Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2: Today. This is an exciting intrigue in the Weird House
Speaker 2: Cinema catalog because we are going to be covering our
Speaker 2: first film from India. It's always fun when we can
Speaker 2: dive into a new film culture, a new national film tradition.
Speaker 2: And I know, for me personally Indian cinema Bollywood in particular,
Speaker 2: this is a whole area of film that I really
Speaker 2: don't have much of any exposure to. So I was
Speaker 2: excited to watch this movie research it a bit because
Speaker 2: not only is it is it Bollywood, it is Bollywood horror.
Speaker 2: We're going to be talking about Purana mandir A not
Speaker 2: only a horror movie, but like the horror movie from
Speaker 2: India from nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 3: This is also my first full viewing of a Bollywood movie.
Speaker 3: I've watched a lot of clips from them before. Often,
Speaker 3: like people will clip out really great musical numbers from
Speaker 3: them and put them online, so I've seen plenty of those,
Speaker 3: but yeah, this was the first time I've seen the
Speaker 3: whole thing. But man, this movie was mostly great, at
Speaker 3: some points awful and really got my mind cranking about
Speaker 3: the what it means to have musical numbers in a film.
Speaker 2: Yes, because one of the if you don't know anything,
Speaker 2: or you don't know much about Indian cinema and Bollywood
Speaker 2: in particular, you may know that there are musical numbers.
Speaker 2: It's a big song and dance numbers. And I think
Speaker 2: at times this can be like knowing this can be
Speaker 2: kind of like a barrier to entry. You might think, well,
Speaker 2: I don't know if I'm up for that. I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm not a musical fan. Or even if you decide, oh,
Speaker 2: well there's a horror genre I want to get into that,
Speaker 2: but then you realize there are musical numbers, maybe you're
Speaker 2: going to hold back, but yeah, it's to sort of
Speaker 2: break that down, like, well, how different is that from
Speaker 2: anything we watch over here? You know, we have this
Speaker 2: a genre of musical obviously that goes in various directions,
Speaker 2: but also we have strong musical segments in various pictures
Speaker 2: where you'll feature a particular track. It just maybe you
Speaker 2: don't have characters actually singing that song.
Speaker 3: Yes, I agree with all of that. I mean It
Speaker 3: really got me thinking, why don't American horror movies tend
Speaker 3: to have musical numbers in them? And if they did,
Speaker 3: why would we say, well, actually, this is just a
Speaker 3: totally different genre now it is a musical. Why couldn't
Speaker 3: all genres have musical numbers, because, as you say, music
Speaker 3: features in other movies, diagetic and non diegetic music features
Speaker 3: in as long as the characters aren't singing, it's not
Speaker 3: a musical. But there's no particular reason I think of
Speaker 3: why the fact that characters do sing in a movie
Speaker 3: should make that a separate genre from whatever the narrative
Speaker 3: content is. So yeah, I think we should have more fantasy,
Speaker 3: sci fi movies, whatever, horror movies that have characters singing songs,
Speaker 3: because songs are great. Now that I've experienced a Bollywood film,
Speaker 3: it in no way takes away from my enjoyment of
Speaker 3: this as a cheesy horror movie. And I don't really
Speaker 3: see why you would resist. I think maybe there's one
Speaker 3: impulse that says like musical numbers could take away from
Speaker 3: the seriousness of the film. There's another that says it
Speaker 3: could take away from the quote realism. I'd say, if
Speaker 3: you're overly concerned with either of those, maybe you shouldn't
Speaker 3: be making a horror movie.
Speaker 2: I think another sort of barrier to entry or sort
Speaker 2: of expectation is that might be for many and it
Speaker 2: was kind of this way for me. Is I expected
Speaker 2: going into a musical number to be clunkier and take
Speaker 2: me out of the picture more. And there are sections
Speaker 2: of the film that do manage to take me out
Speaker 2: of the picture and are clunky, but the musical numbers,
Speaker 2: like you get the impressional like this, this is down
Speaker 2: to like an art just in Indian cinema in general,
Speaker 2: And so if a movie's going into a musical number,
Speaker 2: they know what they're doing. They like it's you're gonna
Speaker 2: have a smooth takeoff and landing with the emotional arc
Speaker 2: of whatever that particular song happens to be.
Speaker 3: Every time a song kicked in, I was like, okay,
Speaker 3: now we're cooking. Even the kind of sad, slower paced songs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, because it's it's it's not coming out of nowhere,
Speaker 2: it's coming out of what's going on emotionally with the characters,
Speaker 2: or especially towards the end of this picture, with like
Speaker 2: the driving nature of the plot.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, the human sacrifice song I think was my
Speaker 3: favorite song in the movie.
Speaker 2: All right, So again, this was my first Bollywood film.
Speaker 2: I'd never watched one in its entirety, like you had
Speaker 2: seen some clips, so I had to I had to
Speaker 2: do a little extra reading about everything. There's a lot
Speaker 2: of things about Bollywood cinema that I was not familiar
Speaker 2: with and just did not know about. So, for instance,
Speaker 2: bear with me if you already knew all of this.
Speaker 2: But when we talk about Bollywood cinema, we're talking about
Speaker 2: films specifically coming out of the Mumbai film industry. Mumbai
Speaker 2: formerly known as Bombay. You get it, like Bombay plus
Speaker 2: Hollywood equals Bollywood. And while it's perhaps the most well
Speaker 2: known internationally of the various Indian film centers, Indian cinema
Speaker 2: is not a monolith like India itself. India cinema consists
Speaker 2: of various languages and cultures and in the different cinematic
Speaker 2: traditions and centers have like different strengths, different histories and
Speaker 2: so forth. So with some of the various extras on
Speaker 2: the disc or discs that we looked at for this
Speaker 2: as well as some articles, it was a real learning
Speaker 2: experience for me to familiarize myself somewhat with this. I
Speaker 2: mean it goes beyond genre with this, just whole realm
Speaker 2: of cinema.
Speaker 3: By the way, just as one example of other film
Speaker 3: subcultures of India, I know there is also the so
Speaker 3: called Tollywood, which refers to Tollywood with a tea, referring
Speaker 3: to films made in the Telugu language, which is one
Speaker 3: of the many languages of India.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And then likewise you have in Pakistan you
Speaker 2: have Lollywood that is centered in Lahore. I didn't know
Speaker 2: anything about Lollywood either until I started absorbing some of
Speaker 2: these extras on these discs. But this film Purana Mandha
Speaker 2: from eighty four is very much Bollywood. It is a
Speaker 2: Bollywood film, it is a Bollywood horror film. And it's
Speaker 2: going to be interesting to discuss exactly what all of
Speaker 2: that means because to a very large degree, the filmmakers
Speaker 2: the other here, the Ramsey brothers, are pushing into an
Speaker 2: area that had traditionally been less successful and more of
Speaker 2: fringe within Bollywood cinema. But still it's going to have
Speaker 2: things in it that are very much part of the
Speaker 2: Bollywood blueprint, and that includes a compelling story of starcrossed lovers,
Speaker 2: a fair amount of family melodrama, multiple music numbers, Now
Speaker 2: this was interesting. I was looking at an excer where
Speaker 2: it was an interview with a critic Omar Khan, and
Speaker 2: he pointed out that eight or so musical numbers per
Speaker 2: movie is pretty standard.
Speaker 3: Oh so this seems under the average, right, I think
Speaker 3: there were maybe five in this movie.
Speaker 2: Is that right? I lost count after a little while,
Speaker 2: just because I'm not used to seeing any in my heart,
Speaker 2: but I saw something where he was talking about a
Speaker 2: later Ramsey Brothers film where he's like, well, there are
Speaker 2: only four musical numbers in this, which may seem like
Speaker 2: a lot too Outsiders, but like really it's like a
Speaker 2: half load. But on top of the music, on top
Speaker 2: of the horror, which we'll get to, we also have
Speaker 2: martial arts action, you got a little dancing. You've got
Speaker 2: some comedic segments which we're probably not going to talk
Speaker 2: about too much other than to say they are are
Speaker 2: they are awful. But all of this comes together into
Speaker 2: what felt to me it's kind of like a circus. Right.
Speaker 2: It's like you go to a circus, They're going to
Speaker 2: be a number of acts. You may not be there
Speaker 2: primarily to see the clowns. You may be there to
Speaker 2: see the trapeze act, but the clowns are going to
Speaker 2: be there because somebody came with the expectation of clowns.
Speaker 2: Within talk of Bollywood film in particular, i've seen this
Speaker 2: described as Massala film that is a reference to the
Speaker 2: spice blend. You know, you're going to the theater to
Speaker 2: see this show, and by golly, it needs to deliver
Speaker 2: a little something for everyone. A little of this spice,
Speaker 2: a little of that, all under the big top of cinema.
Speaker 3: Now, if it sounds like that's a lot to fit
Speaker 3: into one movie, it is. This is a long movie.
Speaker 3: This is definitely the longest movie we've covered on Weird House, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it beats out Blade by twenty minutes, which I
Speaker 2: think is it's important to keep that in mind because
Speaker 2: it's not absurdly long, like they are longer. Plenty of
Speaker 2: longer Bollywood films, and there are plenty of longer Western
Speaker 2: films as well. Avatar two is longer than Piranhamundi, so
Speaker 2: you know, don't necessarily let the linth, you know, keep
Speaker 2: you away from these films. And there's an intermission too,
Speaker 2: so you got that going for you love an intermission
Speaker 2: now the disc we watched this on, and I'll give
Speaker 2: a full mention of that and just a bit here
Speaker 2: has an introduction from Indian horror expert Tim Paxton. He
Speaker 2: provides the intro and he points out that Parana Mandir
Speaker 2: is one of the most important films in Bollywood history
Speaker 2: and probably the most important film in the history of
Speaker 2: Indian horror cinema specifically in one of the interesting things
Speaker 2: here is produced on a very modest budget, but it
Speaker 2: was a colossal hit. I was looking at some of
Speaker 2: the numbers and if I was doing my math correctly,
Speaker 2: it like multiplied its budget in revenue on the scale
Speaker 2: of something like Rocky or Blair Witch Project. Like that
Speaker 2: level of success. Just did amazing business.
Speaker 3: Have you read anything from somebody who knows it was
Speaker 3: about the Bollywood market, like what audience has responded to
Speaker 3: so much about this movie in particular? Like why was
Speaker 3: it so popular? Well?
Speaker 2: Omar Con gets into this a little bit on some
Speaker 2: of the extras from this blue ray set, and a
Speaker 2: lot of it kind of comes down to luck, you know,
Speaker 2: like the Ramsays at this point had been pumping out
Speaker 2: horror content since seventy two, I believe, and none of
Speaker 2: those films had certainly had anything like the success, but
Speaker 2: they were out there. It was on the fringes, you know,
Speaker 2: And so I mean, I guess part of it is
Speaker 2: like by this point they definitely knew what they were
Speaker 2: doing with a number of these elements. They knew how
Speaker 2: to put together things, they knew how to do them
Speaker 2: a sola film offering. So they did have a little
Speaker 2: bit for everybody. And I don't know, it was just
Speaker 2: like the right time, Like audience has just really responded
Speaker 2: to it. And he described it as being like a
Speaker 2: generational date movie, like if you were going to cinemas
Speaker 2: in India during this time period, you saw this movie
Speaker 2: and it was also he points out, you know, probably
Speaker 2: going to be especially for for how mainstream it became.
