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Veerana Vlog

Friday, December 16, 2022

The Devil's Hour [Tom Moran]

Over the course of a week, I finished watching this 6-episode mini-series called The Devil's Hour (TDH, currently showing on Amazon Prime). It can be loosely described as Silence of the Lambs meets The Sixth Sense meets Groundhog Day. Check the Vlog to see my take on it. If you prefer reading to watching, the full transcript is given below the video:

Our protagonist Lucy (Jessica Raine) is a social worker and single mother who balances her job of counseling assorted abuse victims with a troubled home-life; her son Isaac (Benjamin Chivers) is a cipher, almost always silent, and curiously devoid of any emotion. While Lucy's husband Mark would like dearly to get her back in his life, he is far less enthusiastic about the son; with cruel sarcasm he refers to the latter as a "psychopath in the making".

Lucy also has a senile mother who watches television with the power off and talks to people that aren't there. And oh, it appears that Lucy wakes up every night exactly at 3.33am. This is evidenced by a bedside clock that glows a ridiculously bright purple; to me the bigger mystery here is how she manages to fall asleep with that light in her face.

On another story-thread detective-inspector Ravi Dhillon (Nikesh Patel) - whose schtick is retching at crime scenes and listening to the Beach Boys while studying them (hold on!). Along with his intensely Scottish cop buddy Nick Holness (Alex Ferns), Ravi is on the trail of a random series of murders and abductions, which hint at a diabolical serial killer. Together they discover that the murderer is in some way connected to Lucy and Isaac.

These two tracks are frequently interrupted by a series of scenes set at an unspecified time in an interrogation cell, where a bruised Ravi and Lucy are talking to a rather sinister, murderous looking character called Gideon (Peter Capaldi of Doctor Who fame).

The overall tone of TDH is what I call "Netflix Dark" - the characters have intense obsessive personalities and dark secrets, the crime scenes are gruesome and if a character smiles, you can be sure that smile will be wiped out before long. That said, it is not all misanthropic and it does have a sense of humor, which goes some way to making the atmosphere less miserable. It also helps that the actors fit their parts really well. Jessica Raine is empathetic as the single mother protagonist, but special mention must be made of child actor Benjamin Chivers, with his beautifully modulated depiction of the almost android-like Isaac. Capaldi and Nikesh Patel also embody their parts well.

For most of the season, TDH's narrative jumps around in time in a manner that is distracting, without making itself clear. Individual episodes have some strong moments but there are also seemingly random dream logic segments. It is in the final episode that the underlying concept is revealed, for which the clues had been strewn before. Without going too far into spoiler territory, this is where the Groundhog Day element dominates in a very far-reaching way. It calls for a significant suspension of disbelief, and renders certain characters and sub-plots less important than they initially seemed. How much that conceit appeals to you is a matter of individual taste. I thought it was decent, and they did go for a bold downer ending, which is not a return to status quo.

On the whole, TDH can be described as somewhat cliched and contrived. But it is also nicely polished and frequently effective. Fans of mystery/horror dramas might want to check it out, and it's only 6 hour long episodes.

Official trailer link:

Monday, December 12, 2022

Un-kvlt Vlog 5 - Ramsay Horror Special - Bandh Darwaza

Bandh Darwaza (1990) may not be the last film in Mondo Macabro's upcoming Bollywood Horror boxset, but it does represent the end of the classic cycle of Ramsay monster movies that began with 1984's Purana Mandir (PM), and I hope to do it sufficient justice in this Un-kvlt vlog. For those that prefer to read, the transcript is given below:

In some ways, this end mirrors the beginning. In both films, the featured monster is portrayed by the Ramsays' most famous horror star Aniruddh Agarwal. While in PM, Agarwal was the devil-worshiper Saamri who is resurrected as a vengeful ghoul, Bandh Darwaza (BD) has him playing Nevla, a vampire who is also master of a satanic cult, and returns from the grave for his revenge.

Nevla's vampiric nature is emphasized in the introduction where he emerges after sundown from his lair to stalk the countryside for prey. His all-black costume with flowing cape, red lenses and fangs owe a great deal to Christopher Lee's ensemble in Hammer's Dracula movies. Nevla's den is the familiar dungeon set from previous Ramsay films, this time housing a striking bat statue.

