A Pakistani movie about Hitler's gangster son!!

by Salman Hameed

What?? Well, Lollywood (the Lahori Hollywood) has had its fair share of dubious films. So here is a case of a 1986 film called Hitlar, which has a convoluted plot (and not exactly in the most complimentary way) involving the escape of Hitler's son after WWII and finding residence in Pakistan as an evil gangster. In this parallel universe, Hitler is also responsible for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This switching is actually interesting. Pakistan and the US were actually close allies in the 1980s, and the switching of the blame of nuclear attacks to Hitler may be a reflection of the high-regard for the US at the time (ah - things are a bit different now...).

I was still in Pakistan in 1986 - and no I did not hear about the film. But the movie does star two of the biggest action heroes of Punjabi cinema, Sultan Rahi and Mustafa Qureshi. Rahi often played a hero, and Qureshi was an expert bad guy. So it is no surprise to find that Mustafa Qureshi plays Hitler's son (see the photo). And of course, there is a singing and dancing. Well, how can we not have singing and dancing? Oh wait, it also has bears. As it turns out, the son of Hitler (Qureshi) uses bears to try and eliminate his chief rival (Sultan Rahi). No seriously. This is part of the plot! This is pretty awesome.

Here is a bit from the fantastic website io9 (tip from Abbas Raza):

Have you ever thought to yourself, "Gee, didn't The Boys From Brazil really lack catchy disco numbers?" Well, you're in luck, you hypothetical (and presumably insane) alternate history enthusiast! 

The 1980s Pakistani action flick Hitlar presents a parallel universe in which der Führer escaped Germany after World War II only to settle down in South Asia. Once there, the deposed tyrant threw his racial dogma to the wind and sired a son (actor Mustafa Qureshi, with swishing Teutonic locks). 

The son of Hitler — the eponymous Hitlar — spends his days terrorizing a small town, using his musical sting to petrify his enemies (hear it in the video below), and conversing with paintings of his dead Nazi father. As the blog Die, Danger, Die, Die, Kill explains of this particular plot point: 

[In] case there is any doubt in your mind as to whether it is really that Hitler that's being referred to, there are the numerous, swastika-featuring portraits of the man himself that adorn our villain's lair, which essentially serve as the filmmakers' way of saying, "Yes, we totally went there."

And that villain, of course, is Hitlar, the ill-fitting Shirley-Temple-meets-Louis-XIV wig wearing son of Hitler, who, as a shouty prologue narration informs us, fled Germany following the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (by Germany, apparently) and found happiness in the arms of a Pakistani woman somewhere in the Punjab [...] Old Adolf appears to have passed on sometime between then and the events of this film, but that does not prevent young Hitlar from seeking the counsel of his dad, whom he refers to as "Master," via frequent soliloquies directed toward those aforementioned portraits.

Read the description of the movie plot at the Die, Danger, Die, Die, Kill blog.

Here is the beginning of the film: