Black Panther - Wakanda Forever [dir. Ryan Coogler]

While watching the new Black Panther film Wakanda Forever (WF) I could not help but think back to the 2018 predecessor. At the time this is what I had thought of it:

"Black Panther is another fun action-packed superhero movie that holds its own, managing to mostly avoid the cookie cutter feel of other Marvel adaptations. The first half feels more like a James Bond adventure (if Bond had access to a Crysis-style exosuit). Second half has family intrigue and some standard Chosen One yarn, but done efficiently enough to not be boring. In fact, this is one movie that went by without my feeling any urge to check the time. The depiction of the fictional Wakanda with its mixture of African art and fashion motifs with futuristic design makes for a production and costume designer's wet dream. Chadwick Boseman delivers charisma and substance for the title part, and all the women are badass and sassy. Definitely recommended for superhero action movie fans."

Fans of Black Panther will of course be aware that work on the sequel had been brought to a halt by the tragic early death of lead star Chadwick Boseman from cancer. Undoubtedly a hard act to pull off after the sudden death of its mascot, the sequel is a thoughtful expansion of the narrative, very respectful of the actor's impact with the character of King T'Challa / Black Panther. Instead of recasting T'Challa, the story passes on the role to his sister Shuri (Letetia Wright - this is not a spoiler because the trailer itself shows Shuri in the Panther suit).

But WF takes a long while to get there. Beginning with the funeral of T'Challa, it soaks in the grief of the characters, mirroring the real-world tragedy of Boseman's passing. Queen Ramonda (a commanding Angela Bassett) holds the throne while Shuri is still struggling with T'Challa's death and her conflicts with Wakanda's beliefs (she considers the Panther an outdated relic). But tragedy or not, the struggle for power is an unceasing one. After rebuffing attempts by real-world countries like France and the US to steal their Vibranium, Wakanda must now face the threat from the undersea nation of Talokan.

Talokan is a Mesoamerican culture inspired civilization occupying the ocean depths. They are a mirror to the Wakandan way of life, having their own vibranium resources, as well as a herb that gives superhuman strength to its users. The Talokans are led by Namor (Tenoch Huerta), a mutant with pointed ears and wings on his ankles which give him flight. Namor wants Wakanda to join with Talokan against the other nations, who have in the past been oppressive colonizers. Initially, it seems like an alliance to protect their combined vibranium resources from the rest of the world, and there is the difficult moral choice of whether or not to kill a teenage prodigy (Dominique Thorne) that has built a device to locate vibranium ores. But soon Namor shifts to a vengeful "I wanna burn the world" mode and issues Wakanda with a "You're either with us or against us" ultimatum.

Whether Wakanda is able to overcome this threat, and whether Shuri is able to get over her grief and take on the responsibility of Wakanda's protector forms the rest of the film.

There are somber threads of loss and grief running through WF, always in a moving and dignified manner. The interaction between Wright, Bassett, Danai Gurira and Luptia Nyong'o makes for some of the film's best moments. But this is also where its spirit clashes with the Marvel Movie Template - the number of jokes may be a fraction of those thrown at us in the last Spider-man movie, but each time they land they jar with the tone of the film.

Namor is an interesting character and the film has a gorgeous, even when indulgent, flashback detailing his backstory. But he is soon converted to a boilerplate villain with his plans of global destruction. Shuri's wearing the Black Panther mantle also comes too easy. T'Challa was trained as a warrior, and his taking of the herb and suit only enhanced his innate combat abilities (as that of rival Killmonger). Shuri is primarily a tech genius. Having her fight her way out of peril as easily as him makes the transformation a cheap gag.

WF's biggest achievement is in how it embraces the death of the franchise star and moves forward while paying tribute to his contributions. I didn't have a huge problem with the 161 min running time, and the film was certainly more interesting than the last couple of Avengers movies for me, but it undercuts its own potential for a richer narrative and leaves one dissatisfied at the conclusion.

As could be expected, the production design has a ball, showing new sides of Wakandan life (with detours to Haiti) and exploring the Talokan's submerged realm. Ludwig Göransson, who scored the first film, continues with a distinctive blending of tribal and synth rhythms identified with the Black Panther films. At the cinemas, least in 3D a large part of the film is quite dark, so I would suggest either trying for a 2D screening or going to the best 3D venue you can find (where they don't skimp on the projector brightness). The 3D is decent in most part, although in mid and long shots it doesn't escape the "cutouts in a diorama effect".

