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The last Vlog episode I did on the Ramsay movies included in Mondo Macabro's Bollywood Horror blu-ray boxset was several months ago. I have no excuse for this huge gap, I was just being a lazy bum. Anyway, a short while ago I saw that people had started receiving their copies of this monstrous set. I felt I should get off my ass and finish with the last entry in this series - Aatma aka Spirit (2006), directed by Deepak Ramsay. Like always, those that prefer to read than watch, the full transcript is available below the video:
I must confess here that I have a special fondness for Aatma. It was the first Ramsay horror feature which I saw in a cinema. When their classic titles like Purana Mandir, Veerana and Bandh Darwaza were being screened in movie halls, I was still a schoolkid and obviously could not go for these Adults Only rated films. Also, the 80's were the age of VHS, and my household was one among many middle class Indian households that did most of their movie-watching at home. Before Aatma, I had seen other horror films in cinemas, including Hollywood films and also some by other Indian horror film-makers like Ram Gopal Varma, but I was still a virgin to Ramsay-style horror on the big screen.
So when in 2006, a new Ramsay horror feature was released, I felt obliged to experience it in a movie theater. Interestingly enough, the Ramsays had previously retreated from big-screen movie-making for some time. 1994's Mahakaal (an unauthorized "re-imagining" of Nightmare on Elm Street) had been the last previous theatrical horror feature from the Ramsay production house. The Indian horror film market by then was in a bad shape, with a glut of zero-budget zero-talent films killing audience interest in the genre.
Ironically this return to big-screen horror was very likely inspired by their foray into television programming. During the early 90's satellite TV boom, the Ramsays produced an anthology series called The Zee Horror Show. Household TV sets across the country blared the iconic Ramsay theme tune which had been recycled for the series, and home audiences were both terrified of and delighted by the show. The series had an 8-year run from 1993-2001, probably one of the longest running on Indian television.
Deepak Ramsay, who had previously assisted his father Tulsi Ramsay and uncle Shyam on some of their classic horror films, 'made his bones' on the show, directing the majority of the episodes. It is likely that the experience he gained on this show and the long-running success it enjoyed, planted the idea in Deepak's head of reviving the Ramsay Horror banner for the big screen. In fact, several people have likened Aatma to an extended episode of The Zee Horror Show.
Which is not a bad thing, per se. It reminds me more of the horror and suspense films the Ramsays made for a decade before they hit upon Purana Mandir's monster formula. I quite like this phase of the Ramsays, when they were experimenting with a bunch of different narratives, making for some variety in the telling. There is a strong element of EC Comics style "revenge from beyond the grave" here.
In the story, a young doctor (Kapil Jhaveri) is visited in the dead of night by a strangely pale bloke that tells him about an autopsy he will do the next day. He warns the doc to make an honest job of it or suffer horrific consequences. Imagine the doc's surprise when he finds the same bloke laid out as a corpse on the morgue table. But our doc has a problem - the dead man's relatives have compelled him to pass the murder off as a natural death, by threatening to kill his beautiful wife (Neha / Shabana Raza). Having succumbed to their blackmail, he has to deal with the curse of the dead man's spirit, which is also determined to avenge itself on the murderers. Whether the spirit is successful in its quest for vengeance and whether our doc is able to obtain release from its oppression forms the rest of the narrative.
The influence of the Ramsays' TV stint is certainly reflected in Aatma, but I think mostly to the film's benefit. Moving away from the trademark haunted palace and dungeon locations of their previous films, Aatma is entrenched in a contemporary urban setting. Within the crisp 107 min running time, there is a compact narrative-focused structure, and a lesser number of breaks for songs and odious comedy. I appreciated the moral ambiguity - the doc dishonors his profession and pisses off the dead man's spirit by his perfidy, but he does it for the safety of his family. Our sympathies are thereby divided between the doc and the wronged spirit. As the murderous villains, Bollywood character actors Sadashiv Amrapurkar and Mukesh Tiwari ham it up in style, and Laila Patel as the vamp oozes mucho oomph factor. Deepak sets up some solid revenge kills for the spirit - my favorite is when an unearthly high-pitched scream literally splits open Amrapurkar's head (a possible hat tip to Scanners).
Visually, Aatma is a mixed bag. It is colorful, but lit in a flat full-bright fashion and relies on blue filters for night-time scenes; a look more suited to TV. Camera wizard Gangu Ramsay does bring out his trademark odd angles, and I like some of the modern touches, like the surveillance cameras monitoring the spirit's activity. It's not high art by any means, but it is pleasing Bollywood style horror entertainment. Going by the screenshots I have seen, Aatma's look seems to be nicely replicated in the Mondo blu-ray. It certainly promises to be a huge upgrade over my current VCD copy and I can't wait to visit this late era Ramsay horror in proper high-definition.
Other Vlogs in this series:
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