Speaker 2: It was offering things people just hadn't seen before because
Speaker 2: Western horror films could only really enter into like the
Speaker 2: the general zeitgeist there so much because they weren't coming
Speaker 2: in on like satellite TV or anything. They were they
Speaker 2: were coming in on it. They weren't being shown in
Speaker 2: the theater for the most part. They were coming in
Speaker 2: on VHS tapes and those were in rare, you know,
Speaker 2: and there were those were hard to get. Only certain
Speaker 2: people had access to those. And so this is a
Speaker 2: film that has some really scary stuff in it, and
Speaker 2: you can just imagine how much more scary it is
Speaker 2: if you didn't have direct exposure to say The Exorcist
Speaker 2: or the first Evil Dead movie or something like that.
Speaker 3: I can also see how it would be such a
Speaker 3: great date movie since it has you know, it's like,
Speaker 3: it's like scary, so the classical cliches. It gets you
Speaker 3: hugging clothes because you know, because the same reason out
Speaker 3: here are about to do something evil. But it's also
Speaker 3: got a great love story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you got again. You've got a romance of
Speaker 2: the heart of it. You've got family melodrama the heart
Speaker 2: of it. You've got the music, You've got the comedy,
Speaker 2: you've got the dancing girl. You've got all these things
Speaker 2: that any given viewer is going to be wanting to
Speaker 2: see out of a Bollywood film. But it's also offering
Speaker 2: something that is new, and that the newness ends up
Speaker 2: being key because this kicks off a horror boom in India.
Speaker 2: The Ramsey Brothers end up coming out a lot of
Speaker 2: additional horror films, they have competitors, and also, you know,
Speaker 2: other folks just jump in to try and ride that bandwagon,
Speaker 2: and it actually they end up writing it out by
Speaker 2: something like I want to say, ninety two, so the
Speaker 2: boom doesn't last too long. But during that time, everybody
Speaker 2: gets in there, and some of the films are supposed
Speaker 2: to be quite good, but there's a sort of sameness
Speaker 2: to everything, and after a while people seen it and
Speaker 2: it loses that new edge that this film seemed to have.
Speaker 3: I think a similar thing happened with some of the
Speaker 3: biggest money making horror films in the United States in
Speaker 3: the eighties. Also kind of the Slasher for Me got
Speaker 3: repeated and played out to death.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or the or later on the speaking of Blair
Speaker 2: Witch the found footage formula. Because you know, that's a
Speaker 2: case where, for the most part, people hadn't really seen
Speaker 2: a film like this. It was produced on a very
Speaker 2: low budget, made tremendous money, and lots of folks jumped
Speaker 2: in there to try and recreate that success, and God goodness,
Speaker 2: off the top of my head, I'm not sure anybody
Speaker 2: really did, so, yeah, I think it's a it's a
Speaker 2: good comparison though only in terms of like sort of
Speaker 2: business and impact, not so much style.
Speaker 3: I think following the blair Witch model, the Paranormal Activity
Speaker 3: franchise did pretty good, Okay, I think, hmmm, I'm trying
Speaker 3: to think of another one. I don't know. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 3: the found footage style is obviously very appealing because it's
Speaker 3: cheap to make. But when people were trying to just make,
Speaker 3: you know, cash in on found footage movies with very
Speaker 3: uninspired ideas, I think a lot of them missed out
Speaker 3: on how creative the original blair Witch project actually was.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And I mean that's kind of like written
Speaker 2: across the horror genre. Wherever you look, right, a successful
Speaker 2: horror movie comes out and somebody's gonna think I can
Speaker 2: do that. Horror is easy. Horror films can't be that
Speaker 2: hard to do, and there is an art to it.
Speaker 2: There is a certain amount of style, and then there's
Speaker 2: a certain amount of luck to hitting things just right.
Speaker 2: And that's what Perana Mander seems to have done. Let's
Speaker 2: see just a couple of other notes. Paxton points out
Speaker 2: that this movie, which deals specifically with a resurrected evil
Speaker 2: decapitated wizard, does draw heavily on two prior films, One
Speaker 2: American in one Spanish nineteen fifty eight is The Thing
Speaker 2: that Couldn't Die that stars Robin Hughes as the Wizard
Speaker 2: Gideon Drew, and nineteen seventy two's Horror Rises from the
Speaker 2: Tomb starring Paul Nashy as the Wizard Alaak Demarnac. This
Speaker 2: is a film, of course, we discussed on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Not expect that. Yeah, Paul Nashy plays the Wizard. He's
Speaker 3: actually part of like an evil sorcerer power couple in
Speaker 3: Horror Rises from the Tomb. Right, he has a he
Speaker 3: has like a wife or a girlfriend who's also a
Speaker 3: powerful wizard. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean the thing about Paul Nashy films is Paul
Speaker 2: Nashy monsters you're supposed to feel some sort of sympathy for,
Speaker 2: you know, that's where he's coming from. He's coming from
Speaker 2: that that that love of universal horror and sympathy for
Speaker 2: the monster, the wizard. In this film, Samri is unlovable.
Speaker 2: He is just a complete monster. Every crime that is
Speaker 2: committable he has done. We are not meant to have
Speaker 2: any sympathy at all for Samri. And and ultimately have
Speaker 2: to say, even though the early stages of the film do,
Speaker 2: like the historical opening does kind of mirror the opening
Speaker 2: of Horizons from the Tomb, it ultimately goes in its
Speaker 2: own direction as opposed to being anything like like a
Speaker 2: clone of that movie.
Speaker 3: Well, on one hand, yes, I agree. Samri is not
Speaker 3: sympathetic at all in terms of the narrative. He doesn't
Speaker 3: have like a tragic love story or anything like that.
Speaker 3: There's nothing likable about him except just his physical vibe.
Speaker 3: Like the presence of the actor who plays summary in
Speaker 3: the opening is so cool.
Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely, Yeah. The performance here by aj Agarwal is
Speaker 2: tremendous and this is a role that launched him as
Speaker 2: like a true monster actor for Indian horror cinema.
Speaker 3: We'll have to come back to him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll come back to him for sure, because he's
Speaker 2: at a light. There are long stretches of the film where
Speaker 2: he's not there, but when he is there, he's tremendous. Right.
Speaker 2: Just a couple other small points before we get to
Speaker 2: the trailer. Basically the film is predominantly in Hindi, though
Speaker 2: the characters do throw in a little English here and there,
Speaker 2: and the action ventures into a rural setting, so you'll
Speaker 2: hear some characters speaking another dialect or language. It's referenced
Speaker 2: in the Hindi dialogue as well, but I couldn't find
Speaker 2: an indicator of which language this is.
Speaker 3: I noticed something interesting in the movie where a couple
Speaker 3: of times somebody would say something in Hindi and then
Speaker 3: they would say the same thing again in English, almost
Speaker 3: as if for emphasis. And I don't know if that's
Speaker 3: like something specific to Bollywood movies or just a quirk
Speaker 3: of this movie in particular, or a convention of of
Speaker 3: Hindi language in general. I don't know, but I thought
Speaker 3: that was interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, with that, with that specifically and just generally out there,
Speaker 2: we'd love to hear from listeners after this episode. If
Speaker 2: you have more experience with Bollywood cinema, if you, if
Speaker 2: you speak Hindi, if you certainly, if you, if you
Speaker 2: have experience with the theater, experience of going to these films,
Speaker 2: all of that is on the table, because I've heard
Speaker 2: it pointed out that it's one thing to watch like
Speaker 2: a Bollywood film or a Bollywood horror film in your
Speaker 2: living room by yourself, But that of course was not
Speaker 2: how they intended a film like this to be viewed, No,
Speaker 2: this was to be viewed in the theater.
Speaker 3: Can you imagine how much fun it would have been
Speaker 3: to like see this in a pact theater of like
Speaker 3: young people out on date night?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah? And can you imagine how afraid people were
Speaker 2: again if you hadn't seen many horror films and you
Speaker 2: had to see Sammary. I mean, he's terrifying almost all
Speaker 2: the time on the screen. He's at least unnerving, if
Speaker 2: not just outright terrifying. All right, well, I mean the
Speaker 2: elevator pitch on this one is basically it's the biggest
Speaker 2: Bollywood horror film of them all. It's the it's the
Speaker 2: granddaddy of Bollywood horror films. It's your basic evil wizard,
Speaker 2: multi generational family curse romance film with added music and comedy.
Speaker 2: We have a trailer here. I don't think we're going
Speaker 2: to play at all, but we'll play at least a
Speaker 2: nice sampling of this so you can get sort of
Speaker 2: an audio taste of what's ahead.
Speaker 1: How many another.
Speaker 2: Shaw man? How about rights? Gonna be all right? Well,
Speaker 2: before we go any further, if you would like to
Speaker 2: watch this movie for yourself, if you'd like to check
Speaker 2: out here, go and see it, and then come back
Speaker 2: to the rest of the episode. Well, you don't have
Speaker 2: to depend on sort of weird stream to view this film,
Speaker 2: because there's a wonderful Bollywood Horror limited edition box that
Speaker 2: is out from Mondo Macabre, and I checked out a
Speaker 2: couple of discs from this, the disc for this film
Speaker 2: and then a disc for another movie that had some
Speaker 2: extras on it, and we rented these discs from Atlanta's
Speaker 2: own videodrome rental store.
Speaker 3: It's a great print, though it does warn you that
Speaker 3: there will be some variable quality and different scenes of
Speaker 3: the movie due to just like storage issues with the
Speaker 3: film over the years, so the restoration is a bit
Speaker 3: patchy in places. But for the most part it looks great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's one particular I don't even know what to
Speaker 2: call it, but there's some sort of an error in
Speaker 2: the final print that we have on the disc here
Speaker 2: that has almost kind of a psychedelic quality to it,
Speaker 2: and I didn't really I don't think i'd seen it
Speaker 2: on a film before, this particular kind of noise. So
Speaker 2: it's very watchable. Nothing in this gets in the way
Speaker 2: of your enjoyment of the movie, all right, well, let's
Speaker 2: jump into the people involved here. The main ones to
Speaker 2: really highlight here are the Ramsey brothers, the directors. It's
Speaker 2: impossible to discuss Indian horror cinema without discussing the Ramsey brothers. Again,
Speaker 2: they had been doing this since seventy two, and this
Speaker 2: is the movie that kicked off an enormous boom in
Speaker 2: Indian cinema for horror. And even like contemporary horror movies,
Speaker 2: they still have connections to the work of the Ramsey
Speaker 2: brothers here. Now, Ramsey brothers, I think can at times
Speaker 2: refer to just different sons and grandsons of f U Ramsey.
Speaker 2: But in particular the directors here are Shyam Ramsey and
Speaker 2: Tulsi Ramsey. Chyam lived fifty two through twenty nineteen and
Speaker 2: Tulci lived nineteen forty four through twenty eighteen. Other Ramsey
Speaker 2: brothers would get in on directing game at times, like
Speaker 2: Kishu and Kieran. But yeah, these are the main two
Speaker 2: we're talking about. They're the ones who directed horror films
Speaker 2: in the early seventies, beginning with a nineteen seventy two film.
Speaker 2: In the title for this one translates to two yards
Speaker 2: under the Ground so already like kind of a grim
Speaker 2: beginning there. They followed this up with a string of
Speaker 2: horror and creature films. There's one from eighty two Matt Kasaya.
