Runtime: The version I saw was around 139 minutes
Directed by: Shyam Ramsay/Tulsi Ramsay
Starring: Mohnish Behl, Arti Gupta, Puneet Issar, Sadashiv Amrapurkar, Anirudh Agarwal
From: K.R. Enterprises
This sure was an 80’s Indian horror film. The hope was to see something in the genre from India this year; it’s a shame that none of the titles in Mondo Macabro’s Bollywood Horror boxset (devoted to the films of the Ramsay family, who were dominant in this genre for about 20 years) are available for legal streaming anywhere. It took a random YouTube account uploading a version w/ subtitles for me to check it out.
It features various horror hallmarks. A king beheads a demon and separates the head far away from the torso--but not before the demon curses the family for time immemorial that all the women die during childbirth. In modern times, this is why dad doesn’t want daughter to date, although her lover is of a lower class anyhow. She and her beau go to the haunted palace (the movie’s title in English) as they feel the legend is poppycock. However… there are jump scares, frightening-looking images, a black cat, dark foggy nights, a ghostly painting, a buff mustached shirtless pal of the beau that does one-armed pushups by a lake… OK, that last part you can only find in cinema from this country. I was utterly delighted that even this featured a buff macho man who beats up multiple foes at once… & on more than one occasion.
I should have suspected that there’d be more than one random subplot involving completely random characters that had little to do with do w/ the main plot; regrettably, the most egregious one involves a rather rape-y dude and thankfully he only appeared in a few scenes. What I did accurately predict: the broad comedy & the musical numbers! Oh, those were a hoot. The first number was done in a club featuring posters of Elvis and Christopher Reeve as Superman.
The film’s demerits weren’t enough to prevent me from giving it a nice rating. Bad “comedy” aside, the horror scares were done well enough and the “Indian cinema” moments usually landed. From hearsay, this picture was a massive hit and in fact propelled the careers of the Ramsay family. It also added variety to Spooky Season this year.
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