Back in 1988, Salman Rushdie published his novel The Satanic Verses which caused an uproar among the Islamic world and culminated in the infamous fatwa issued by the Supreme Leader of Iran at the time, Ayatollah Khomeini, calling for Muslims to kill Rushdie for insulting their Prophet which resulted in a series of assassination attempts and bombings by terrorists. Pakistani filmakers took a different approach by making a 164 minutes-long movie in 1990 called International Guerillas in response to the novel by portraying its author as an megalomaniacal, sadistic Diabolical Mastermind that conspires to destroy Islam. The movie tells the story of three brothers that vow to track down and kill Rushdie to avenge their sister's death after she was killed in a public protest against the book's publication. Also there is a lot of dancing and mind screwing going on, with the heroes disguising themselves as Batman. It frankly has to be seen to be believed.
Relatively obscure outside of Pakistan itself, the movie was nearly banned in the UK for portraying Rushdie as the main villain, until the man himself protested against its censorship arguing that it would have accomplished nothing except draw attention to it. Sure enough, the movie came and went with nobody really knowing it even existed without the internet. It was also reviewed by Diamanda Hagan.
International Guerillas features examples of the following tropes:
- Arab Oil Sheikh: Surprisingly for this kind of movie, they are allied with Salman Rushdie which is rather ironic, considering that real-life Arab Muslims (specially from Saudi Arabia) didn't like the book anymore than Khomeini did.
- Assassin Outclassin': Rushdie's victims in his Establishing Character Moment are mujhadeens that tried to kill him, but were caught, tortured and executed instead.
- Badass Israeli: Inverted. The Israelis are nameless mooks to be mowed down by the righteous guerillas.
- Big Bad: Salman Rushdie.
- Body Double: Rushdie makes use of several decoys; when the guerillas seemingly confront him for the first time, they manage to kill him only to find out he is a body double.
- Card-Carrying Villain: Salman Rushdie, once again. He plots to undermine Islam by killing Muslims, constructing casinos and distributing his book throughout the world.
- Converting for Love: Dolly converts to Islam from Judaism after genuinely falling in love with one of the leads.
- Cool and Unusual Punishment: Rushdie forces one of his victims to... Listen the video tapes to The Satanic Verses. All night long.
- Crucified Hero Shot: The protagonists are captured at the end of the movie and crucified, but are saved by Allah's intervention.
- Deus ex Machina: Quite literally. Salman Rushdie is incinerated by three Korans at the end of the movie, and the heroes are resurrected after being crucified.
- The Dragon: Chief Batu Batu is the Israeli general of Rushdie's private army.
- Dating Catwoman: One of the leads is in love with the Batu Batu's sister Dolly, who is also one of the villains.
- Evil Is Petty: Not content with killing Muslims in horrific ways like hanging or beheading them, Salman also loves to torture them by reading excerpts from his book.
- Establishing Character Moment: To really hammer the point Rushdie is a Card-Carrying Villain here, he is introduced beheading prisoners with his sword, licks their blood and says "every time the blood of those who love Mohammed has spattered my chest all gods above and below have got scared".
- Gratuitous English: The villains' dialogue (such as Rushdie and the evil police officers) is peppered with English words which is done to identify them as bad guys.
- Historical Villain Upgrade: The real-life Rushdie most certainly did not kill anyone.
- Knight Templar: The protagonists will stop at nothing to achieve their goal. By their own admission:(To the Rushdie's decoys) If everybody in this world looked like you, we would have to kill everyone.
- Misplaced Retribution: What drives the guerillas to seek Salman Rushdie's death is that their sister died during a protest against his book's publication, nevermind that it was the government officials that gunned her down.
- No Name Given: The main heroes go on unnamed.
- Supervillain Lair: Rushdie's hideout in the Phillipines, though apparently it isn't very secret considering the number of would-be assassins that found it and died trying to kill him.
- Talking Is a Free Action: Characters tend to make long monologues in the middle of confrontations that could have been easily interrupted by a shot in the face.
- You Killed My Father: The deaths of several demonstrators including the protagonists' sister incites their hunt for Rushdie.