Speaker 2: I'm probably mispronouncing that, but it looks interesting to me
Speaker 2: because it has some sort of like big creature water
Speaker 2: monster in it. I'm not sure this one is available
Speaker 2: widely in the West, but I put it on my
Speaker 2: radar because it looks interesting. Neat monster anyway. But anyway,
Speaker 2: all of these films that they were putting out, these
Speaker 2: were outliers. The horror pictures just weren't viewed as culturally viable.
Speaker 2: They weren't seen as potentially anything that would make money
Speaker 2: at the box office. So it was more fringe stuff.
Speaker 2: And you know a lot of these pictures, particularly Ramsey
Speaker 2: productions at the time, they were also pushing boundaries of
Speaker 2: what was accepted in Hindi cinema at the time. As again,
Speaker 2: as Omar Khan points out, most Indian film viewers had
Speaker 2: little or no exposure to Western horror films and Indian
Speaker 2: horror films were barely a thing. In fact, I saw
Speaker 2: an interview with aj Aguah, the main monster actor in
Speaker 2: this picture, and he said that he didn't know the
Speaker 2: difference between horror films and regular films before being cast
Speaker 2: by the Ramses, like that's how little horror was established
Speaker 2: in the general audience's mind. But with this movie again,
Speaker 2: it hits it just the right time, takes off. Nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty four becomes a huge hit, a generational date movie,
Speaker 2: as Cohn describes, it sets off this massive boom that
Speaker 2: doesn't really subside till ninety two. The Ramsees continue to
Speaker 2: apply their trade, tons of competitors and imitators trying to
Speaker 2: get in on the craze as well, until overexposure kicks
Speaker 2: in and the boom ties out. The Ramses followed this
Speaker 2: movie up with nineteen eighty five's Telephone nineteen eighty five's
Speaker 2: three D Samary What, which is obviously the Yeah, the
Speaker 2: three D sequel of sorts to this movie.
Speaker 3: Well, but I thought the evil Wizard was destroyed at
Speaker 3: the end of this movie.
Speaker 2: If an evil wizard makes you enough money, there's no
Speaker 2: destroying him. He will come back. There's a nineteen and
Speaker 2: I'm not Also, I haven't seen three D Samary. I
Speaker 2: assume it's Samar because it's the title is the name
Speaker 2: of the character. But you know, sometimes a movie like this,
Speaker 2: maybe it's not a direct sequel, maybe it's a spiritual sequel.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure. But there are a slew of interesting
Speaker 2: looking features that they came out with in the wake
Speaker 2: of Parana Mandir, including Takhana from eighty six, Verana from
Speaker 2: eighty eight, Pirani Haveli from eighty nine, and nineteen ninety's
Speaker 2: Bond Darwazo, which is said to be quite good, more
Speaker 2: of a traditional Dracula style film, and after that the
Speaker 2: well kind of dries up. One of their last big films,
Speaker 2: if not their last big film, was a nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: four movie titled Mahakal, which a number of you might
Speaker 2: be familiar with because it is, to be kind, it
Speaker 2: is very inspired by Nightmare on Elm Street. It is
Speaker 2: at least a strong homage to Nightmare on Elm Street
Speaker 2: and features a Freddy Krueger esque character on the cover.
Speaker 2: So I think this one has gotten some amount of traction.
Speaker 2: If nothing else. You might have seen some clips or
Speaker 2: the poster art.
Speaker 3: It does have a guy with knives for fingers.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, yeah, And if you're not sure like how
Speaker 2: to spell that title and you want to look it up.
Speaker 2: Just do a search for like Bollywood Freddy Krueger and
Speaker 2: you'll you'll find it, all right. The screenplay on this
Speaker 2: one was written by another Ramsey, Kumar Ramsey, who lived
Speaker 2: thirty six through twenty twenty one. He was the screenwriter
Speaker 2: and a number of their films. This is one of
Speaker 2: those situations where you know the brothers and the family here,
Speaker 2: they'll often draw in some of the same talent. So
Speaker 2: this Ramsey also wrote Samari three D in a movie
Speaker 2: called Guest House. There are also three other contributors also
Speaker 2: credited here, but I couldn't find out much about them.
Speaker 2: But there's a story credit, there's a dialogue credit, and
Speaker 2: there's an assistant dialogue writer. All right, let's get into
Speaker 2: the cast. So we've talked about him already. But Aj
Speaker 2: Agerwahl I believe AJ is short for Annarrud. He was
Speaker 2: born in nineteen forty nine. As of this recording is
Speaker 2: still out there. I think he's retired now. But yes,
Speaker 2: he plays our dark wizard of evil who's eventually going
Speaker 2: to rise from the tomb and get his head back
Speaker 2: and go on a rampage. He only acted in three
Speaker 2: Ramsey Brothers films. He played a monster in two of
Speaker 2: them in Parana Mandir. Of course in the follow up
Speaker 2: Samari three D or three D Sammary in eighty five.
Speaker 2: He also played more of a traditional Dracula in that
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety film Bandowaza, and he continued to act through
Speaker 2: twenty He's retired now but mostly just almost exclusively in
Speaker 2: Hindi films, but he does have a role in Steven
Speaker 2: Summer's The Jungle Book from nineteen ninety four. I included
Speaker 2: a picture here for you, Joe. As you can you
Speaker 2: can see he's playing heavy of some sort in this.
Speaker 2: He's standing next to the villain holding Lena Hetty by
Speaker 2: the arms.
Speaker 3: Well, that's also Carrie Elwis. I know all three of
Speaker 3: these actors. I don't think I would have recognized a
Speaker 3: single one of them in this screenshots. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're very young. I mean especially Lena. I wouldn't
Speaker 2: have recognized her. But anyway, yeah, he's in it. He's
Speaker 2: very tall. He was like six four six ' five,
Speaker 2: so especially among a lot of actors, he's pretty towering.
Speaker 2: Andy has just very pronounced features. I've read this might
Speaker 2: have been due to like some sort of underlying medical
Speaker 2: condition as well, that sort of gave him pronounced facial features.
Speaker 2: Also yeah, again very tall and based on I read
Speaker 2: an article about him and I was looking at an
Speaker 2: interview conducted with him, and basically he made two goes
Speaker 2: at getting into acting before and after earning like a
Speaker 2: civil engineering certificate or degree of some sort, but at
Speaker 2: both times he didn't have any luck. Until he had
Speaker 2: some sort of ill health or injury while working in Muntumbai,
Speaker 2: and he looked even more haggard afterwards. I'm not sure
Speaker 2: if he had some sort of like facial bruising or
Speaker 2: whatever the case may be, but someone came up to
Speaker 2: him and said, hey, you look pretty tough. You should
Speaker 2: be in movies and he's like, well, that's what I've
Speaker 2: been trying to do, but nobody will hire me. And
Speaker 2: they said, say, well, you know what, you need to
Speaker 2: go talk to the Ramsey brothers because they will give
Speaker 2: you a chance. And so he went. He talked to
Speaker 2: the Ramsey brothers, and the Ramsey brothers at that point
Speaker 2: were apparently six months into shooting Piranha Mandir, but they
Speaker 2: hadn't done any of the horror sequences yet. What I
Speaker 2: guess they didn't even have a Samari cast. Wow, and
Speaker 2: they'd leaned heavily on masks and makeup and previous films,
Speaker 2: but then in walks a man who doesn't need as
Speaker 2: much makeup, you know, and like he's We've seen this
Speaker 2: in time and time again in various horror cinema periods
Speaker 2: and settings, where somebody comes in and they just have
Speaker 2: that unique look where you don't have to do much
Speaker 2: to them, you know, just a subtle amount of makeup
Speaker 2: and right lighting and the right lighting and effects, and
Speaker 2: you're already in the horror realm. And that's what he
Speaker 2: offered to them here.
Speaker 3: It's interesting because, as we were saying earlier, this character
Speaker 3: is in no way likable or sympathetic. They just make
Speaker 3: him an absolute demon, like pure evil, not like charismatic
Speaker 3: or anything, except in the opening sequence before he gets
Speaker 3: transformed into a more Frankenstein type creature. The like human
Speaker 3: Somary evokes strong rock star charisma. He has kind of
Speaker 3: a shaggy Keith Richards haircut, and the back of his
Speaker 3: shirt sparkles. It's got this like Sequin wolfman motif. It
Speaker 3: looks kind of like something David Bowie would have worn.
Speaker 3: And he's just like tall and has a kind of
Speaker 3: you know, lead guitarist posture. I don't know. He seems
Speaker 3: very cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's at least a head taller than everybody around him.
Speaker 2: At times, he kind of felt like he had kind
Speaker 2: of a Boris Karloff kind of a presence to him,
Speaker 2: you know, and you know, and also reminds me of
Speaker 2: various other you know, actors with unique appearances. But yeah,
Speaker 2: very strong screen presence from this guy. And and when
Speaker 2: he shows back up, he just keeps looking more and
Speaker 2: more monstrous, and the lighting, the effects are always just
Speaker 2: really on point whenever he's on screen. So he's very terrifying.
Speaker 2: So that's Sounary, that's our monster. But you to have
Speaker 2: an effective monster, you have to have a bunch of
Speaker 2: mortals that are in peril or cursed by said monster.
Speaker 2: And so the next major character of note here is
Speaker 2: Suman Sing played by Arti Gupta. She's our heroin I
Speaker 2: guess you know. She's born into a long line along
Speaker 2: cursed lineage of sings here. It's a very charismatic performance.
Speaker 2: She's a lot of fun on the screen. The actor here, Gupta,
Speaker 2: would come back for three D summary and also apparently
Speaker 2: produced a few films much later, including two thousand and
Speaker 2: Seven's a Mighty Heart starring Angelina Jolie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think Arti Gupta is great. She conveys a
Speaker 3: lot of emotion, especially in the musical numbers. Though I
Speaker 3: was wondering, dude, do you know if the actors in
Speaker 3: this movie sing their own parts in the musical numbers
Speaker 3: or are they sort of lip singing along to professional singers.
Speaker 2: It is my understanding, and again I invite further education
Speaker 2: on Bollywood by anyone out there listening, but it's my
Speaker 2: understanding that it's almost it's usually not the actor doing
Speaker 2: with singing that that's added later. And I think that
Speaker 2: would make sense given that if you have, if there's
Speaker 2: no real division between films and musicals, it just makes
Speaker 2: sense to do that. And of course this is not
Speaker 2: unprecedented in Western musicals as well. I mean, I think
Speaker 2: of Oh Brother, We're Art Thou, which is a tremendous musical,
Speaker 2: but George Clooney is not doing his own singing in that.
Speaker 3: Film, and it works great in both cases. I mean,
Speaker 3: I know, sometimes for some reason, people talk disparagingly about
Speaker 3: lip syncing. I think they talk about it like that
Speaker 3: when it's like a band is faking doing a live performance,
Speaker 3: just like full on trying to trick people that they're
Speaker 3: playing live.
Speaker 2: But in a movie.
Speaker 3: No, there's no problem at all. I like it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I imagine there are Bollywood films where at
Speaker 2: least some of the actors are doing their own singing.
