Historical epics have been a rare commodity in Lollywood over the years but this intriguingly titled Punjabi film starring Babra Sharif, Sultan Rahi and Ghulam Mohiuddin promised a mouth-watering treat judging by the majestic VCD cover. 

Not entirely surprisingly, the film is in fact not set in the past at all but in present day Pakistan where a naval officer has taken his wife and two daughters for a day out on the harbour where they are aboard a ship when all of a sudden some nasty anti-state types show up and proceed to create mayhem by shooting indiscriminately into the helpless crowd.  The good naval officer is gunned down in cold blood by the dastardly villain who then proceeds to snatch one of the infant daughters claiming she might come in handy in the future.  Then the villain escapes to the safety of his den to be told of a snitch who turns out to be a poor village fisherman.  The villain hunts down the fisherman and also guns him down brutally in front of his young son – who soon grows up with vengeance burning in his eyes as a paunchy 60 year old young man Ibra (Sultan Rahi). 

Ibra is known in the local community as being a bit of an oddity yet fiercely honest and a sort of peoples “superman” while Ghulam Mohiuddin is the local police officer whose right hand woman is the perky, busty beauty Miss Kiran Khan who secretly admires Sultan Rahi’s heroics and is prone to dozing off at work and daydreaming lustful thoughts.  Things progress in a typical masala style until all of a sudden, totally out of the blue a totally bizarre subplot is inserted into proceedings seemingly just for the hell of it. 

One fine evening, Tina, has a dance performance somewhere and is kitted out as Cleopatra but it all goes woefully wrong as somehow or the other, she accidentally wakens the sleeping spirit of Marc Anthony (called Rafin in this instance) who begins to stalk her as he believes she is his Cleopatra, torn away from him centuries ago and now it is time to reclaim her.  So Rafin, dressed oddly like he has just walked off the set of a Tarzan movie, starts to terrorize Cleopatra into submission and when she still refuses to accept that she is the reincarnation of Cleopatra, Rafin possesses her body and makes her do strange things such as speak in a booming masculine Punjabi voice and she also acquires the strength of ten Sultan Rahi’s throwing large pieces of furniture around the house as though they were merely feathers.  She also takes to pacing up and down frantically, but not on the floor like most people, on the ceiling! 

Babra’s old mother is perplexed at her daughter Tina’s odd behaviour and eventually a holy man is sent for to perform an exorcism that turns horribly wrong as Tina/Cleopatra turns the tables on the holy man and sends a large syringe hurtling through the air like a guided missile to inject him lethally in the bum and turn him into a flaming female impersonator!  Its mind-boggling stuff, even by Lollywood standards and who could be better at playing a demented demonically possessed mad thing than the great Babra Sharif, who at the best of times appeared demonically possessed in almost all her films in any case.  Here, she is able to tuck into her role and do what she does best: act like a deranged imp. 

Later on there are spectacular scenes of levitation and then a magnificent head-spinning scene that makes the Exorcist appear like an episode of Rainbow - (Though I actually find Rainbow rather more disturbing than The Exorcist, especially the bits featuring Bungle).  Meanwhile the other sister has turned into a super criminal under the tutelage of our master villain but eventually all such unfortunate matters are sorted out thanks to sheer brilliance as well as a touch of good fortune along the way.  In our intriguing subplot, though an epic battle was expected to rid Tina of the shadow of Miss Cleopatra – it seems the strain of speaking in Punjabi finally gets the better of the demonic spirit who packs it in rather meekly allowing the She-Imp to re-emerge as Tina the demented dwarflet, soon to be the wife of Police inspector Ghulam Mohiuddin.  Life is a bed of roses soon enough. 

I had been told by those in the know that Miss Cleopatra was a Pakistani version of The Exorcist and I was wondering how on earth this could have existed without my knowledge all these years.  I managed to get my hands on a copy and threw it on a 1am that very night, absolutely intrigued by the prospect of watching a Punjabi version of The Exorcist.  Sadly the film is far from an Exorcist rip off that I was hoping for but just another Punjabi revenge masala flick, YET it did contain a comic/horror subplot that involves Babra Sharif being possessed by the spirit of Cleopatra and the ensuing mayhem that follows is indeed sheer Lollywood genius.