THE BOLLYWOOD HORROR COLLECTION Volume 1

By: BRIAN THOMAS
Review Date: Monday, September 25, 2006

"There are no Indian horror movies."

I live in what has been documented as the most diverse neighborhood on the planet, and as I browsed through the many Indian, Pakistani, Russian, African and Filipino video stores lining its main thoroughfare during the peek rental boom years of the late 1980s, I was told this several times by clerks as I hunted for more exotic cinematic thrills. Bollywood is one of the world's movie capitols, churning out film footage to rival Hollywood, Tokyo and Hong Kong, but those movies were manufactured to appeal to anyone and everyone. Competition was so fierce that genre niches were unthinkable every feature was a love story with plenty of drama, some comedy, a bit of action, and at least one musical number per half hour. In India, the horror film was an import item only.

But I knew better, thanks in part to film fans like Peter Tombs, who named his video label Mondo Macabro after the book he wrote about weird films from the far corners of the world. Films like those of the Ramsay family. The Ramsays, much like American low budget filmmakers, were unable to compete with the spectacles turned out by the big Bollywood studios, and were looking for something new that the majors wouldn't touch Noting the popularity of horror comics with India's youth in the 1970s, the embarked on a plan to make garish spook shows complete with gore and monsters though without completely leaving out elements of the Bollywood formula, of course. They had a number of thoroughly disreputable horror hits throughout the 1980s, and though the boom is over in India, the Ramsays are still making chillers today.


1990's BANDH DARWAZA (aka THE CLOSED DOOR) is a typically unsubtle example of the Ramsay handiwork, introducing their monster right off the bat (literally) in a flurry of lightning and smoke. The narrator tells us how this Dark Master, a giant somewhat resembling Marvel Comics' version of Dracula, rises from the crypt on the Black Mountain each night in search of human victims. Cut to: Pratap and Lajo Singh are an unhappy young couple due to the fact that five years of marriage have not produced any children. Of course, everyone blames the wife, and fearing her husband will leave her, Lajo follows the advice of her servant Mahua and goes to the Black Mountain seeking help. In a black magic ceremony, the Dark Master agrees to help the distraught woman by... well, impregnating her. Why Lajo doesn't go the BIG CHILL route and seek a friendlier helper is unexplained, though it's assumed she thought she'd just have to wear a magic amulet or something. In exchange for his questionable "help", the undead cult leader demands that if the child is a girl she'll belong to the Black Mountain.

Sure enough, the baby is a girl, and Mahua wastes no time in poisoning Lajo and kidnapping the infant Kaamya. Pratap leads a squad in pursuit to Black Mountain, slaughtering the Dark Master and his cult and rescuing his daughter, though the Master warns him from Beyond that the child will yet be his. All this happens before the opening credits roll! The main plot begins with Kaamya grown into a sexy young woman who has adopted western ways; such as using English slang and aerobics. Kaamya is obsessed with her father's assistant Kumar, but Kumar loves only his buddy's sister Sapna. Rejected, Kaamya falls in with the revived Black Mountain coven, who promises her supernatural power to win over her dream boy. Now in the thrall of her revived vampire father, Kaamya succeeds in bewitching Kumar, and it seems Sapna and her friends have little hope of saving him.

Of course, there are still a few song & dance numbers, some fights, plenty of soap opera histrionics, and a comic relief servant to bring in the mainstream crowd, but this only serves to pad out the picture to standard length (about 2 ½ hours in India). The rest is definitely horrific stuff, full of gothic settings, monstrous characters, violent imagery, and soundtrack cues stolen from the FRIDAY THE 13th movies. The second half is much more action-heavy, devolving into a serial-style series of martial arts fights, chases and stunts, but it's driven by an almost comically monstrous villain. Giving it all an interesting twist is a cultural subtext: though given sympathetic treatment, Kaamya is damned by her origins from the start, being from a bad bloodline, and her enslavement to the Dark Master has a disturbing incestuous air to it. Despite this taint, it's the wronged lovers 2-fisted Kumar and scrappy Sapna who make a raid on Black Mountain to rescue Kaamya from enslavement. But the message is clear, it's not so much the vampire's evil or a man's impotence that brings danger, but the weakness of women, and both heroes and villains try to maintain security by locking up their females.

While borrowing heavily from American and European models, a few interesting twists are added to the vampire mythos here. The heroes use symbols of several faiths, not just a crucifix, to battle the monster, who can only be truly destroyed by burning his bat-shaped idol.

Disc 2 presents as a "bonus" the Ramsays' 1984 hit PURANA MANDIR. In ancient times, the kingdom of Bijapur is terrorized by a blood-sucking cannibalistic beast-man named Saamri. The king has the monster captured and beheaded, with the body and head entombed far apart to keep his demonic power in check. At his execution, Saamri curses the king's family, pronouncing that every female of his family will turn into monsters until his head is reunited with his body.

Wealthy Ranbir Singh is the modern descendant of the royal family, and teenage daughter Suman is his jealously guarded pride and joy. When he learns his daughter is seeing poor photographer Sanjay, he sends thugs to beat the young suitor. Fortunately, Sanjay's pal Anand comes by and rescues his friend using kung fu (or a Bollywood facsimile of same). Confronted by the young couple, Ranbir reveals that it's not Sanjay he fears, but the family curse that causes all the Singh women to change into ugly beasts upon childbirth. To end the curse somehow, Sanjay and Suman journey to the old palace in Bijapur, taking along Anand and his girlfriend Sapna. There they encounter deranged locals including feuding arms of the Singh family bandits, primitive warriors, and other diversions. But they also meet the supernatural in the form of moving portraits, showers of blood, killer cats, killer snakes, and other manifestations of the ghost(s) of Saamri. Eventually (about 108 minutes in), the monster is re-capitated and re-animated, and it's up to our heroes to try to stop him.

A few expected musical numbers are worked in, but the fantasy horror story is so furiously earnest that non-Indian viewers will be bewildered by sidesteps and subplots that would have been better off cut out on the first day of editing. However, Indian audiences seem accustomed to a full course meal in every movie, and if a sequence delivers a bit of comedy, action or romance that the main tale lacks, it doesn't matter if it makes no sense or slows things down. It's considered extra value, and if the attached horror story delivers the promised thrills and scares, the audience goes home happy. PURANA MANDIR was a gigantic hit, considered on the level of FRIDAY THE 13th of India, and was followed by a sequel the next year.

Both features are preceded by warnings that the transfers are of less than stellar quality both are presented "fullscreen", with shifty background blocks during camera moves and other defects but we've all seen worse on much more accessible movies, and apologies are hardly necessary.

Mondo Macabro loves to educate as well as entertain, so disc 2 also contains fine documentary featurettes on the history of the horror genre in South Asia, and the work of the Ramsays in particular, plus some text essays for further reading. This volume is highly recommended for all fans of world horror, and hopefully Mondo Macabro will follow it with several more.

Grade B/B

Copyright © 2006 Brian Thomas, author of the massive book VideoHound's DRAGON: ASIAN ACTION & CULT FLICKS.
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