Speaker 2: I mean, it makes sense, but I did not get
Speaker 2: a sense of that from looking at the credits for
Speaker 2: this movie. All right, So we have Suman sing She's
Speaker 2: our heroine. Her father, Thakor Singh, is played by pra
Speaker 2: Deep Kumar, who lived nineteen twenty five through two thousand
Speaker 2: and one. This is Suman's father, a loving but overly
Speaker 2: protective father, but he's overly protected for reasons that go
Speaker 2: beyond the norm and get into the realm of supernatural,
Speaker 2: multi generational curses as we'll discuss. But Kumar hero is
Speaker 2: a veteran Indian actor with credits going back to the
Speaker 2: late nineteen forties. Apparently highly regarded, though largely lacking in
Speaker 2: like highly successful roles. He often acted in period dramas
Speaker 2: and seems to have just always boasted a meticulously trimmed mustache,
Speaker 2: just a real, real, gorgeous and stylish mustache on this
Speaker 2: man and.
Speaker 3: It's a mustache of the thin style, which I feel
Speaker 3: like is hard to pull off, but it looks good
Speaker 3: on him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, kind of like a swashbuckling old Hollywood kind of
Speaker 2: a mustache.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: All right, so we have the daughter, we have the father,
Speaker 2: but now it's time to talk about the daughter's secret boyfriend, Sanjay,
Speaker 2: played by Manish Bell, who was born in nineteen sixty one.
Speaker 2: He's a he plays a low born photographer, but he's handsome,
Speaker 2: he's a good lad. You know, he's our lover boy.
Speaker 2: This was only his fifth credit, but he went on
Speaker 2: to act in more than one hundred pictures.
Speaker 3: I think it's interesting that they try to what seemed
Speaker 3: to me to like fit in a very standard forbidden
Speaker 3: love dynamic, even though it's only like a red herring.
Speaker 3: So like, for the first bit of the movie, Suman
Speaker 3: and Sanjay understand that Suman's father disapproves of their relationship
Speaker 3: because she is a rich girl. She's from a you know,
Speaker 3: a high class family, and he's middle class. He's not
Speaker 3: rich like them. So that seems like a very standard
Speaker 3: kind of romance obstacle. But then there's a twist which
Speaker 3: is like, oh no, actually he's opposed to their romance
Speaker 3: because there's a curse on the family and if you know,
Speaker 3: she gets married, she may one day have a child,
Speaker 3: and that means she will die. Well, actually she will
Speaker 3: turn into like a witch and then die. Yeah, but
Speaker 3: it's seemed interesting that it's almost like they were trying
Speaker 3: to fit like a second, like short romance movie into
Speaker 3: the beginning of this movie.
Speaker 2: Well, he lets viewers know where they stand. It's kind
Speaker 2: of like Sons of Anarchy, Right, you jump into watching
Speaker 2: Sons of Anarchy, and it's like, oh, it's like Shakespeare bikers.
Speaker 2: That doesn't really hold on to the Shakespeare aspect of
Speaker 2: the thing for the most part. I guess it comes
Speaker 2: back towards the end, but a little bit, but it's
Speaker 2: still it gives you sort of an initial footing on
Speaker 2: which to proceed with the picture. Or in the case
Speaker 2: of Sons of Anarchy the TV series, all right, we've
Speaker 2: got the monster, we've got the father, the daughter, the
Speaker 2: daughter's boyfriend. Now it's time for the boyfriend's best friend.
Speaker 2: This is the character Anand played by Plunette Isar born
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty nine. Yeah, he plays a best friend. Martial
Speaker 2: arts and personal fitness enthusiast. The actor here outside of
Speaker 2: this is apparently well known in India for his role
Speaker 2: in the Mahabarat TV show that ran eighty eight through
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety. He played Duri o'hanna, eldest of the Carava's,
Speaker 2: one of the two feuding houses in that epic. He's
Speaker 2: also written, directed, and produced, and is especially known for
Speaker 2: his negative roles. This is terminology I was not familiar
Speaker 2: with until I started reading about different Bollywood actors. But apparently,
Speaker 2: like when you talk about somebody being like a great
Speaker 2: villain or being great at villain roles, you talk about
Speaker 2: how they're great at playing negative roles, which I thought
Speaker 2: was an interesting turn of phrase there.
Speaker 3: So I thought Punitasar was one of the highlights of
Speaker 3: the film. Actually, my favorite stuff about this movie is
Speaker 3: sort of like the tall, macho guys in it. So
Speaker 3: I like the villain. I love Anon a nod Is,
Speaker 3: so he's yeah, he's the main dude's best friend. But
Speaker 3: in a way, it's a movie where the side the
Speaker 3: so called sidekick, actually does most of the heroism. It's
Speaker 3: like Big Trouble in Little China, and every time Anon
Speaker 3: shows up to save the day, it is it's increasingly
Speaker 3: HILARI there's like an amazing scene where Sanjay is getting
Speaker 3: beaten up by twelve guys or something. You know, they're
Speaker 3: all like these guys in fancy red footman's uniforms, these
Speaker 3: red jackets, and they're all ganging up on Sanjay, and
Speaker 3: then suddenly a Nod appears sort of over the top
Speaker 3: of a mountain. He's like, comes up on this ridge
Speaker 3: overlooking the whole scene, and he's like, oh, my friend,
Speaker 3: and then charges down into the fracas to just slam me,
Speaker 3: just like beat beat all these guys up, which he
Speaker 3: can do pretty much single handedly. He is the center
Speaker 3: of a number of martial arts scenes that I think
Speaker 3: are actually quite good. And there's also a really funny
Speaker 3: scene where they have a they're on a road trip
Speaker 3: and they have a car. They have a flat tire,
Speaker 3: and it's clear that they staged this just so a
Speaker 3: Nod it could be like, hey, it's no problem that
Speaker 3: we don't have a car jack, I'll just lift the
Speaker 3: car while you fix the tire.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he's yeah. He's he's basically the the the
Speaker 2: the action star of the film, while Sonja is the
Speaker 2: romantic star of the film. And Annan, Yeah, he's a
Speaker 2: lot of fun. These martial arts sequences are cool. He's
Speaker 2: got these really long legs, so he's one of these guys.
Speaker 2: When he's throwing kicks, it's like he he manages to
Speaker 2: kick around you and then kick you on the other
Speaker 2: side of your face, kind of a thing. And he's
Speaker 2: also able to somehow pull off the leather vest over
Speaker 2: a bare chest look. He also wears a lot of
Speaker 2: fun T shirts, but sometimes no T shirt, just the vest.
Speaker 3: In the scene where he where he intervenes to save
Speaker 3: Sanjay and beats all the guys up, I think he's
Speaker 3: wearing a sleeveless polo shirt tucked into jeans.
Speaker 2: Somehow he makes it work all right. Now, Anon, his
Speaker 2: character has a wife, and the wife is Sapna played
Speaker 2: by and I'm mostly sure on this. This character in
Speaker 2: this actor was not listed in some of the databases
Speaker 2: I was looking at, so like not on IMDb. I
Speaker 2: had to go to another database. But pretty sap rou
Speaker 2: Wallya born nineteen fifty seven, I believe is the actor
Speaker 2: playing his wife. She wishes he was a little less
Speaker 2: into martial arts and personal fitness and more into love making,
Speaker 2: which makes for at least one amusing sequence in the film.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a fun performance. I think she has
Speaker 2: only a couple of scenes to really shine in, but
Speaker 2: she does shine.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, she's good. It's a real bummer when the
Speaker 3: evil Wizard throws her off the top of a building.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so in a way, it's like, you know, she's
Speaker 2: she's I guess she was dimmed, you know, from the start,
Speaker 2: like this, somebody's got to be killed by the monster.
Speaker 2: We've got to give, you know, the certain plot elements
Speaker 2: have to be put in place.
Speaker 3: The two main lovers go on a road trip with
Speaker 3: their two friends to go stop the evil Wizard. What
Speaker 3: do you think is going to happen to the two friends? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Now, do we have a creepy groundskeeper in the film? Yeah,
Speaker 2: we kind of have two of them, because we also
Speaker 2: have a creepy, creepy woodcutter. The creepy woodcutter, I'll mention
Speaker 2: really quickly is Sanga played by Satis Sha born nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty one. Basically, he's just a scarred woodcutter who really
Speaker 2: would like a bit of that treasure. But the main
Speaker 2: grounds keeper at the haunted mansion where everyone ends up
Speaker 2: is this character Durjon played by Sadashev a'm Rapokur who
Speaker 2: lived nineteen fifty through twenty fourteen. There's something about his performance.
Speaker 2: At first, I didn't I didn't pick up on it,
Speaker 2: but you know, it's kind of like a nice haunted vibe.
Speaker 2: He has kind of haunted eyes. And when I looked
Speaker 2: him up, apparently he made a name for himself playing
Speaker 2: villains or negative ones or negative roles in various films.
Speaker 2: In fact, I saw a twenty fourteen Indian Express article
Speaker 2: that called him quote Bollywood's most memorable villain.
Speaker 3: So oh interesting. Yeah, not a villain in this though, no,
Speaker 3: just more.
Speaker 2: Of he's the local, that is, the haunted local who
Speaker 2: knows more about goings on than the main characters in
Speaker 2: the film.
Speaker 3: At one point, he quite crucially hides a trident in
Speaker 3: a chandelier and I did not understand why he did that,
Speaker 3: but it comes in later.
Speaker 2: He just knew that it would come in handy later.
Speaker 2: Somebody's going to need to drop this chandelier. Sometimes. Yeah, sometimes,
Speaker 2: I guess it's just the film logic of the thing. Now,
Speaker 2: there are a lot of other actors in this, and
Speaker 2: I'm not going to go through all of them here,
Speaker 2: I will say that we do have a bandit character
Speaker 2: named Machar, I believe, and he is played by this
Speaker 2: actor who went by the moniker Jack Deep. This is
Speaker 2: an Indian actor and comedian who appeared in more than
Speaker 2: four hundred films, including I think some various Ramsey Brothers films.
Speaker 2: This is our sort of I don't know, Benny Hill
Speaker 2: esque misogynistic slapstick specialist that is brought in for at
Speaker 2: least two, maybe three long segments of the film that
Speaker 2: are concerned only with comedy that do not really connect
Speaker 2: much at all with the rest of the film and
Speaker 2: are really difficult to watch.
Speaker 3: Agreed. I had read in multiple commentaries that the comedy
Speaker 3: segments are by far the low point of the film,
Speaker 3: and they are for the most part, extremely unpleasant, not
Speaker 3: funny and just like a lot of jokes about sex crimes.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, so's it goes beyond like, oh, this is
Speaker 2: out of keeping with the main vibe of the picture.
Speaker 2: Is just like content wise, it's gross. So I would
Speaker 2: advise if you're just casually watching this movie, you know,
Speaker 2: feel free to get up and get a snack during
Speaker 2: the comedy segments. Don't necessarily bother reading the subtitles during
Speaker 2: these segments and feel free to skip them all right. Finally,
Speaker 2: the music for Piranha mandir Ajit Singh. I don't think
Speaker 2: I was able to find any dates for him, but
Speaker 2: he worked on subsequent Ramsey pictures as well, including Takana
Speaker 2: in eighty six, Perani Haveli in eighty nine, and a
Speaker 2: friendly Yetti movie that came out in ninety one that
Speaker 2: looked pretty interesting as well. But the music in this
Speaker 2: picture is I guess at times I loved it. It's
Speaker 2: a little abrasive, like at times the synths come on
Speaker 2: really strong, but I still can't fault it too much,
Speaker 2: Like it definitely gets in there and it comes at
Speaker 2: you with its clause.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I really liked a lot of the music.
Speaker 3: There's one theme that really stuck in my head that
Speaker 3: was not especially complex melodically, but it was just like
Speaker 3: a real rubbery synth tone as the characters were like
Speaker 3: exploring a secret passageway and I was grooving on it
Speaker 3: really hard.