Official trailer below:

Un-kvlt Vlog 4 - Ramsay Horror Special - Purani Haveli

After the previous Un-kvlt vlogs dedicated to Veerana, Purana Mandir and Tahkhana, this site takes a look at 1989's Purani Haveli. For those more inclined to read than watch, a transcript of the vlog is provided below the video link:

With Purani Haveli (Haunted Palace), there are two likely factors that guided its construction. The first is the Ramsays' insistence to stick with the Purana Mandir (PM) formula, which had brought them great returns, even if by this time those returns had begun to diminish. The second was the nightmarish battle they fought with the Indian censor board for the release of Veerana.

Like in PM, the young lovers, rather the ostensibly young lovers - since lead actor Deepak Parashar was in his late 30's at this time - are traveling with other friends to a decrepit old palace to resolve the knotty obstacles to their romantic future. But once there, they find themselves having to fight for their very lives against the demonic forces that prevail in the place.

So once again we come to the sprawling abandoned mansion with the stuffed animal trophies that served as the backdrop in PM, Tahkhana and even Veerana. The elaborate dungeon/crypt is the same that was used in Tahkhana. A similar set of visual tricks is employed to suggest supernatural activity. The ominous Ramsay musical motif that originated with PM is once more trotted out. There's some major déjà vu here.

While the Ramsays are at fault for this wholesale recycling, there is an interesting "variations on a theme" element that plays out across this series of films on account of the repetition. After all, even more universally celebrated horror artists like MR James and HP Lovecraft recycled several elements in their fiction. In any case, the Ramsays never made any claim to being trend-setting artists. They were in the business of quick returns for modest investments, and if they saw a trend that worked, they milked it for what it was worth.

Now let's talk about the monster in the room. While PM's demon Saamri had a personal grudge driving his evil deeds, the  monster in Purani Haveli (PH) is, like Tahkhana's undead ghoul, a more amorphous entity. A flashback in the middle of the movie reveals that he is simply the result of a pregnant woman giving birth under the malign influence of the palace; so the true source of evil is the location rather than the creature.

The monster is played by actor Manek Irani; he has good presence and unlike some of their cheaper imitators, the Ramsays certainly deliver the goods on his makeup. Irani was a regular supporting player mainly doing henchman characters in Hindi movies of the 80's and early 90's. He didn't work in many horror films overall, but in 1990, just a year after PH, he did a film called Amavas ki Raat (Moonless Night) in which also he plays a demonic origin killer, but in a very different style.

Apart from the monster, there is also a delightful iron statue that periodically comes to life and snuffs out whichever unlucky fool happens to be nearby. I quite enjoyed this statue's shenanigans, he reminded me of the knight from the game Quake. I wish the movie had either a tag team or a versus match with the monster and the knight statue, but sadly in the movie no real connection is drawn between them.

While it was never an original creation, PH still had the ingredients to be a cracking Bollywood horror. But for the longest time, it only hints at its potential. At least Tahkhana's treasure hunt plot was interesting on its own when the monster action wasn't happening. This one unfortunately features a lot of tedious and repetitive filler. Apart from the musical numbers you have a barrel of crude homophobic comedy that wasn't very funny to start with and translates even worse.

The narrative can be alarmingly disjointed. After one person dies in an unexplained fashion in the palace, the gang of friends just buries him in the nearby grounds and carries on with their holiday like nothing had ever happened. There's almost an element of gaslighting in how each time the lead girl claims to have seen something strange, she is dismissed with a "That's just your imagination" putdown. It doesn't help that lead girl Amita Nangia has a bland oatmeal quality, lacking the spunky charm of the Ramsays' best-remembered heroine Aarti Gupta.

Most people who've seen PH will mainly remember its last 20 min when the monster bursts out from the crypt and proceeds to kick some major ass, including attacking a busload of the escaping friends. And for good reason, because especially after the slack middle-section, this sequence has a relentless pulse-pounding feel that resonates with some of the Ramsays' best work. In keeping with the Christian motifs used throughout the film, the final showdown takes place in a church, drawing from both classic Hammer Horror and films like The Omen. Interestingly, since it is the palace itself and not the creature that is the source of evil, there exists the possibility for it to rise again.

