I never heard of 'The Living Corpse' aka 'Zinda Laash' before. A few days ago I was browsing the website of a reputed movie vendor when I got a glance of this movie. The movie was marketed beside other movies of the horror genre. Manmohan Sabir was a new name for me and since Sarika was in the main cast, I chose to buy it. I was expecting it to be a good horror movie.
I began watching it with a can of coke and waited anxiously for any grisly figure. After 20 minutes I thought 'Is it really a horror movie?' and my mind said 'No it isn't. It is a social movie'. This is exactly what 'Zinda Laash' is about. This is about slum dweller paupers, who hardly make their ends meet. Poverty forces them to get indulged in various unlawful activities. Poor women often become easy targets of the rich sex maniacs. They exploit the poor in various unspeakable ways.
The story begins with a narrative by renowned Urdu poet Ali Sardar Jafri. The narrator tells that a poor but sane man (Jairaj) happens to find a crying baby in a trash bin and takes it home to look after. Years later the child grows up and becomes Mr. Goody-to-Shoes (Akaash) and fights against injustice. He spends most of his time helping the needy ones.
One day he meets a girl Laxmi (Sarika), who has come to Mumbai with her brother and sister, who are still very young. Laxmi's village was swept away by flood and this natural calamity also decimated the village population. Laxmi is in Mumbai to seek work and shelter. She finds work at a construction site but the overseer (Jankidas) has plans of his own. He tries to go intimate with Laxmi but Laxmi turns him down. Soon she loses her job and is left again on her fate. She finds another job as a housemaid but loses it again when she protests against the seductive moves of her employer.
Now there are many hoodlums in the locality. Raja (Mac Mohan) is a crosspatch pimp. Once he goes man to man with Akaash for a silly reason and is jailed. Raja now wants to settle scores with Akaash.
There is nothing in the movie that can be called 'Horrific' or 'Terror Inducing'. I really don't know why this movie was misunderstood as a horror movie. Even the VCD cover has pictures of ghouls and werewolves on it. Is it some kind of trick to sell the stuffs to horror fans and gain fake popularity? The movie is very slow and the picture quality is such that you feel the waves of sleep after every 10 minutes. Direction wise the movie is okay but there is nothing new in this. 'Zinda Laash' has adopted a stale plot and hyperbolic dialogs that don't seem to work in today's world. I won't suggest anyone to go for this movie because it is a badly made social movie with no trace of horror.