Speaker 2: Samri has a pretty strong theme as well that I
Speaker 2: think Omar Khan. I think it was Omar Khan compared
Speaker 2: it to the main theme from the Omen, not that
Speaker 2: it's directly that or reuse of that, but maybe has
Speaker 2: hit similar notes of that score.
Speaker 3: All right, so you wanted to talk about the plot, now, yeah,
Speaker 3: let's do it. Okay. So one thing is we absolutely
Speaker 3: cannot do the kind of granular commentary we do with
Speaker 3: some movies, especially like seventy minute drive in movies, or
Speaker 3: this episode would be six hours long. And I want
Speaker 3: to say this is not only because this is the
Speaker 3: longest movie we've ever done. I'd also argue, I wonder
Speaker 3: if you'd agree with this, that it's in the running
Speaker 3: for the dnsesst movie we've done, meaning that the amount
Speaker 3: of plot or stuff happening per minute of run time
Speaker 3: is unusually high.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, everybody gets their stuff in on this film.
Speaker 2: And again it's it's having to deliver all of the
Speaker 2: various spices. So yeah, there's a lot that happens in
Speaker 2: this movie, and to just cover every bit of it
Speaker 2: we just wouldn't have time for. And certainly we're going
Speaker 2: to skip over stuff like the comedic segments, which you know,
Speaker 2: the less said the better.
Speaker 3: Okay, First of all, I like a film that begins
Speaker 3: by showing you its papers. The first thing we see
Speaker 3: here is a is scan of the certificate from the
Speaker 3: Central Board of Film Certification of the Indian government. Seem
Speaker 3: to recall seeing similar paperwork at the beginning of like
Speaker 3: British movies from the thirties, like those old Alfred Hitchcock
Speaker 3: movies that show you the certificate from the British Board
Speaker 3: of Film Censors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, I really like this makes it feel
Speaker 2: kind of like more like a cultural artifact, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. So the narration begins two hundred years ago.
Speaker 3: Bijapor Sultanate was ruled by Raja Hariman Singh. In those days,
Speaker 3: the fear of ghosts and demons prevailed in the hearts
Speaker 3: of people. The most feared demon of all was called Somri.
Speaker 3: And as they mentioned these different people, we see like
Speaker 3: painted portraits of them. Samri's portrait has a kind of
Speaker 3: purple glow, so he is emitting rays of evil magic
Speaker 3: even in painted likeness. The action begins with a historical
Speaker 3: flashback where Hariman Singh is traveling with his daughter Rupali
Speaker 3: and his retainers when his chariot breaks down. Unfortunately, it
Speaker 3: breaks down in the middle of Samri's land, and even
Speaker 3: worse than that, his daughter wanders away while the carriage
Speaker 3: is being fixed and fearing for her life, the rajah
Speaker 3: sends his men out looking for her. They are of
Speaker 3: course attacked and picked off by the Evil Sorcerer. And
Speaker 3: I just want to say this again. One thing I
Speaker 3: noticed immediately about the opening segment is the extremely high
Speaker 3: energy editing and pacing of each shot. So the cuts
Speaker 3: between shots are frequent, and the action in each shot
Speaker 3: develops very quickly, so it's this kind of near frantic
Speaker 3: pace for the first couple of minutes. But it's not
Speaker 3: just fast. It's also loud, full of like screaming and
Speaker 3: blasts of music, like slamming the audio into the red
Speaker 3: It's just a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I've seen Sam Rainey's Evil Dead for maybe
Speaker 2: one mentioned as an influence on the Ramsey Brothers as
Speaker 2: well as the films of Wes Craven, so I don't
Speaker 2: know if maybe we see a little bit of those
Speaker 2: influences in this editing style.
Speaker 3: It's not going to keep up at quite this pace
Speaker 3: and level of intensity for the rest of the movie,
Speaker 3: but overall for this film, the Ramsey Brothers do stick
Speaker 3: to a pretty fast moving and intense editing style. It
Speaker 3: always feels energetic. Things are always happening really quickly. There's
Speaker 3: not a lot of establishing or waiting around.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and you don't have to wait to see Samri.
Speaker 2: He's there. He's going to disappear for a while for
Speaker 2: reasons that will that makes sense. But yeah, he's there
Speaker 2: from the get go, and you get to you get
Speaker 2: a good look at him, and and boy, it's he's
Speaker 2: just a great sight to take in.
Speaker 3: As I said earlier, strong evocations of rock stardom. He's
Speaker 3: like he is singing devil music. But okay, Samary is
Speaker 3: running around. He kills all of Harryman Singh's men, and
Speaker 3: then he vamps through Paully Harry Mun Singh's daughter. How
Speaker 3: are we supposed to understand what happened to her? I
Speaker 3: don't know exactly. Like he leans over her as if
Speaker 3: he's biting her, and then there's blood on her face
Speaker 3: and her eyes look different. There's sort of like her
Speaker 3: eyes have turned white, as if she's in a kind
Speaker 3: of magical trance.
Speaker 2: One thing I loved about Samre just throughout the picture
Speaker 2: is I never really know what the rules are with him.
Speaker 2: He's just overpoweringly evil, like he yeah, he can drink
Speaker 2: your blood but it's just he just looks at you.
Speaker 2: If you just think about him too much, you may
Speaker 2: just lose your soul. And then in terms of like
Speaker 2: what he is, yeah, there's the basic Kahara rises from
Speaker 2: the tomb undead sorcerer aspect of the whole thing. But like,
Speaker 2: especially when he starts showing up later, I mean, he
Speaker 2: already has things at this point, and then later on
Speaker 2: in the movie, his body becomes even more monstrous in
Speaker 2: ways that don't line up with just pure like decay
Speaker 2: and resurrection. Like his body becomes just increasingly like just
Speaker 2: materially evil.
Speaker 3: Yeah, his later form is part Frankenstein, part decaying zombie,
Speaker 3: and part pro wrestler.
Speaker 2: Yeah, with like some Bigfoot thrown in there.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyway, Harry Munsingh comes back with his full forces and
Speaker 3: they capture the demon. They capture Sammary, taming him with
Speaker 3: holy things like there is a priest chasing him with
Speaker 3: a trisula, the trident of Shiva, and there is an
Speaker 3: altar with the statue of Shiva, et cetera. And he's
Speaker 3: ultimately held in chains. They stand him up for a
Speaker 3: kind of trial while the accusations against him are read
Speaker 3: before the crowd. Basically, he did everything bad. He did murder, rape, cannibalism,
Speaker 3: all of it, all in service of his evil, demonic masters.
Speaker 2: I liked how the priest is reading these charges out
Speaker 2: and finally stumbles a bit, reading the charge of digging
Speaker 2: up graves and eating corpses.
Speaker 3: That doesn't seem like the word of them.
Speaker 2: No, But at that point he's this is too far.
Speaker 2: We're not used to this one. We don't even have
Speaker 2: this one on the books. I'm not sure this is
Speaker 2: technically illegal. It's just bad manners. Now.
Speaker 3: There was a cultural and language question here that interested me.
Speaker 3: In the English subtitles of this scene, it says that
Speaker 3: Samri is accused of using his Satanic powers to create
Speaker 3: terror among the people. It says that he slaked his
Speaker 3: satanic thirst by drinking the blood of children, and it
Speaker 3: says he is so vile that even Satan would shun him.
Speaker 3: So given the Hindu context here, and it seems very
Speaker 3: much in a Hindu context, like there are other scenes where,
Speaker 3: you know, there are temples of the temples of Shiva,
Speaker 3: people offering prayers to Shiva in order to help them.
Speaker 3: I kind of wonder whether they actually said satanic and
Speaker 3: Satan in these scenes. I guess they could have because
Speaker 3: I kept hearing a word in the audio that sounded
Speaker 3: like shatan. So I was just curious, what's going on here,
Speaker 3: Like what is the most direct translation of what they're saying. Because,
Speaker 3: of course, in the context of like a Christian culture
Speaker 3: horror movie, it's very normal, like the evil sorcerer is
Speaker 3: understood to get his powers from Satan or some kind
Speaker 3: of demonic force. In the Hindu context, where does the
Speaker 3: evil sorcerer's power, where's it understood to come from?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had the same thought here. I thought, well,
Speaker 2: maybe they're just referring to mentions of Satan and Western films,
Speaker 2: which would have obviously been an influence here. And then
Speaker 2: I was thinking, well, maybe it's there's an Arabic loanword
Speaker 2: at play here. I looked up to some basic stuff
Speaker 2: in translation. Again, I do not know what I'm doing
Speaker 2: with the Hindi language at all, but it does seem
Speaker 2: like we do have this term chatan, which means devil, satan, freaks, beasts,
Speaker 2: or demons, So I guess that's what we're talking about.
Speaker 3: Interesting. Okay, again, Hindi speaking listeners, please write in let us.
Speaker 2: Know at any rate, he's done all the bad things
Speaker 2: and something's got to be done about it, right.
Speaker 3: Right, So harry Mon Sing's advisors all they argue about
Speaker 3: the best way to punish this evil sorcerer. The priest says,
Speaker 3: you know, why don't we burn him to ashes, that'll
Speaker 3: purify him with flame. Harryman Sing says, no, I've got
Speaker 3: a better idea. We're gonna cut his head off and
Speaker 3: keep it in a different building than his body, and
Speaker 3: that way we'll know that his head and body can
Speaker 3: never possibly be reunited.
Speaker 2: There you go. Sounds like a winning plan.
Speaker 3: And then the holy man suggests using the trident the
Speaker 3: trisula to guard his head. I think they're going to
Speaker 3: like lay it over the top of the box.
Speaker 2: Okay, again, sounds sounds good. That's a good way to
Speaker 2: secure it.
Speaker 3: Then the prologue ends, suddenly lightning strikes and there are
Speaker 3: more credits. After these credits, we get the story picks up,
Speaker 3: but it's still in the historical prologue. See them leading
Speaker 3: Samri off to his fate, and then they're sort of
Speaker 3: leading him in procession in chains, and then he stops
Speaker 3: to rage at everyone like he rages at Hariman Singh,
Speaker 3: and he issues a curse upon his household, which is
Speaker 3: he says that all of his female heirs will die
Speaker 3: in childbirth until Samri's head and body are joined again.
Speaker 3: Note that in the scene they haven't been separated yet. Also,
Speaker 3: he says, on the day that his head and body
Speaker 3: are joined again, that will be the end of Hariman
Speaker 3: Singh's dynasty, I guess, meaning he will destroy them all.
Speaker 3: Then they do it. They cut his head off and
Speaker 3: they bury the body in the ruins of a temple.
Speaker 3: They say it's Shunkar's polygot temple. And they take his
Speaker 3: head to throw it in a trunk wrapped with chains,
Speaker 3: and then they hide that in the dungeon of the
Speaker 3: Raja's palace. And then they of course put the Trishulas
Speaker 3: she was holy trident on top of the trunk and
Speaker 3: they wall it up like Fortunado.
Speaker 2: All in all, a pretty great historical prologue that then
Speaker 2: leads us into modern day Aka in an early eighties Bombay.
Speaker 3: Right, so we meet our modern day characters. There is
Speaker 3: Takur Ranbier Singh. He is the descendant of the Raja
Speaker 3: from the prologue. So the curse has passed down through
Speaker 3: his family. He's a rich man. He loves his family,
Speaker 3: but he is preoccupied with fears about the ancestral curse.