So the last section of PH is great, but it is lacking in one thing - Gore. I have a theory about this. As I described in my Veerana Vlog post, there was an almost 2-year struggle for the theatrical release of that film because the censors repeatedly denied them a certificate. It finally came out after more than 40 cuts, that too for an Adults Only rated film. I feel either the censors became more scissor-happy with the subsequently released PH or the Ramsays became extra-cautious in its making. So even when the monster is in full rampage mode, there are  few overt displays of the red stuff in comparison to their previous films. Most of the time, he just gropes people roughly and leaves the rest to your imagination. 

But still it's an energetic final act that raises the film from its midsection slump and renders it overall a worthy second-tier Ramsay horror feature.

In the next Ramsay Horror Special episode, I hope to tackle 1990's Bandh Darwaza, which was the last major monster film in this series, and a fitting swan song from their iconic horror star - Aniruddha Agarwal.

Other Vlogs in this series:

Aatma Vlog

Bandh Darwaza Vlog

Tahkhana Vlog 

Purana Mandir Vlog

Veerana Vlog

Un-kvlt Vlog 3 - Ramsay Horror Special - Tahkhana (1986)

...where we continue with this mini-series of Vlogs dedicated to the Bollywood Horror flicks being released on the upcoming blu-ray boxset from Mondo Macabro. The films that we previously talked about - Veerana and Purana Mandir - represented the heavy hitters from the Ramsays in terms of recognition and commercial success. What I'd like to get into now is some of the lesser-known films they put out in that same era - Tahkhana and Purani Haveli - where we try to look at how the responses to the bigger films possibly affected the shaping of the ones that followed.

Below the video link is the full transcript of the Vlog, for those more inclined to read:

First up is Tahkhana (1986), which came to screens after Purana Mandir (PM) and Saamri 3D. The name refers to a subterranean construction like an elaborate cellar or catacomb. In the film it is a grotto like structure under a palace with rows of pillars and even a sort of bath-house. Incidentally the palace is the same one that is seen in PM - by this point the Ramsays had started to recycle sets, props and musical motifs from that film in the hopes of repeating its box-office success.

Plot-wise Tahkhana is an interesting mishmash of genres. A large part of the film is an involved pulp adventure in which the protagonists hunt for buried treasure. To reach this treasure they must assemble a map that is a combination of two pendants worn by sisters that were separated in childhood.

The other narrative thread is that of a black magic practitioner, the evil uncle of those poor sisters, raising an undead entity in whom he invests his soul. Think Mackenna's Gold meets The Golem, and you have some idea of the unwieldy scope of this film.

In Tahkhana, you can see how the success of PM influenced their further work. While previously they'd developed several kinds of horror plots, the huge impact that PM's monster Saamri made on the audience seems to have decided them to have a similar monster character in all their subsequent horror movies. To be fair, Tahkhana's nameless boogeyman does look good. Played by Shamsuddin, who normally did bit parts as henchmen, he is imposing in size and the makeup job lives up to the usual Ramsay standards. There are some solid kills as well.

But unlike PM, the monster in Tahkhana does not have a strong identity or purpose, and seems somewhat tacked on to the treasure hunt plot, which takes up the bulk of the running time (with the accompanying slapstick and romance elements). There's a good bit of creature mayhem in the climax, when he whacks his way through a sizable lot of torch-waving extras. The climax is also interesting in terms of not having any religious iconography for destroying the monster.

Compared to the Ramsay's other horror films, the screenplay for Tahkhana has a hurried, sloppy quality. In one scene, the female lead (Aarti Gupta), after being startled in the night is running all through the palace the treasure hunters lodge at, banging on doors with no response; you kind of wonder where everyone else is. She then rushes down to the grotto, has an adventure there. When she gets back, they're all assembled in the living room, ready for action (I doubt the Ramsays had any kind of Lynchian surrealism in mind).

Some words about the cast. One of the male leads in this film was played by newcomer Kamran Rizvi. A model-turned-actor with a pleasant screen presence, he would have possibly made a good stock leading man for the Ramsay studio, but in a bizarre incident just a few years later, he was stabbed to death in a family dispute. People who've seen PM will notice that in Tahkhana actor Puneet Isaar plays the exact same role that he did in PM, and even bears the same screen name - Anand.

