B-MOVIE REVIEW: "International Guerrillas" (1990)

As a reaction to the controversy surrounding "The Satanic Verses," a bunch of Pakistani filmmakers decided to create a movie in defense of Islam. In the film, Muslim rebels go on an global quest to murder Salman Rushdie, who lives with a Jewish sorceress on an island fortress where he stabs wannabe assassins with scimitars. It's also three hours long. And a musical. 

Back in 1988, Salman Rushdie released a book that was marginally critical of Islam, titled "The Satanic Verses." Needless to say, not a whole lot of hardcore Muslims were fans of the work, with such noteworthy Islamic heads of state as the Ayatollah of Iran and the guy that used to be Cat Stevens calling for Rushdie's assassination shortly after the novel's release.

While some irked Muslims responded by killing the hell out of the book's Japanese translators and lobbing Molotov cocktails at retailers carrying the title, others pursued more artistic ways of telling this Rushdie fella' what-for. Which, of course, brings us to "International Guerrillas," an absolutely indescribable piece of Jihadist propaganda/satire that melds virtually every single genre you can think of into a cinematic ball of insanity.

The Pakistani production, known in its native land as "International Gorillay," is a 1990 movie that's one part Bollywood dance spectacular, one part "Rambo III," one part slapstick comedy and one part religious agitprop. Clocking in at a staggering three hours long, it truly is an "epic" in every sense of the word; an epic that appears to have cost about five dollars to make, but still.

The film begins rather cryptically, with an ancient-looking book prominently displayed in a smoky cavern, while some guy with a menacing voice says some stuff that's all ominous and shit. After that, we have ourselves some particularly grainy aerial shots, which segues into a sequence where Salman Rushdie acolytes toss back some cocktails and talk about ways to destroy Islam.

Next week's meeting to destroy Sikhism is being held at IHOP, by the way.

Anyway, a dude in a cowboy hat drops through a skylight and says that "The Satanic Verses" is part of some grand Western conspiracy to start fires across the Muslim world and, thusly, prevent an Islamic superstate from arising. By the way, throughout the entire sequence, some down right pimp-tastic rock and roll synth music is playing -- as we all know, Eurotrash '80s proto-techno is the ONLY good thing the Great Satan of Western Civilization has granted humanity, clearly.

And from this, we get our first of MANY song and dance numbers, a particularly pointless disco sequence, which has actors for no apparent reason breaking out into occasional spurts of broken English. At this point, I think I should also mention how the audio in the film drops considerably from time-to-time...a technological fault that surely no one would expect out of a 20-year-old VHS recording.

Then, a double agent sporting a bandanna breaks into the soiree, starts spraying WD-40 everywhere and then decides to rush into the still-ongoing disco number and start doing a little song and dance himself. The actress he duets with, I feel I should add, looks JUST LIKE Nelly Furtado...hell, she might be her second cousin or something.

After that, ANOTHER cowboy shows up -- right after the FIRST cowboy blows up a dude with a magical stopwatch. So the cowboys climb atop each other's shoulders and continue the "Stairway To Heaven"-length ballad, culminating with the pseudo cowboys playing the syndicate ringleader's bald noggin like a bongo before everybody hops into the dance. And this leads to a police shootout, which segues into a dramatic, exposition-providing sequence where we learn the cowboys and the police chief are all siblings. Cue some highly awkward political chit-chat about crony capitalism, low-income crime and the pros and cons of living in a police state, and we move on to a montage showing the reaction of various Muslim media outlets to the publication of "The Satanic Verses." Motivated by Rushdie's novel, the cowboy scoundrels decide to give up their life of conning and conniving to snuff out "the biggest crook in the world" instead.

Displaced, homicidal vengeance: it really does make the world go 'round!

Next, Pakistani police forces prepare for an anti-Rushdie demonstration, while a couple of clerics issue a fatwa on the author. There are snipers in the trees at the rally, which, as we should all know by now, means bad things are destined to happen shortly.

A protester said she won't rest until Rushdie's head rolls past her sneakers, and the snipers open fire and a stampede follows suit. This results in a major police shootout and, for some reason, a sudden hurricane.

And so, the dysfunctional family, weeping the loss of an uncle who was killed in the anti-Rushdie stampede, agree to a double fatwa on both Rushdie and the police chief that ordered fire on the crowd. More helicopter footage ensues. Then, we're introduced to Rushdie's hidden island fortress, which is surrounded by frogmen and heavily armed guards like he was living in the first level of "Contra" or something. The author makes his grand debut in the film by LITERALLY slaying four dudes with a scimitar -- because that's OBVIOUSLY the kind of behavior a fella' like Rushdie must be doing on his weekend retreats.