Speaker 3: There is Ranbier's daughter, Suman, who is a college student.
Speaker 3: She's got a kind of sunny disposition, and her father
Speaker 3: laments her growing up because that means that she may
Speaker 3: marry and try to have children and then the curse
Speaker 3: of Samri will kill her. Then there is Suman's boyfriend Sanjay. Again,
Speaker 3: he is not rich, but he is handsome and brave,
Speaker 3: loyal and scrappy. And then there is Sanjay's friend Anand
Speaker 3: who this is a buff guy who cuts the sleeves
Speaker 3: off of all of his shirts. Not all of them,
Speaker 3: He's got some sleeves.
Speaker 2: Yeah, some slaves are cap but most of them they
Speaker 2: just get in the way.
Speaker 3: San and Sonjay being in love, they go out on dates.
Speaker 3: They like go to a pool party. They go out
Speaker 3: to a nightclub where there's a dancer dressed in gold,
Speaker 3: and here we get our first musical number.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is kind of a cabaret number. The dancer
Speaker 2: is Lena Doas and it's a it's a pretty fun
Speaker 2: Indian disco type musical performance. I guess I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: I turned the volume up a little bit on this one.
Speaker 3: I was thinking though about this night club here. It's
Speaker 3: a strange mix of inside it seems cool but also claustrophobic.
Speaker 3: I think maybe the claustrophobic aspect comes from like the
Speaker 3: solid black walls and what felt like a sort of
Speaker 3: low ceiling. But it's got these cool like red bench
Speaker 3: seats and then posters on the wall for movies and
Speaker 3: stuff like there's a poster for Superman up on the walls.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And we also we get a little bit of Sonjay
Speaker 2: is looking at the dancer, maybe a little bit too much,
Speaker 2: and Suman is so it was a little bit jealous.
Speaker 3: This is a curring motif.
Speaker 2: Yes, whole songs will be sung about this later on.
Speaker 3: So Suman and Sonjay are in love, but Suman has
Speaker 3: to lie to her father about where she's going when
Speaker 3: she heads out on dates with him. However, her father
Speaker 3: finds out Ron Beer is not pleased and he forbids
Speaker 3: her to see Sanjay again. But of course she's in love.
Speaker 3: There's no stopping her. So she's not going to just
Speaker 3: leave her boyfriend hanging. And so this is an ongoing
Speaker 3: conflict at the beginning of the movie, and again, as
Speaker 3: I mentioned earlier, there's a misunderstanding about the reason her
Speaker 3: father forbids the romance. She and like the young people
Speaker 3: think it is a class thing, that she's rich and
Speaker 3: he's not. Actually it's a demonic curse thing, but they
Speaker 3: don't know that yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he won't tell her about that, he's keeping that secret. Instead,
Speaker 2: he just says things like like, hey, our family name
Speaker 2: is not so deluded that our blood can just flow
Speaker 2: directly into the gutter and things like that, and of
Speaker 2: course that just pushes her further away. He won't tell
Speaker 2: her the real demonic curse rationale that is behind his fear.
Speaker 3: But then we get like a love song on a
Speaker 3: beach or it's on rocks near the shore, where Sanjay
Speaker 3: is singing about his love for Suman.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's nice, you know, it's like just a
Speaker 2: nice music video. Break.
Speaker 3: Somewhere in here we get the first martial arts scene,
Speaker 3: and this is with Okay, So the basic situation is
Speaker 3: ron Bier. Again, he forbids Sanjay and Suman to date,
Speaker 3: but then he catches them together. So he sends his
Speaker 3: men who are all dressed up in these cool red
Speaker 3: jackets to beat up Sanjay and then on on to
Speaker 3: like comes over the mountain top. It comes over like
Speaker 3: a ridge looking down on them and runs into the
Speaker 3: rescue and then together they beat up all of the
Speaker 3: all of the bad guys. I guess they're not bad guys.
Speaker 3: I don't know. The guy's working for her dad.
Speaker 2: They're just Dad's goon squad that's to beat up Sanjay.
Speaker 3: But we see a lot of signs of Ron Beer's worries,
Speaker 3: like he has a freak out dream sequence with a
Speaker 3: giant beast samary head. And this is where we start
Speaker 3: getting signs of what Samri will look like in his
Speaker 3: in his sort of undead form, which is again less
Speaker 3: rock star and more kind of I don't yeah, like bigfoot,
Speaker 3: pro wrestler zombie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just seething in darkness. Just these great eyes, just
Speaker 2: in this in this pronounced brow. It's just a tremendous look.
Speaker 2: And I can just imagine moviegoers screaming when they see
Speaker 2: this on the screen.
Speaker 3: But eventually the curse is revealed to Suman and Sanjay
Speaker 3: and they have a bunch more you know, back and
Speaker 3: forth about how Ronberd disapproves of them, but eventually, like
Speaker 3: there's one scene where he's repeatedly getting a gun off
Speaker 3: the wall, but eventually he breaks down and confesses to
Speaker 3: them what's really going on. He explains the curse, and
Speaker 3: there are exchanges like one that was funny was he's like,
Speaker 3: you know, it's a secret, and they say what's the
Speaker 3: secret and he says, it's one I can't reveal, and
Speaker 3: they're like, but you must reveal it. But then when
Speaker 3: he does, it's horrifying. It's there's a horrifying flashback to
Speaker 3: when Ronbier reveals that after Suman was born, her mother
Speaker 3: was transformed into some kind of devil creature with these
Speaker 3: long fingernails, these claws and like barnacles on her face,
Speaker 3: and then she died.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's nothing. It turns out there's nothing ambiguous about it.
Speaker 2: I thought they were more setting up a situation where
Speaker 2: it's like, oh, you're you know your mom died in
Speaker 2: childbirth and there is this ancient curse thing. So I
Speaker 2: put one and two together. No, no, no, she like
Speaker 2: straight up practically explodes in some sort of like just awful,
Speaker 2: you know, cursed flesh type of death, and it's it's
Speaker 2: it's a lot to watch.
Speaker 3: Like all the doctors and nurses run out of the room.
Speaker 3: There's no end.
Speaker 2: They're like, it's out of our hands. This is straight
Speaker 2: up wizardry going on in here.
Speaker 3: So ron Bier explains to Sanjay, you know, if you
Speaker 3: really love Suman, you will leave her alone, right, And
Speaker 3: so Sanjay does because he really does love her. But
Speaker 3: then very next scene it cuts straight to Anon is
Speaker 3: lounging on a bed or something. He's wearing a sweatshirt,
Speaker 3: and he says, so you left her, you lose her.
Speaker 3: What'll she think of you?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 3: Should we do a sidebar on Anon's shirts? He wears
Speaker 3: a lot of interesting shirts. Some of them have English
Speaker 3: writing on them and interesting logos and pictures and stuff.
Speaker 3: He wears one shirt that just says styles, and he
Speaker 3: wears another shirt that says Golden Rule. He who has
Speaker 3: the gold makes the rules very cool. And it's weird
Speaker 3: because Anon in many ways does have a heart of gold,
Speaker 3: as we will see. But also he is I don't know,
Speaker 3: he is indifferent. Scenes shown to be vain and highly
Speaker 3: covetous of money, even doing very shady criminal things to
Speaker 3: get money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, though those occur either within or within close proximity
Speaker 2: to the comedic segments, and I'm never sure how much
Speaker 2: of that I should actually pay attention to, Like does
Speaker 2: that count? Is that real Anon? Or is that like
Speaker 2: some different version of a noon just for the comedic
Speaker 2: segments of the movie. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Well anyway, Suman shows up and she's got a better
Speaker 3: idea than Sanjay just leaving her. He convinces Sanjay that
Speaker 3: they should break the curse. Hey, great idea. So it's
Speaker 3: now a road trip to Bijapur, driving down the highway
Speaker 3: in a red convertible. The road trip buddies are the
Speaker 3: four of them, Suman, Sanjay, Anon, and his wife Sapna.
Speaker 2: So at this point it's kind of a Scooby Doo
Speaker 2: road trip kind of a movie, which is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and all you know on the trip we see
Speaker 3: Anon is such a good friend. Sanjay is like, why
Speaker 3: would you risk your life to help us? And an
Speaker 3: On I think, threatens to beat him up for saying this.
Speaker 3: He's like, Hey, what are friends for? A friend has
Speaker 3: to help you break the curse on your family, even
Speaker 3: if that means laying down his own life. Yeah, Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: this is funny. Sapna is happy to come along because
Speaker 3: she is confident that the curse is just Suman's father
Speaker 3: having a delusion. So I guess it's just a regular
Speaker 3: road trip for her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it has to get out of town.
Speaker 3: This married couple. They have extremely different ideas of the
Speaker 3: stakes of this this road trip.
Speaker 2: Yeah, He's like, I am ready to die and she's like,
Speaker 2: I am ready to see the countryside. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, Ron beerre back at home. He has visions of
Speaker 3: samary As in his kind of altered beast form and
Speaker 3: has a heart attack. He survives, but the doctors say
Speaker 3: he must rest, and I think they use this to
Speaker 3: explain why he doesn't chase after the youths to stop
Speaker 3: them on their quest. Yeah, but then we go into
Speaker 3: a part of the movie where basically the four friends
Speaker 3: are investigating the different settings. So they go to an
Speaker 3: old temple. They noticed that the statue in the temple,
Speaker 3: which I believe is of Shiva or maybe of Shivshankar
Speaker 3: maybe they say later, is missing its trident. And then
Speaker 3: you know, so they look around there, they have some
Speaker 3: visions of scary things. They drive around and just have
Speaker 3: encounters with scary people, like they meet a woodcutter who
Speaker 3: just freaks them out by smiling at them and holding
Speaker 3: an asp X. And then finally they reach the palace
Speaker 3: and they explore that and meet Dirjen, the watchman, who
Speaker 3: shows them around and tells them sort of the family history,
Speaker 3: and they start having repeated freaky reactions to portraits or
Speaker 3: I guess mainly it's just Suman that does. Like she
Speaker 3: sees a portrait of her ancestor and it zooms in
Speaker 3: on her eyes and it's knowing.
Speaker 2: Whoa whoa whoah whah. Is this the scene where the
Speaker 2: eyes follow her? And they do it by having clearly
Speaker 2: two separate paintings, one with eyes looking straight ahead and
Speaker 2: one with eyes looking off to the side.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I loved it. I really like these scenes.
Speaker 2: Because we know the viewer knows that behind that painting,
Speaker 2: behind the bricked up wall is going to be the
Speaker 2: head of Samari sealed up in a box with Trishula
Speaker 2: leaned against it to keep it from coming out and
Speaker 2: wreaking havoc.
Speaker 3: The next day, there's a funny scene where Sopna is
Speaker 3: annoyed because Anon won't stop doing workouts and martial arts,
Speaker 3: Like he's doing one handed push ups and practicing martial
Speaker 3: arts and she's just like, Wow, really really great romantic
Speaker 3: vacation you took me on.
Speaker 2: Yeah. This is a fun sequence though, because then she
Speaker 2: kind of she has the scene where she fantasizes about
Speaker 2: him being more into romance and less into personal fitness,
Speaker 2: which I thought was pretty fun.