Another actor that makes an impression is Imtiaz Khan - his brother Amjad is more famous as the bad guy in one of India's most famous mainstream movies - Sholay. Amjad and Imtiaz were both intelligent theater-trained actors, but in Hindi movies they were stereo-typically cast as heavies. Even in the Ramsays' Do Gaz Zameen ke Neeche (1972), Imtiaz's portrayed his character's gray shades with marvelous nuance. But here he's just a reckless lecher who paws literally every woman he comes across, even his on-screen cousins.

All things considered, Tahkhana doesn't stand with the most distinctive Ramsay movies, but there is a certain charm in its cobbled together nature that makes it an interesting watch for Bollywood Horror enthusiasts. For those interested, the full film is available (without subtitles) on Youtube:

Other Vlogs in this series:

Aatma Vlog

Bandh Darwaza Vlog

Purani Haveli Vlog 

Purana Mandir Vlog

Veerana Vlog 

Un-kvlt Vlog 2 - Ramsay Horror Special - Purana Mandir (1984)

This Vlog series focused on  monster features produced by the Ramsay family commenced with the discussion on Veerana (1988). Now we go back in time to the breakthrough horror hit that made their name in Indian cinema and largely cemented the formula they would apply in their later films - 1984's Purana Mandir (PM) aka Ancient Temple. For those more inclined to read, I have provided a transcript of the Vlog content below:

In PM, an 18th century sorcerer/devil-worshipper called Saamri is caught and tried by the royal court for crimes that include practicing black magic, grave-robbing and necrophagy. He is sentenced to death by beheading, after which his head and body are to be stored in different locations such that the twain shall never meet. In return, Saamri swears vengeance on the royal family, with a curse that each of its women would die during childbirth. He also warns that when his head and body are reunited he will hunt down and destroy every last member of the line. Somewhat extreme, but then you can hardly blame him for losing his head over it.

Cut to modern times and urban locales. Suman (a charming Arti Gupta, who did 3 films with the Ramsays), the daughter of the last blueblood wants to marry and make babies with her photographer fiance (Mohnish Bahl), but her royal papa (Pradeep Kumar) is wholly against this because of the family curse. Now the young lovers must go to the place where it all began and find a means of defusing the curse so they can live happily ever after.

In the plot point about the sorcerer's separated head and torso being reunited, horror fans might recall older films like Will Cowan's The Thing That Couldn't Die (1958) and more importantly, Spanish horror icon Paul Naschy's 1972 chiller Horror Rises from the Tomb (HRftT). Naschy's film, which in itself owed a debt of gratitude to Mario Bava's Mask of Satan (1960), was the likeliest inspiration for the outline of PM. But that's where the similarity ends. HRftT has a languorous, sepulchral air; some might even describe it as boring. On the other hand PM, its detours into song breaks and comedy tracks notwithstanding, is a thrilling, kinetic narrative. In its best parts the style is Bava meets Hammer Horror. The scene where Saamri's severed head is carried through the night in a chase sequence and joined up with the body in a demented blood ritual ranks among the most memorable moments in horror for me. Even now, it makes my hairs stand.

And Aniruddha Agarwal...as Saamri the 6ft+ actor has a genuinely menacing air. In an intelligent move, once his character is resurrected from the dead, he has no lines of dialog. He is a towering implacable presence whose eyes radiate pure malevolent energy. At one point, when the martial arts expert friend of the lead pair (Puneet Issar), the one guy expected to have a fighting chance, falls victim to Saamri's rampage, an unmitigated hopelessness permeates the scene. His reign of terror seems inevitable. Fortunately for the film's protagonists, Saamri is eventually vanquished in a dramatic climax that echoes Terence Fisher's work.

At the time of release Purana Mandir was another in the line of low-budget shockers the Ramsays had been putting out since the 70's, but it turned out a surprise blockbuster, garnering several times its making cost at the box office, and after four decades it continues to rake in royalties and recognition for the Ramsays. So in spirit Saamri still lives on as the most known face of Indian horror cinema.

Other Vlogs in this series:

Aatma Vlog

Bandh Darwaza Vlog

Purani Haveli Vlog 

Tahkhana Vlog

Veerana Vlog