Like all Booker Prize winners, Rushdie slakes upon the blood of true believers daily.

So, after SMELLING THE BLOOD of his slain prey, Rushdie just comes out and says that his primary agenda is the murder of all Muslims on the planet. And also, he's using a magical diva with hypnotic eyes to seduce would-be jihadists and turn them against other extremists. This, naturally, leads to another song and dance number.

Eventually, Rusdhie catches wind of the brothers' plan to snuff him, so he sends a platoon of hired guns to the airport as soon as they touch down. You know, because that's way easier than just blowing up the plane  before they get there or anything like that. The guerrillas, it must be said, also have their own theme song, which is every bit as awesome as you'd assume it to be.

After a lengthy motorcycle chase -- where Rushdie's troops drive motor bikes with rocket launchers attached to them like in "Megaforce" -- two of the guerrillas get captured and strapped to a tree with TNT. The other guerrilla just shows up and rescues them, by throwing a whole shit load of grenades around the place.

What lady could possibly resist a bilingual terrorist rocking Horace Grant goggles?

At this point, we're introduced to the movie's sub-villains, the Sheikh of Dubai -- a cigar-chomping scaredycat with the IQ of a tree stump -- and his equally dim-witted associates. With the full entourage on screen, the total fake-mustache count must be an all-time cinematic record.

A lengthy slapstick sequence ensues, with the guerrillas -- dressed in drag -- trying to seduce the Sheikh into revealing Rushdie's whereabouts. The producers of this film, so it seems, have some REAL slight against Arabians, apparently. Eventually, the guerrillas manage to break into Rushdie's stronghold, while disguised in these real funky get-ups. In come the paramilitary troopers, and here comes Rushdie -- who, for all of the rubles in Russia, looks JUST LIKE the dad from "The Wonder Years." And Rushdie's entrance, of course, can signal but one thing -- another dance sequence, of course.

A huge shoot-out unfurls, with more actors taking dives into swimming pools than in any movie in the history of film. Rushdie is fatally wounded in battle, but wouldn't you know, it wasn't the real Rushdie, but a decoy. THEN the real Rushdie shows up, and it is revealed that the Sheikh was actually a double turncoat the entire time. The guerrillas, instead of being shot dead right then and there, are instead hung from helicopters, which allows our protagonists to make a facile escape.

Slapstick comedy and murderous propaganda: two great tastes that taste great together!

Now it's all out war, with Rushdie commandeering grenades and machine guns and just going all "Gunstar Heroes" all over the place. The guerrillas are  nearly killed by some frogmen, but they are saved by one of their female relatives. Meanwhile, the brothers' aunt back in Pakistan calls the boys up, and concoct a new plan to rub out Rushdie. Dressed as doctors, they confront the Sheikh once more, and subdue him with a giant syringe.

You know that magical diva from earlier? Well, as it turns out, she's Jewish, and willing to lead the guerrillas to Rushdie. A romantic subplot blossoms between the diva and one of the brothers, and another musical sequence follows. By the way, it's a love song (or maybe a song about religious warfare, it's hard to tell sometimes), in which the two take turns shooting live ammunition at each other. I guess "playing hard to get" means something entirely different on the Indian subcontinent, no?

Re: why they call themselves "International Guerrillas." 

And what do you know? The Jew diva LIED and it was all a trick orchestrated by Rushdie! Rushdie enters the fray, where he chases the brothers on a speedboat, all the while firing a rocket launcher -- that makes sci-fi movie stock sounds and has the ability to set water ablaze -- while the same explosion and guy-getting-machine-gunned-and-falling-out-of-his-boat stock footage is used over and over again

This leads to the brothers attempting to sneak into a casino, where numerous Rushdie decoys -- all wearing differently colored suits as the Sheikh counts up the number of Salmans on his fingers -- waltz in. A dance sequence ensues, and then, the brothers make their grand entrance...while wearing BATMAN COSTUMES.

The first still from the upcoming "Justice League" movie, starring Geraldo Rivera as the Caped Crusader.

One of the jihadists tells a Rushdie facsimile that he will mutilate his face so badly "even Satan won't recognize you," which is arguably one of the greatest action movie quips of all-time. A poorly-lit shootout transpires, with Rushdie calling the brothers' aunt in Pakistan after it's all over. Rushdie then kidnaps the aunt when she arrives at the airport, which results in another car chase. At Rushdie's tropical compound, he said he's going to make her listen to the BOOK ON TAPE VERSION of "The Satanic Verse," a punishment that she responds to by praying to Allah for sudden deafness.

