THE
BOLLYWOOD HORROR COLLECTION - VOLUME 3MAHAKAAL (1993)/TAHKHANA (1986)
Directors: Shyam Ramsay and Tulsi Ramsay
Mondo Macabro
THE
BOLLYWOOD HORROR COLLECTION - VOLUME 3Notwithstanding the accolades
and success of Danny Boyle’s SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, India has yet to influence
the American film landscape to the degree that America has influenced India’s.
Since the rise of home video, India, a country that already devours cinema,
has looked to the west for characters and storylines from which to borrow from
as a means of furthering its own cinematic output. The practice has lead to
a film industry rife with remakesploitation pictures that cater to regional
audiences while providing recognizable, often pop culture American flavoring.
While many Bollywood remakesploitation pictures outright mimic their Hollywood
counterparts scene for scene, the majority derive their influences from a single
situation or character. Films such as SARKAR and AATANK, essentially reworkings
of THE GODFATHER and JAWS respectively, succeed by framing their borrowed plot
points within a setting that is relatable to an Indian audience, almost all
of whom have predetermined notions of what a film should offer ( i.e. a little
bit of everything - comedy, action, musical numbers, etc.). Such practices make
for films that while recognizable, are unto themselves wholly unique.
In
addition to the sheer number of pictures produced in a given year, where India
excels in remakesploitation is in its amalgamations of Hollywood fare, combining
elements from a variety of films in order to shape something new altogether.
Take for example 2004’s DHOOM, which incorporates elements from POINT
BREAK, THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS and THE MATRIX RELOADED, to name just a few.
Or 2005’s NAINA, a take on The Pang brothers' GIN GWAI (THE EYE), itself
remade by Hollywood in 2008, which combines elements from THE SIXTH SENSE and
Hideo Nakata’s DARK WATER, again remade by Hollywood, to create a distinctly
Hindi horror thriller. India should also be given credit for branching out past
the U.S. and across the globe in its search of material from which to borrow,
resulting in films such as ZINDA, a reworking of Chan-wook Park OLDBOY and 100
DAYS, a remake of Lucio Fulci’s THE PSYCHIC. With remakes ranging from
CHACHI 420, a Bollywood spin on MRS. DOUBTFIRE, to KAANTE, an interpretation
of Quentin Tarantino’s RESERVOIR DOGS, there are simply too many Bollywood
remakesploitation pictures to name.
For the third entry in their Bollywood Horror collection, Mondo Macabro presents
MAHAKAAL, the Ramsay brothers' take on Wes Craven’s A NIGHTMARE ON ELM
STREET. Take away Freddy Krueger’s sarcastic wit and red striped sweater,
but leave the crispy face and glove made of knifes. Then dress him up like Tony
Todd in CANDYMAN and give him Patrick Swayze’s mullet from ROAD HOUSE
and you have yourself a walking nightmare more than suitable at striking fear
into the middle aged hearts of college students all over Bombay. Anita (Archana
Puran Singh) and her best friend Seema are being haunted by nightmares about
a strange, foreboding figure with a deadly glove of knifes. While their night
terrors at first appear to be the result of overactive imaginations, both ladies
awaken to find themselves physically scarred by their nocturnal encounters.
As if Anita didn’t have enough to worry about, she is constantly harassed
at school by Randhir, a lowlife nicknamed The Boss, who wants nothing more than
a few choice moments with Anita’s tender frame. Thankfully her boyfriend
Prakash is not about to let any harm come to his lady, after all, who would
he duet with in the rain? Attempting to momentarily forget their troubles and
put the stresses of the school week behind them, Anita, Prakash and a group
of friends head out into the country to have a picnic, only to find themselves
stranded upon their return. Holed up in an out of the way motel, Seema's nightmares
turn deadly, setting off a chain reaction of grisly murders that somehow relate
back to the death of Anita’s sister, Mohini, seven years earlier.
While
it displays touches of the first four films in the franchise, MAHAKAAL is a
fairly straightforward reinterpretation of the original NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET.
The film maintains several inventive kills from the series, as well as the boiler
room atmosphere, complete with metal chains hanging from the ceiling for no
reason other than they look cool swinging back in forth in the fog, and goes
so far as to replicate segments of Charles Bernstein’s original score.
While the demonic villain in MAHAKAAL can’t hold a candle to Robert Englund’s
Freddy, the beast holds his own in regards to past Bollywood monsters, though
is decidedly more human in comparison to his often Sasquatch-like counterparts.
Not surprisingly, MAHAKAAL isn’t India's only NIGHTMARE knockoff; numerous
Hindi horror outings would use choice scenes from the series to heighten both
chills and kills. However it is KHOONI MURDAA, directed by Mohan Bhakri and
released several years before MAHAKAAL, which makes the most in its interpretations
of Krueger’s imaginative and gruesome killing streak.
Look past the obvious NIGHTMARE influence, MAHAKAAL is also characterized by
several staples commonplace in most Bollywood horror pictures. The horror genre
saw a short lived boom in India throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s,
but eventually the trend fizzled out, due mainly to the repetitiveness of the
industry's output. Dramatic, colored lighting effects, borrowed from the films
of Bava and Argento became commonplace, as did EVIL DEAD inspired camera work,
all which can be seen in MAHAKAAL. Omar Khan, director of ZIBAHKHANA (HELL’S
GROUND), puts it best, as seen in the documentary on Bollywood horror found
of this release's second disc: there are only so many times you can duplicate
the head spin from THE EXORCIST before it loses its impact. One aspect of MAHAKAAL
that is distinctly rare, for any Bollywood picture, is the presence of a comedic
foil that is actually entertaining. As the boisterous Canteen, the school's
seemingly sole cafeteria worker, Johnny Lever is so ludicrously silly that it’s
outright hilarious, particularly his introduction in which he mimics Michael
Jackson dance moves to the tune of "Thriller." Filled with action,
a handful of solid laughs and tolerable musical numbers, MAHAKAAL is a perfect
film to play when entertaining a group of like minded, and properly inebriated
friends.