Speaker 3: Then oh my, here things start taking a left turn. Well, first,
Speaker 3: a bunch of guys from the forest attacks Sopna from
Speaker 3: out of nowhere, and then Anon gets to come to
Speaker 3: the rescue and beat them all up. And then we
Speaker 3: go and meet this bandit commander who's I think giving
Speaker 3: the guys in the forest orders. It starts with a
Speaker 3: lot of over the top slapstick comedy and then descends
Speaker 3: into this rivalry between the bandit and a local official
Speaker 3: in the village. This is the barely related comedic side
Speaker 3: plot that we were discussing earlier, and to be frank,
Speaker 3: as many reviewers have mentioned, I found it extremely unpleasant.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to make much effort to recount it.
Speaker 3: But it's a lot of jokes about like a guy
Speaker 3: not having armed and another guy who does sex crimes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's basically it. And they just keep driving home
Speaker 2: these plot points and and it's it's very skippable. I
Speaker 2: highly recommend you skip it if you watch this movie.
Speaker 2: But but it is. It really throws you off when
Speaker 2: you first hit it because when the Bandit's men show up,
Speaker 2: they have like like dime store Halloween mask on the
Speaker 2: back of their head, and you're just like, what are
Speaker 2: what is happening? Did I switch channels somehow? This this
Speaker 2: is an error on the disk. No, you've just you've
Speaker 2: just descended into the comedic subplot. But don't worry. You
Speaker 2: will eventually rise out of it. But then you're gonna
Speaker 2: fall into it at least one more time, and then
Speaker 2: you'll fall out of it again without anything in the
Speaker 2: comedic plot ever really impacting the A plot or getting resolved.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean there's a little bit of interaction like
Speaker 3: it does develop to where the Bandit and Anon have
Speaker 3: a have a twoco and Blondie plot from The Good,
Speaker 3: the Bad, and the Ugly, where like a Noon repeatedly
Speaker 3: turns the Bandit in for a bounty and then freeze
Speaker 3: him before execution and then does it again to keep
Speaker 3: collecting money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then the whole time you're just like a
Speaker 2: non stay out of this subplot. You don't need to
Speaker 2: be here to stay in plot A with the rest
Speaker 2: of us.
Speaker 3: So in this middle section we get some some delivery
Speaker 3: of lore from the watchman Dirgin at the palace. He
Speaker 3: tells some backstory about the connection between the palace and
Speaker 3: the temple.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: There are also sections here where it seems like maybe
Speaker 3: the heroes kind of lose track of what the road
Speaker 3: trip was for, Like instead of furiously hunting down the
Speaker 3: body of the evil sorcerer, like Sanjay is fishing for
Speaker 3: food and Suman is doing like a couple's photoshoot of
Speaker 3: Ann and Sopna.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. Yeah. It's like there's a curse. There's a
Speaker 2: deadline here, guys, got we gotta stay on this. Oh.
Speaker 3: But in this scene, it starts with a thing where
Speaker 3: there's a woman in the water, and at first I thought, oh,
Speaker 3: is she a mermaid? But she's like biting fish with
Speaker 3: her teeth and then trying to give them to Sanjay.
Speaker 3: Uh and I and Suman gets jealous of this woman
Speaker 3: because she clearly is into Sanjay and she's like a
Speaker 3: beautiful local woman.
Speaker 2: I guess, yeah, beautiful local woman that maybe I think
Speaker 2: maybe we're supposed to assume that she's kind of a
Speaker 2: bad Girl definitely a threat to their romance, but ultimately
Speaker 2: we're gonna find out she has a heart of gold,
Speaker 2: even if she's kind of like doomed to die. Like
Speaker 2: like like other characters in the.
Speaker 3: Film, general spooky do ins are afoot. There's Suman has
Speaker 3: more freak outs when looking at the portraits. And then
Speaker 3: there is the blood shower scene.
Speaker 2: Yes, I love this because, first of all, it's the
Speaker 2: middle of the night time to take a shower, but
Speaker 2: Suman also is gonna take that shower in a swimsuit,
Speaker 2: and you just know the way that the cameras zooming
Speaker 2: in on the showerhead. I'm like that that water's turned
Speaker 2: into blood. There's no way that water's not turned into blood.
Speaker 2: And of course the water turns to blood.
Speaker 3: I knew exactly what was coming, but it's it's a
Speaker 3: pretty fun scene nonetheless. So yeah, she's like then in
Speaker 3: the tub, screaming, covered in blood in the swimsuit, and
Speaker 3: then Anan and Sanjay run into the rescue and they
Speaker 3: like lift her out of the blood tub by her
Speaker 3: arms and legs and then put her directly on the
Speaker 3: bed and I was thinking, oh, no, you're getting blood
Speaker 3: all over the blanket.
Speaker 2: That's a white blanket, y'all. Come on.
Speaker 3: But then Dirgen comes in to explain that the blood
Speaker 3: tub incident proves the curse is real. You know, you've
Speaker 3: got to take it seriously now, and I think he says,
Speaker 3: you've got to talk to the locals to find out
Speaker 3: more about the curse. And then intermission.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so setting up basically, like if the story game
Speaker 2: of Arkham Harr or something, the research portion of the
Speaker 2: adventure where you just got to go around talking to
Speaker 2: people and find out how the ancient evil works.
Speaker 3: So that comes into play right after the intermission. But
Speaker 3: it leads to a lover's quarrel between Suman and Sanjay
Speaker 3: because Sanjay goes to talk to one of the local
Speaker 3: villagers and who does he pick to talk to, Well,
Speaker 3: it just happens to be what's her name Beaeshley, the
Speaker 3: beautiful woman who was bathing in the river earlier, and
Speaker 3: she's bathing in the river again and he's like, hey,
Speaker 3: I need to, you know, talk to you about a
Speaker 3: curse and she's like, Sanjay, I love you Mary me.
Speaker 2: He dead knows no his way around. You're supposed to
Speaker 2: go talk to the haunted drunk guy old drunk guy
Speaker 2: in the village. He's the one who has the secret
Speaker 2: knowledge to share. But now he goes to the attractive
Speaker 2: lady from the water that is also offering him drinks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so she takes him back to her house, gives
Speaker 3: him some kind of alcoholic beverage, and then he watches
Speaker 3: her dance in front of a fire. He's clearly being
Speaker 3: romantically tempted. Suman is jealous and heartbroken, and she sings
Speaker 3: there's another musical number. She sings a forlorn song. I
Speaker 3: was wondering, did you detect this song? Maybe cutting off
Speaker 3: before the song was finished or I don't know. It
Speaker 3: seemed like something was missing. It ended rather abruptly.
Speaker 2: I didn't notice that I'd have to go back and
Speaker 2: the look.
Speaker 3: Maybe I'm wrong, But anyway, after Sanjay finds out some
Speaker 3: more lore from the villagers, he returns to Suman and
Speaker 3: they reconcile.
Speaker 2: Their love is tested, but remain strong.
Speaker 3: Yes. Now, later that night, Suman is sleeping and then
Speaker 3: there's a cat scare, Like literally, somebody throws a cat
Speaker 3: at her, just jumps on her bed, and she like
Speaker 3: screams and wakes up, and she's in a kind of oh,
Speaker 3: kind of a daze wandering around, and then she ends
Speaker 3: up stabbing the portrait of Hariman Singh that's on the wall,
Speaker 3: and after this, Anon realizes he looks up at the
Speaker 3: wall and realizes she stabbed through the wall behind the
Speaker 3: portrait as well. And then Anon and Sanjay bust down
Speaker 3: the wall. They investigate the secret passageway within. This is
Speaker 3: the scene where I mentioned there's some really cool kind
Speaker 3: of rubbery synth music. There's some cool bits, like Anon
Speaker 3: gets a snake attack to the neck. A snake wraps
Speaker 3: itself around his neck and they have to fight it off.
Speaker 3: But then they find the trishula. They find the trident
Speaker 3: of Shiva on top of the trunk, wrapped in chains.
Speaker 3: They bust it open. Inside they find the severed head,
Speaker 3: and Sanjay concludes that it must be the head of
Speaker 3: some brave soldier and it must be there out of respect.
Speaker 2: Oh, Sanjay couldn't be more wrong.
Speaker 3: Bad decision. Yeah, But then there's like, so the woodcutter
Speaker 3: from earlier is looking on and he decides he sees
Speaker 3: the box and he thinks it's full of treasure and
Speaker 3: he wants treasure. So he comes back in the middle
Speaker 3: of the night to get treasure, and instead the head
Speaker 3: hypnotizes him and turns his eyes into ping pong balls
Speaker 3: and makes him attack people.
Speaker 2: The ping pong bong eyes were pretty hilarious, and I
Speaker 2: don't think they were meant to be hilarious, but they're
Speaker 2: also out of keeping with what they did with other
Speaker 2: people's possessed eyes, Like they did some sort of like
Speaker 2: contact effect I guess with everyone else, but this guy
Speaker 2: got ping pong eyes. Yeah, and it's a questionable choice.
Speaker 3: Like Rupauli's eyes were creepy looking, they like they turned white,
Speaker 3: but they were you know, yeah, so those were different.
Speaker 3: He just has like they're like bulging and they look
Speaker 3: like plastic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're like, we couldn't get a hold of our
Speaker 2: contact guy for today. What else we got? What's the
Speaker 2: backup effect? It's ping pong balls.
Speaker 3: This leads to a great chase scene that I loved.
Speaker 3: So it's the It's like a horse drawn carriage with
Speaker 3: driven by the woodcutter carrying the wizard head in the carriage,
Speaker 3: riding through the forest at night, and then Sanjay in
Speaker 3: an ond in a red convertible chasing after it. So
Speaker 3: it's machine versus horse.
Speaker 2: It's great. But then they are also supernatural environmental effects
Speaker 2: that come into play as well.
Speaker 3: That's all right, So like the Sorcerer's head I think
Speaker 3: causes a tree to fall down and block their path
Speaker 3: as they pursue the head, so they can't keep up
Speaker 3: with it. Meanwhile, something happens in here where Dershon hangs
Speaker 3: the trisula up on the chandelier.
Speaker 2: Yeah, unsure why. He's kind of like, I got to
Speaker 2: hide this away for later so that it can play
Speaker 2: a dynamic role in the showdown or something. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: the only logic that makes sense.
Speaker 3: So the hypnotized woodcutter like digs up Samri's body. I
Speaker 3: guess he knows where it is because the head has
Speaker 3: hypnotized him. Then he grabs the head. He puts the
Speaker 3: head on the body. He poked himself with a dagger
Speaker 3: and bleeds on the next stump, and this kind of
Speaker 3: glues the head back on and then Sammary wakes up
Speaker 3: and now it's it's clubber and time.
Speaker 2: That's right, it is on. Body and head are back
Speaker 2: together again. His body. At this point, like I alluded
Speaker 2: to earlier, it's the evil is just completely manifest. It's
Speaker 2: it's now this hairy demonic sasquatch Frankenstein creature that that
Speaker 2: ultimately really works. Like the way I'm describing it makes
Speaker 2: it sound like it's kind of patchwork and and maybe
Speaker 2: you know, can't decide what it wants to be. But no,
Speaker 2: whatever it is, it is, it totally succeeds as being that.
Speaker 2: It's just this, This is evil incarnate.
Speaker 3: Samary is wickedness and malevol I'd say he's bad. Hey, everybody,
Speaker 3: we just had to take a quick break. But we
Speaker 3: we're back now. So if we sound different, that's why.