Of course, that means its time for our grand finale, with the guerrillas staging an all-out assault on Rushdie's palace. The guerrillas are ultimately captured, with Rushdie all the while taunting their religion. For the sake of irony, he commands the Sheikh to be the one that kills the guerrillas, but SWERVE! The Sheikh turns on Rushdie! So, uh, does that constitute a Pan-Muslim message then?

A not at all hypocritical message, being in a movie about holy warriors on a quest for death and stuff.

The prisoners, who are now all chained on crosses, "Life of Brian" style, begin praying to Allah, which kinda' mutates into another song. Miraculously, images of Mecca and Islamic worships services start blinking in the sky, with the Jewish diva automatically converting once she sees the visions. She dances around the island, like she was in "The Sound of Music" or something, and divine lightning frees the other hostages. And thus, the film's climactic battle sequence doth begin.

It's grenades, bazookas and explosions galore for the final 20 minutes of the movie. While Rushdie barks out commands a the top of his castle, the guerrillas, who now have the ability to hop twenty feet in the air, start swinging from vines and shooting stuff while virtually all of Rushdie's commanders instantaneously convert to Islam.

Outnumbered and outgunned, Rushdie than faces his ultimate demise...not at the hands of the guerrillas or his turncoat guards, but from A GIANT FLYING KORAN THAT ZAPS HIM WITH LIGHTNING. This, you must see in its entirety, folks.

And on that note, the film concludes. In all honesty, I'm not sure if this thing is supposed to be criminally negligent, absurdly hyperbolic agitprop OR the most subversive satire of Muslim extremism ever filmed. There's really no way around it; the film is either a hate-filled, borderline insane work of propaganda -- filled with some of the most delusional politics in the annals of the medium -- OR it's an incredibly sly parody produced by Pakistani intellectuals to demonstrate the murderous absurdity of Islamic fundamentalists.

Politics aside -- a Herculean task, I know -- this movie is guilty pleasure cheese to the nth-most degree. Despite being "Lord of the Rings"-sized in length and loaded with so many superfluous dance and action numbers, it's never really a boring movie at any point. Poorly written, poorly acted and with special effects that must've  cost at least a full dollar to produce, "International Guerrillas" is a monumentally shitty movie that, instead of striving for artistic greatness, fully embraces its own low-budget idiocy. It's over-the-top sensationalism at its best, an unbelievably naive movie that's irresistibly dense and wrong-headed, and makes no apologies for its own blunt stupidity.

The message of the film may be utterly reprehensible, but the cartoonish lengths the makers of the film went to to stamp out said message -- by Bollywood dance numbers and "Rambo"-like action sequences and the creation of a murderous antagonist that blurs the line between defamation and stylization -- makes the film wholly unique, and in spite of its irresponsible nature, thoroughly entertaining from start-to-finish. It's a terrible movie, in almost every individual categorization -- acting, writing, editing, audio, etc. But, all of that awfulness manages to come together in a concrete, holistic package of terrible, which alike heavy bad-movie hitters "The Story of Ricky" and "Crippled Masters," is so lame-brained that you can't help but be entertained by every molecule of celluloid therein.

Two and three quarter stars. Jimbo says check it out. 

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In Defense of "Innocence of Muslims"

There’s no denying that the hyper-controversial movie is crude, stupid and highly offensive…but is that really enough to warrant worldwide censorship?

On June 23, 2012, a film called “Innocence of Bn Laden” (apparently, the extra “i” in “Bin” went over the Kinkos budget) was screened at the Vine Theater in Los Angeles, to an audience of allegedly 10 people. And unbeknownst to that scant crowd, they’ll probably be the only folks in history to get a look at the full version of what has come to be known as “Innocence of Muslims”, i.e., “That One Movie That’s Pissed Off A Whole Lot Of People Over There in The Middle East.”

Even before the condensed version of the film went viral on YouTube, it’s history was pretty darn bizarre. The first sighting of the film came in the form of advertisements that somehow made it into the pages of Arab World, perhaps the Los Angeles area’s most circulated Muslim-targeted entertainment industry trade magazine. According to the Los Angeles Times, the ads caught the attention of some fellows over at the Anti-Defamation League, but since they couldn’t read Arabic, they decided to just live and let be.

The crew supposedly filmed the movie on a one-day shoot at the Blue Cloud Ranch, for a somewhat paltry $1,195.00 USD. It’s primary backer was Media for Christ - a Duarte, Calif.-based nonprofit that, obviously, has tried to move heaven and earth in order to distance itself from the incendiary production - who say that they were duped into laying down money for some religious-themed action movie called “Desert Warriors.” A second screening of the film was scheduled for June 30, but according to an expert eyewitness - a Vietnam Veteran who told the L.A. Times that he slipped ads for the screening at various mosques in the area, with the hopes of most likely beating up whoever came out of the theater afterward - not a single soul showed up for the presentation.