Disc Two of Mondo Macabro’s third volume in their Bollywood Horror Collection
presents a much more familiar Indian horror yarn with TAHKHANA, also known as
THE DUNGEON. Attempting to strike gold twice, TAHKHANA is more or less a rehash
of PURANA MANDIR, one of the Ramsay brother’s most profitable pictures.
While it incorporates much of the same cast and plot points as PURANA MANDIR,
TAHKHANA also displays several signs of a western influence unique unto itself,
such as one manically extraordinary scene in which a telekinetic yeti wills
a giant boulder down a destructive path, ala RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, towards
a male protagonist dressed like Rambo!
On his death bed, Thakur Surjeet Singh bequeaths his entire wealth and estate,
including the treasure hidden within the family dungeon, to his youngest son
Raghuveer Singh, hence disowning his eldest, Durjan, a practitioner of the black
arts. Furious over his father’s rejection, Durjan swears vengeance on
his brother, kidnapping his two daughters to sacrifice and thus resurrect the
demon god for which he worships. However before blood can be spilt, Raghuveer’s
daughters escape from Durjan, only to be separated in the heat of the moment,
with Aarti (Aarti Gupta) finding her way home and Sapna (Sheetal) lost to the
wilderness. Twenty years later, Raghuveer Singh calls Aarti and her cousins,
Vijay, Anand and Shakaal, to his bedside, to inform them of the treasures hidden
within the dungeon of Gangapur Mansion and of his desire that they seek out
Sapna and finally bring her home. Before they were separated, Aarti and Sapna
where each given half of a golden locket from their father, that when combined
shows the exact location of the family's secret jewels, so without Sapna, the
treasure will remain a mystery forever.
Traveling
back to Bombay, Shakaal, played by Imtiaz Khan, meets an attractive woman in
desperate need of a job. Looking to take advantage of the innocent beauty, Shakaal
has the young girl hired as a dancer for the hotel with which he helps run,
but before she can get a chance to hit the stage, Shakaal forces himself into
the young girl's room and on top of her curvy figure. Struggling to break free
of the motley brute, whose oversized facial mole lends him to resemble a Hindi
Aaron Neville, the young girl accidentally kills herself, dropping a necklace
that (you guessed it) reveals herself to be Sapna. Eager to find and keep the
family's long lost treasure to himself, Shakaal produces his cousins with a
fake locket, hoping to distract his relatives on a wild goose chase while he
and his cronies makes off with the hidden fortune. However, the group doesn’t
make it far within the dungeon before being confronted by a hairy, murderous
behemoth. Trapped within the dungeon years ago by his brother, Durjan sacrificed
himself to the demon god as a means of resurrecting his master, now a walking
corpse that wreaks havoc and destruction where ever it treads. Such a bloodthirsty
monstrosity did not however plan on Heera (Hemant Birje, VEERANA), a strapping
young man prone to dressing like Rambo, who befriends Aarti and her cousins
and brings with him an entire village with which to fend of the evil deity.
With a running time that just barely clocks in at two hours, TAHKHANA is quite
brisk, particularly for a Bollywood film. A monster movie at its heart, the
film wastes little time with unnecessary comedic relief, relying instead on
action, thrills and a couple of prerequisite musical numbers to flesh out a
familiar story that, at the time, Indian audiences could not get enough of.
While rather straightforward in its delivery, there are thankfully plenty of
“what the?” moments for those looking for something out of the ordinary
to enjoy, such a when Vijay and Heera get their dates high off of hemp tea,
which of course leads to an impromptu musical number in the rain. I also couldn’t
help but notice the unexpended presence of underground vultures in both TAHKHANA
and MAHAKAAL, who apparently sustain themselves by feeding off of the rubber
bats and spiders that inhabit the caves in which they reside.
A
breakout from his first starring role as the lead in Babbar Subhash’s
TARZAN, it’s clear from his introduction that the Ramsay brothers were
looking to capitalize on Hemant Birje's notoriety as a buff leading man, as
his character's introduction in TAHKHANA is signaled by a signature Tarzan yell.
Rarely scene without a black wife beater and matching headband, Hemant would
star in number of Ramsay brother releases including VEERANA, available on volume
two of Mondo Macabro Bollywood Horror collection, playing more or less the same
role as Heera.
Mondo Macabro presents both MAHAKAAL and TAHKHANA in brand new digital transfers
taken from original negatives, both in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio. Picture quality
varies, with MAHAKAAL faring far better than its companion piece, but given
the rarity of the films, such imperfections are easy to look past. MAHAKAAL
actually looks quiet amazing, with an impressive degree of detail and rich coloring.
TAHKHANA however suffers from some fluttering in the film and the occasional
color wash. Audio is on hand in Dolby Digital Stereo in the film's original
Hindi language with optional English subtitles. Tracks for both films are for
the most part clear, save for a number of instances when TAHKHANA again shows
its age with a bit of background junk. Written by Pete Tombs, text essays and
cast bios are provided for both features. Both are insightful looks into the
film's cast and the studio that hired and produced them. Besides their popular
preview reel, this release's most entertaining extra is a 24-minute documentary
on Bollywood horror. Previously available on volume one of their Bollywood Horror
collection, the doc is a fascinating look into the film industries of India
and Pakistan that will have you craving for more from the hand-painted poster
strew streets of Mumbai. (Jason McElreath)