Runtime: 120 minutes
Directed by: S.U. Syed
Starring: Sharmila Tagore,
Suresh Oberoi, Navin Nischol, Prema Narayan, Chandrashekhar
From: Several Indian
companies
A Hindi Bollywood version of Friday the 13th!
To address the elephant in the room, I did hear about this from The Cinema Snob doing a video about the film a few days ago. I do not watch The Cinema Snob as to me the character is not funny... like at all. Plus, Channel Awesome is a horrorshow all its own, as many probably have heard by now. However, with what I do watch those videos sometimes pop up in my recommendations and I at least watched enough of that to find out what this was called, and it can be found on YouTube. The idea of this does make me chortle, and India rips off many Hollywood movies, or so I've heard... that includes the horror genre. A few years ago I saw and reviewed Makakaal, a 1993 movie known on Letterboxd as The Monster. What a hoot that was, as that ripped off A Nightmare on Elm Street and Indian Freddy Kreuger-among other things-sported a mullet!
This does start off with a sing-a-long at a campfire, then killings inside a building; unlike 13th, this had bizarre images and opening credits which feature 80's electro music, complete with vocodor and record scratches directly taken from Herbie Hancock's Rockit. All of this was tremendous, then the first hour happened and it was full of dialogue (which was mainly useless to me, as it was in Hindi, I don't speak Hindi, and no subtitles were present) and traditional Bollywood musical numbers, which were fine I guess... more than one was pretty hilarious unintentionally with its wacky choreography.
All that needs to be said about the plot was that the setting was a mansion turned into a hotel instead of Camp Crystal Lake, so it is adults we follow instead of randy teenagers. Although, one of the guys we see here has a girlfriend and yet gets incredibly horny at multiple women, while his girlfriend is nearby. There is even a Crazy Ralph substitute, who dresses like a hobo for some reason. Also, there was a random fight scene.
Things do pick up in the second act as a woman is killed then IMMEDIATELY afterwards is a dance number in a club which is a cover of Giorgio Moroder's The Chase, complete with lyrics, and the dancing is rather amazingly, in a spectacle sort of way. About ¾ of the way through is the true highlight: a number set on a fake roof with a fake city skyline as the backdrop, and we finally get the return of electro music, as it's our lead couple dressed in 80's futuristic outfits and it becomes more and more tremendous the longer it lasts.
I am unsure how to rate this; besides the obvious language barrier, the prints of it out there are not of great quality. Yet I guess I'll say that it's fine. There is great novelty value to a Hindi version of an 80's slasher classic which gives the villain a supernatural bent along with replicating its famous stinger ending and yet also has Moroder & electro. It is better than Srigala, an Indonesian Friday the 13th which I've also seen without subtitles; it's known on Letterboxd as Wolf.
To address the elephant in the room, I did hear about this from The Cinema Snob doing a video about the film a few days ago. I do not watch The Cinema Snob as to me the character is not funny... like at all. Plus, Channel Awesome is a horrorshow all its own, as many probably have heard by now. However, with what I do watch those videos sometimes pop up in my recommendations and I at least watched enough of that to find out what this was called, and it can be found on YouTube. The idea of this does make me chortle, and India rips off many Hollywood movies, or so I've heard... that includes the horror genre. A few years ago I saw and reviewed Makakaal, a 1993 movie known on Letterboxd as The Monster. What a hoot that was, as that ripped off A Nightmare on Elm Street and Indian Freddy Kreuger-among other things-sported a mullet!
This does start off with a sing-a-long at a campfire, then killings inside a building; unlike 13th, this had bizarre images and opening credits which feature 80's electro music, complete with vocodor and record scratches directly taken from Herbie Hancock's Rockit. All of this was tremendous, then the first hour happened and it was full of dialogue (which was mainly useless to me, as it was in Hindi, I don't speak Hindi, and no subtitles were present) and traditional Bollywood musical numbers, which were fine I guess... more than one was pretty hilarious unintentionally with its wacky choreography.
All that needs to be said about the plot was that the setting was a mansion turned into a hotel instead of Camp Crystal Lake, so it is adults we follow instead of randy teenagers. Although, one of the guys we see here has a girlfriend and yet gets incredibly horny at multiple women, while his girlfriend is nearby. There is even a Crazy Ralph substitute, who dresses like a hobo for some reason. Also, there was a random fight scene.
Things do pick up in the second act as a woman is killed then IMMEDIATELY afterwards is a dance number in a club which is a cover of Giorgio Moroder's The Chase, complete with lyrics, and the dancing is rather amazingly, in a spectacle sort of way. About ¾ of the way through is the true highlight: a number set on a fake roof with a fake city skyline as the backdrop, and we finally get the return of electro music, as it's our lead couple dressed in 80's futuristic outfits and it becomes more and more tremendous the longer it lasts.
I am unsure how to rate this; besides the obvious language barrier, the prints of it out there are not of great quality. Yet I guess I'll say that it's fine. There is great novelty value to a Hindi version of an 80's slasher classic which gives the villain a supernatural bent along with replicating its famous stinger ending and yet also has Moroder & electro. It is better than Srigala, an Indonesian Friday the 13th which I've also seen without subtitles; it's known on Letterboxd as Wolf.
No comments:
Post a Comment