And then, some dude named “Sam Bacile” uploaded a poorly edited 13-minute digest of the film to YouTube, and the rest, as the say, is history. And also, 75 dead people and counting, but hey, who’s really keeping score here?

By now, we’ve come to fill in most of the blanks regarding the film’s origin. We know the primary financier of the film was some dude named Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, an Egyptian-born Coptic Christian who, over the last three decades, has been busted by the feds for everything from intent to manufacture meth to bank fraud to stealing the identity of a six-year-old child. We know that the actors involved in the film were totally duped by the filmmakers, who ended up dubbing over their dialogue to include references to Muhammad, Allah and the Quran without their knowledge. But what we don’t know - and may possibly never, ever know - is what happened to the full version of the film, which was said to have been at least 70 minutes long. At this point, it looks like “Innocence of Muslims” - by the way, a media-bestowed title and not an official one, in any regard - has officially joined movies like the original cut of “Greed” and Jerry Lewis’ “The Day the Clown Cried” in the pantheon of legendary “lost films.”

You’ve probably seen the clip on YouTube by now, but if you haven’t, here’s my condensed look at the condensed movie:

The film begins with a doctor’s family being attacked by an angry mob, who ransack the doc’s clinic (in what is easily one of the poorest green screen jobs you’ll ever see) and hack women upside the head with plastic axes. Prior to that, some unnamed general talks about how had Muhammad had 60 plus wives, and how he himself would kill his wife and “steal her medicine” if she became ill.

From there, we learn that the doctor’s family is Christian, and by golly, all them Egyptian forces sure are persecuting them extra hard today. Following some of the absolute clumsiest editing you’ll ever bare witness to, the doctor draws an equation on a dry-erase board explaining how “Muhammad” is the great variable in terrorist activity. Of course, everyone has had their voices dubbed over, and horrendously. If you recall that one episode of “South Park” after Isaac Hayes left, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what audio atrocities await you here.

Then, we get to the stuff that may be considered just slightly offensive to members of the Islamic faith. “Muhammad” is introduced as this thin white guy with long hair - think, an anorexic Conan the Barbarian - who is called both “the unknown father” and “the bastard” by his family. He lays in the lap of a woman, who keeps asking him if he “sees the devil” between her thighs, which is followed up by a quick cut to “Muhammad” labeling a donkey as “the first Muslim animal.”

After that, one of “Muhammad’s” handlers says that he will make a “book” for him, consisting of various parts of the New Testament, the Torah and some flat out lies. Then, we see “Muhammad” as a gang leader, who advocates pillaging, raping and all sorts of perverse child abuse. A few parallels are drawn between Muhammad’s campaign and the Jews’ conquest of Jericho, which devolves into a segment in which not only is “Muhammad” accused of being a child predator, but a H-O-M-O. And if that isn’t enough for you, two of his underlings even debate whether or not he’s a “top” or “bottom,” too.

Then, we see an old lady get ripped apart by horses, because she called “Muhammad” a caravan robber, an oppressor and a tyrant. Following that scene, a dude is killed in front of his wife (once again, an all Caucasian cast on display here), which is capped by a sequence in which “Muhammad” is beat up by two women after some sort of three-way sexual escapade. The film concludes with a blood-soaked “Muhammad” staring into the screen…in essence, the audiovisual equivalent of telling the really, really unstable kid back in the third grade that his mother was a whore, his father was a transvestite and that his breath smelled like various shades of animal anus.

It’s pretty easy to see why so many Muslims would take offense to that. In fact, it’s very, VERY easy to see that. The big question moving from here, however, is whether or not the film has the RIGHT to exist, solely as religiously-anchored agitprop.

So far, the movie has been banned in Egypt, Libya, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Singapore, with efforts currently underway to ban the film in Russia, Brazil and Turkey. After the suits at Google refused to take the video of YouTube, the governments of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sudan responded in kind by simply blocking ALL of YouTube from its national Intraweb. Even members of the Obama Administration are reported to have asked Google to “reconsider” hosting the videos, if that wasn’t Orwellian enough for you. There’s no denying that “Innocence of Muslims” is offensive and stupid and poorly made, but is that really enough reason to attempt to eradicate it from the face of the earth like it was rinderpest or something?

