Dracula but on another film that Terence Fisher directed for them, The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959) – generic, apparently non-specialising “scientist” Professor Tabani (Rehan) has been pursuing a formula that will allow him to conquer death. But when he tests it on himself, it initially appears to have the exact opposite effect and he keels over dead.

But it would be a short film if the story ended there and, after being placed in the basement of his palatial home by his loyal assistant (Nasreen), Tabani revives with a thirst for blood. After biting his assistant and making her his bride, Tabani is visited by the film’s Jonathan Harker analogue Dr Aqil (Asad Bukhar) who is promptly disposed of by Tabani and his bride. Aqil’s brother (Habibur Rehman), largely replacing Van Helsing here, though an uncredited innkeeper fills in a bit of missing vampire legend, soon turns up looking for him and from here the film largely follows the path familiar from the Hammer Dracula, culminating in a scene in which Tabani is defeated when Aqil accidentally uncovers a window, causing his nemesis to dissolve in the sunlight that pours in.

Bits are purloined from the Universal Dracula (1931) – though set in the the then-modern day, Tabani dresses like Bela Lugosi and has a variation on his “children of the night” speech – but it’s the Hammer film that provides much of the source material. There are some new wrinkles along the way – a scene from the novel is restored when Tabani  bursts in on his bride trying to seduce Aqil after a sexy dance routine to what sounds like a very good cover of The Shadows Peace Pipe, the B-side to their 1961 hit The Savage, and throws her a baby, telling her to “feast on that” before taking care of Aqil. Surprisingly, the one thing it doesn’t add are any Muslim accoutrements to the story, though perhaps understandably all Christian trappings are gone – but there’s no analogue here for the makeshift cross used to force “Dracula”/Tabani to his doom at the climax.

That “Dracula” (in truth, the antagonist isn’t really the Count we know and love, he’s never referred to as such, and not really a vampire in the traditional western sense, more the product of science than superstition) is as sexualised here as he was in the Hammer film caused a few raised eyebrows in the deeply conservative Pakiatan and several cuts had to be made for the domestic release. Rehan has neither the sensuousness of Christopher Lee nor the magisterial “otherness” of Lugosi but makes a decent stab at the role and the rest of the cast all acquit themselves rather well.

They have to do battle with the score though, a maddening mix of cues lifted from James Bernard’s score for Dracula, new material from composer Tassadaque Hussain, including some experimental jazz, extracts from Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, ossia L’inutile precauzione/The Barber of Seville and some pop music steals, including the aforementioned Shadows piece and, most incongruously, La Cucaracha. It makes for a film that at times almost seems to be striving for laughs but it’s never clear if Sarfraz understood how comical these pieces would sound to westerners – though in fairness, there was never any thought that the film would travel that far so it probably never occurred to him. If it had, he might well have thought twice about a truly bizarre and out of place Bollywood-inspired song-and-dance routine at the beach that seems to have wandered in unannounced from an entirely different film.

Nicely directed otherwise, with some very inventive and even exciting moments (at the climax, there’s a no-holds-barred fist fight between Tabani and Aqil that finds them slugging it out in the former’s mansion taking them from basement to rooftop and all ports between) The Living Corpse isn’t a major addition to the vampire film canon, but nor is it an unpleasant watch. It’s never going to depose either the 1931 or the 1958 Dracula as anyone’s favourite screen version of the story, but it remains a fascinating little oddity nonetheless. At times, it has the feel of one of those Mexican Gothics from the 50s or 60s and if the script leaves some gaps here and there (it’s not clear what the original Aqil does nor why he was at Tabani’s home) then that just adds to its very odd charm.

Sarfraz wasn’t a prolific director so far as anyone can tell and he certainly never made another horror film. And other Pakistani director seemed in no hurry to pick up the gauntlet thrown down by Sarfraz, though in 2007 Omar Ali Khan made Zibahkhana/Hell’s Ground which explicitly references The Living Corpse more than once and which some people seem to regard as a sequel, though there’s really not that much to connect the two films.