Interestingly, the name Nevla translates as 'mongoose', a creature famous for its animosity towards cobras. Even those that haven't come across the animal may know it from the Rudyard Kipling story Rikki-Tikki-Tavi (in The Jungle Book collection). The mongoose is not usually given negative or evil connotations, so it is unusual for a horror feature's main villain to be named after it.

As I said, Nevla is also a cult leader; he has a bunch of acolytes ready to perform any evil deed in his service (including a rather butch woman in an incongruous tigerskin coat). When the local big shot's childless wife (veteran character actor Beena Banerjee) visits him in her desperation to be a mother, Nevla obliges her - and the film makes no pretense about how he does this - but with the condition that any girl child must be handed back as his property (possibly to replenish the quota of female ritual dancers in his shrine).

Expectedly, the wife gives birth to a girl and tries to welsh on the deal. That turns out a fatally bad idea; a furious Nevla has her killed and the baby kidnapped. In turn her husband drives a dagger through Nevla's heart, putting him in cold storage for a while.

In the next segment of the movie, the girl child rescued from Nevla's clutches grows up to be the sexy but spoilt Kaamya. Kaamya has the hots for her childhood friend Kumar (Hashmat Khan). When she finds him unreceptive to her charms, she determines to bag him even if she must sell her soul to the devil in the bargain. You can see where this is leading to.

Kaamya is played by actress Kunika, who had previously worked in a couple of horror projects with the Ramsays' rival Mohan Bhakri (Kabrastan and Amavas ki Raat). Although she was frequently seen in cameos and supporting roles, BD is one of the few features where Kunika has a leading part and she makes the most of it. She doesn't match up to the stupendous sex appeal of Veerana's star Jasmine, but she does convey Kaamya's animal hunger for Kumar, and her willingness to cross all lines to possess him. In this sense, BD is probably a little closer to the Ramsays' earliest horror films, where characters invited doom upon themselves by their actions, instead of simply falling prey to an external evil.

Through a convoluted set of circumstances, Kaamya's desire takes her down the forbidden path and, like her mother before, she too comes under the sway of Nevla's cult. There's a standout scene in which a resurrected Nevla, covered in a slimy primordial goo rises from his coffin and slowly approaches her. Given the story behind Kaamya's birth, Nevla is her biological father. At the same time she is involved in his 'rebirth' and in satisfying his immediate hunger. I doubt the Ramsays factored in all these ramifications while doing the scene, but it creates a strange incestuous vibe. For Dracula fans, another exquisite bit is when the Lucy Westenra equivalent character is summoned by the vampire at her bedroom window and submits to him while her husband slumbers nearby.

Unfortunately, BD is not without its flaws. When Nevla is not on screen the film's energy noticeably dips. While not slumping as much as their previous release Purani Haveli, BD's screenplay has an inefficient, ad-hoc quality, with several slip-ups in continuity and tone. The lead romantic pair, whose survival we are meant to root for, are too bland to care about. For some reason, the trademark rousing Ramsay musical theme is only used once and in a minor key, although they do recycle other tunes from their previous pictures.

But all this notwithstanding, BD is one of the top offerings from the Ramsays in this period. Every scene with Aniruddha Agarwal's Nevla is worth savoring for his towering, terrifying presence. Even simply looking in through a stained glass transom window, captured lovingly by Gangu Ramsay's camera, he can send shivers down your spine. This was the last major feature film that Agarwal did with the Ramsays, and I am happy to report that he bows out with a killer turn.

Next up, I hope to tackle the last title from this much-awaited boxset, Deepak Ramsay's Aatma, which in many ways represent a shift from the other films included here. Till then, farewell and take care.

Other Vlogs in this series:

Veerana Vlog

Saturday, November 26, 2022

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:

Bandh Darwaza Vlog

Veerana Vlog

Sunday, November 13, 2022

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:

Bandh Darwaza Vlog

Veerana Vlog

Sunday, November 6, 2022

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:

Bandh Darwaza Vlog

Veerana Vlog

Wednesday, October 26, 2022

Un-kvlt Vlog 1 - Ramsay Horror Special - Veerana (1988)

The Un-kvlt Site steps into the realm of Vlogs with this piece on the classic Ramsay horror Veerana. Apologies for the poor webcam audio. I still need to figure out how to get my computer to take input from a dedicated mic.

Other Vlogs in this series:

Bandh Darwaza Vlog