Well, ya’ll know me, and I’m one First Amendment-loving mother-lover. Not only do I think the guaranteed right to free expression is the absolute best thing about America (umm, when it’s allotted, anyway), I would say it’s pretty much the ONLY truly, 100 percent, unequivocally, indisputably great thing about the US of A as a whole. Just try looking at the libel laws in Canada and the U.K, and the staggering number of films banned in such liberal progressive utopias as the Netherlands and Norway, and you’ll see just how much more expressive freedom we have as Americans than any other peoples on Earth. Much more than any other right - the right to healthcare, the right to economic equality, the right to employment, the right to housing, and all of that other jazz we’ll never really have - I value my First Amendment right to say whatever I want, no matter how stupid, illogical, irrational and offensive more than any other liberty. As long as I have mostly unfettered expression as a citizen, I could probably put up with all of the other crap going on in the country, and rather happily, too.

And then, along comes something like “Innocence of Muslims,” and things get all sticky and problematic for everybody. Now, the U.S. Constitution says you’ve got the right to say pretty much whatever you want, barring three exceptions: it’s a threat to national security, it’s obscene (and woo boy, the fun we could have discussing the ridiculously subjective nature of that little tidbit) or a direct public threat to at least one or more individuals. Hell, the Supreme Court even ruled earlier this summer that, technically, lying was constitutionally protected speech, so there ya’ go right there.

Clearly, in the hands of easily frightened reviewers, “Innocence of Muslims” could  be considered a national security threat (well, no shit there, Sherlock) but whether or not it’s truly obscene is in the eye of the beholder. Seeing as how the film has SOME inkling of artistic and political merit, it passes the SLAPS test rather facilely, and the film, while definitely aimed to piss off, doesn’t make any direct, physical threats to any specific, identifiable peoples.

With that in mind, the grounds for censoring the film - in accordance to the presupposed, U.S. Constitution definition of expressive freedom - can only exist in a vacuum in which the film itself is considered a security risk that MUST be suppressed in order to prevent vindictive retaliation from some foreign presence. It’s a film intended to agitate a population known for extreme behavior, no doubts there, but is that REALLY enough of a reason to contemplate banning the video outright?

I say no, for several reasons. First of all, just about EVERYTHING can be considered offensive to a certain population, even something as innocuous, domestically, as giving another individual a “thumbs up” of appreciation. Displaying an image of Muhammad as a wife beater and a chi-mo is certain to infuriate a couple of lunatic fringe Islamists, but in case you haven’t noticed, it’s only a small portion - as in, proportionally, about the same percentage of Christians that blow up abortion clinics and try to keep Martin Scorsese movies from playing at the local cinema here in America - of the Arab World that’s instigating such acts of violence supposedly inspired by the movie. Call me a cynic, but I don’t necessarily think that the film itself was what directly inspired such acts of mayhem and murder; in essence, these are people that have wanted to commit acts of widespread homicide for quite some time, and “Innocence of Muslims” only served as a convenient excuse for the periodic uncapping of said murderous rage.

A secondary reason as to why the film shouldn’t even be in the running for censorship is that it PROMOTES domestic civility. Yeah, you heard me right, I said “promotes” civility. How? Because it’s an artistic, non-violent form of political activity, that’s why. As dumb and offensive as a lot of politically-motivated folks are here in the U.S., we can at least take comfort in knowing that their stupid and offensive behavior is limited to inane blog posts and empty, non-nondescript threats on YouTube. All in all, I’d much rather have some wacko burn copies of the Quran to display religious contempt than having some other wacko drive a truck bomb through a restaurant, so the next time you hear someone bemoan the “wretchedness” of Fred Phelps or Louie Farrakhan, just remind yourself that at least they’re expressing their hostilities with words as opposed to pipe bombs.

And lastly, I parrot the words of a guy I never thought I’d by quoting for any legitimate reason, because if the film IS banned, that means the terrorists have indeed won. By appeasing a loose string of religious fundamentalist maniacs, that’s practically cultivating violent activity as a sure-thing in the future, because it demonstrates that targeted, violent acts WORK as modules and methods of obtaining prior restraint against politically, religiously and culturally dialectic opinions. “If you blow us up,” the message there is, “then you’ll get exactly what you want out of us.” Now, let’s just see how far that little strategy goes in preventing acts of ethnocentric violence in the future.

At the end of the day, there’s no denying that “Innocence of Muslims” is but an attempt to rattle the monkey cages, but guess what? It’s an attempt to rattle the monkey cages that’s decisively non-violent, non-oppressive and ultimately, non-hurtful (directly, anyway) to anyone. It’s crude and stupid and pretty thoughtless, but in those Bizarro qualities, I think you’ll find everything you need to in order to defend it as an artistic vision.

Hey, I’d rather watch a movie that blows than get blown up, any day…

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