Speaker 3: But we we're finishing the episode. So uh yeah, the
Speaker 3: plot is kind of in monster mode right now. This
Speaker 3: is when the Frankenstein starts shambling around, grunting, looming and
Speaker 3: killing people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Samri has returned, has full body again, has great
Speaker 2: lights and effects and scynth backing him up. So it's
Speaker 2: just terrifying anytime he's on the screen. He's not interested
Speaker 2: in reasoning with anybody or negotiating. He is here too
Speaker 2: in dynasties. He doesn't care what has happened in the
Speaker 2: world over the past few centuries. He has a pretty
Speaker 2: straightforward agenda.
Speaker 3: Oh I didn't even think about that, Like he hasn't
Speaker 3: been around, so he doesn't know about the moon landing
Speaker 3: or anything. Okay, so yeah, he's killing people. Unfortunately, he
Speaker 3: makes Sopna jump off the roof of the palace to
Speaker 3: her death. Bummer. I like Sopna. And then Anon is
Speaker 3: obviously very upset about this, so he like runs up
Speaker 3: to the roof of the palace to fight him, but
Speaker 3: Samri is gone. And from here there is a blood
Speaker 3: sacrifice subplot. The villagers decide they want to do a
Speaker 3: human sack refice of Sanjay and Suman in order to
Speaker 3: appease the monster and save themselves. And here we get
Speaker 3: a human sacrifice musical number, which I liked quite a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this one is good. I believe they're they're looking
Speaker 2: to sacrifice to Klie and it looks it looks like
Speaker 2: our heroes might be might be doomed once more. But
Speaker 2: someone comes to save them right in the naked time.
Speaker 3: Right, so they're like tied up awaiting death, and you know,
Speaker 3: the drums kick in and then suddenly here's this lady
Speaker 3: from earlier. The one is her name Beachley, I think
Speaker 3: the one who was in love with Sanjay, like he
Speaker 3: went to her house earlier. And she's dancing around singing
Speaker 3: this very jolly, upbeat song about how the man she
Speaker 3: loved is unfortunately going to have his blood spilled and
Speaker 3: she doesn't want that. And then there's a string of reversals.
Speaker 3: So first of all, she comes to save the day
Speaker 3: because she cuts Sonjay free and says she loves him
Speaker 3: and tries to let him free, but then he gets
Speaker 3: caught by the mind. But then her brother, who is
Speaker 3: sort of the guy leading the mob, says that he
Speaker 3: will still kill Suman unless Sanjay beats him in a
Speaker 3: sword fight. And then they get out there they're fencing
Speaker 3: swords and they fence for a bit. The sword fight
Speaker 3: is okay, it's not really on the level of an
Speaker 3: On's martial arts scenes. And then at the end of
Speaker 3: the sword fight, Sanjay sort of wins, but the brother
Speaker 3: tries to throw a dagger at Sanjay's back to kill him,
Speaker 3: but yet again, the sister who loves Sanjay intervenes. She
Speaker 3: steps in front of the dagger and takes it for
Speaker 3: him and dies.
Speaker 2: Oh no, yeah, bad girl with a good heart redeems
Speaker 2: herself through death. I also like that the sword fight,
Speaker 2: like you say, is very different from anything we've seen
Speaker 2: in the film up to that point, and it feels like,
Speaker 2: once again, this is the little something for everybody going
Speaker 2: on where it's like we need to have a traditional
Speaker 2: swashbuckling act in the picture, and this is the place
Speaker 2: to situate it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it makes sense. So anyway, Sanjay and Suman run away,
Speaker 3: the mob searches after them. You know, there's kind of
Speaker 3: a lot of running around and hiding and chasing in
Speaker 3: the woods, and then here comes another Anon fight. He
Speaker 3: is Anon is captured by the leader of the mob
Speaker 3: and then they there's some fighting and On lets out
Speaker 3: some really weird martial arts moves in this fight, Like
Speaker 3: there's one where I think he steps on a guy's head.
Speaker 3: It's kind of gross.
Speaker 2: Well, he's just completely powered up with vengeance at this point,
Speaker 2: like he's more lethal.
Speaker 3: Than ever, right, and so he's yeah, he's angered by
Speaker 3: the death of his wife. He is motivated by defending
Speaker 3: his friends. So he's fighting super hard and there's there's
Speaker 3: a really awesome moment where the leader of the mob
Speaker 3: tries to stab him with a dagger, but Anon grabs
Speaker 3: the dagger by the blade and disarms him.
Speaker 2: Excellent. He just cannot be stopped at this point.
Speaker 3: But unfortunately, even though Anon prevails in this fight, there
Speaker 3: is immediately more peril. So Sanjay and Suman are chased
Speaker 3: in the dark by some the demon, and Anon comes
Speaker 3: to rescue them. He ends up giving his life so
Speaker 3: that they can escape, just like he said he would earlier.
Speaker 3: So a true friend to the end. SAMRII kind of
Speaker 3: strangles him, I think, and then his eyes turn white.
Speaker 2: So now it's just our two lovers pursued by the
Speaker 2: demon Somri.
Speaker 3: But an earlier character returns, so Suman's dad is back
Speaker 3: on the scene and he shows up. He's like better
Speaker 3: from my heart attack. Now there is only one person
Speaker 3: who can beat Samri, and that is Lord Shiva. So
Speaker 3: cut to another musical number. Now Ron Deer is singing
Speaker 3: to an altar of Shiva, or I think they were
Speaker 3: also calling this god Shiv Shankar, which I'm not sure,
Speaker 3: but maybe like a manifestation of Shiva, maybe like Shiva
Speaker 3: the destroyer of evil. Perhaps I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: At any rate, this seems like the right call. Get
Speaker 2: Shiva and on this that then we're dealing with a
Speaker 2: pretty powerful supernatural evil force here. We're going to need
Speaker 2: just a little bit of help.
Speaker 3: Right, praying for the God's help, and we get cutaways
Speaker 3: to the surviving characters, but then also cutaways to like
Speaker 3: a bloody sheet which is presumably covering up the dead
Speaker 3: body of an odd Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I have to say on paper, are just
Speaker 2: us describing this. You might question whether it makes sense
Speaker 2: to throw in a religious musical number this late in
Speaker 2: the film, building up to the final showdown with the monster.
Speaker 2: But I thought it it would work. I thought it
Speaker 2: really worked because the musical number itself has this way
Speaker 2: of kind of revving up and has this kind of
Speaker 2: rhythmic quality to it kind of works the people in
Speaker 2: the scene into a frenzy, you know, to unleash our
Speaker 2: would be monster slayers, and you feel a little pumped up.
Speaker 2: You're like, let's do this, let's let's finish this up,
Speaker 2: Let's let's get somri.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I mean as I said again, I mean this unironically.
Speaker 3: I fully encourage more filmmakers to make horror movies that
Speaker 3: are seriously scary but also have musical numbers. I think
Speaker 3: that's a great idea.
Speaker 2: Also, it's probably a good way to overpower some of
Speaker 2: our traditional Western movie villains like Jason vorhees how he
Speaker 2: can react to full blown musical numbers. He's not going
Speaker 2: to know it's him. This is better than like psychic powers.
Speaker 3: I would love that. Yeah, fully, like a religious musical
Speaker 3: number before somebody goes up against Jason, where they're they're
Speaker 3: like invoking the power of Christ.
Speaker 2: You know, we had something kind of similar without the
Speaker 2: music in the Devil Rides out right. They basically have
Speaker 2: a Sunday school lesson before the big confrontation, just to
Speaker 2: set everything right.
Speaker 3: We should mention by the way that the lyrics of
Speaker 3: the song point out the like remind the audience that
Speaker 3: the statue of Shiva is missing its trident, and this
Speaker 3: gives Sonjay the idea that the way to destroy the
Speaker 3: monster is to use the trisula, which is which again
Speaker 3: was hidden. It was in the hidden passage behind the
Speaker 3: painting on top of the trunk that had the head
Speaker 3: in it. And so Sanjay and Suman go looking for
Speaker 3: the trident. So there's a bunch of more scares. They're
Speaker 3: like looking around in the palace and they are screamed
Speaker 3: at by taxidermied animals and Samar appears. He chases them around.
Speaker 3: He is about to in the very last moment, hypnotize
Speaker 3: and vamp Souman. But then Sanjay sees that the trisula
Speaker 3: is hidden in the chandelier and he wields it. He
Speaker 3: drives Samri into his coffin and they trap him inside
Speaker 3: with the power of the trident, and then the villagers
Speaker 3: come collect the coffin, take it to the village square.
Speaker 3: Then they tie Samary to the steak and burn him
Speaker 3: huge burning fire and the demon is vanquished.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they just they burn him up, and Dad's there
Speaker 2: pumping his fist in the air. The monster burns. Yeah.
Speaker 3: In the end, Rondvier accepts Sanjay because now the threat
Speaker 3: to his daughter's life has passed. So he says, I'm
Speaker 3: proud of you, son. You destroyed the curse that haunted
Speaker 3: my family for two hundred years. And then this is
Speaker 3: one of those cases where he says something that he
Speaker 3: just said again but in English, so he says in English,
Speaker 3: I'm really proud of you, my son.
Speaker 2: Such it's not such a sweet ending, you know. Granted,
Speaker 2: a lot of people died to get us here, but
Speaker 2: it's getting back into like just the straight family melodrama
Speaker 2: aspect of it. It's a nice place to end things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so Sonjay and Suman, we see them married and
Speaker 3: then it ends very abruptly. I was kind of thinking
Speaker 3: there would be an ending music number, you know, but
Speaker 3: there was not, or am I remembering right? Was there?
Speaker 3: I don't think there was.
Speaker 2: I don't think there was a full on musical number
Speaker 2: to end it out. It was just kind of like
Speaker 2: we end on more of a traditional note where Good
Speaker 2: is victorious and they kind of get a nice snapshot
Speaker 2: of everyone together and then we close it out.
Speaker 3: So all in all, I greatly enjoyed Piranhamunder Again. A
Speaker 3: great love story, great evil wizard, good good family, melodrama
Speaker 3: and stuff. Love the musical numbers, comedy segments awful, martial
Speaker 3: arts awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then of course the monster is amazing. So
Speaker 2: all in all, I feel like this was a pretty
Speaker 2: solid entry into Bollywood horror. So who knows, May I
Speaker 2: have to do some more research. Maybe at some point
Speaker 2: in the future we'll come back and do another Ramsey
Speaker 2: Brothers film. There's also blinking on his name at the moment.
Speaker 2: But there was another like top tier competitor to them
Speaker 2: that put out a number of movies as well, and
Speaker 2: some of those looked interesting, so who knows it's either way.
Speaker 2: I'm glad we got to dive in to the cinema
Speaker 2: of India here on Weird House Cinema. And once again,
Speaker 2: if you want to get into into some of this,
Speaker 2: I have to point out there's an Instagram account for
Speaker 2: Bollywood crypt and that was one of the first places
Speaker 2: I started looking around. I found that account, and I
Speaker 2: was seeing what this account was sharing related to Bollywood
Speaker 2: horror and kind of getting a taste for what seemed
Speaker 2: to be important. And then from there I found out
Speaker 2: about this awesome Blu ray set that's out from Mondo Macabro.
Speaker 2: I recommend checking that out. And if you're in Atlanta,
Speaker 2: like I said, you can go to videodrom and rent
Speaker 2: some of these bad boys. They just got them on
Speaker 2: the shelf. All right, we're going to close the book here,
Speaker 2: but we'd love to hear from you out there again.
Speaker 2: If you have experience with Bollywood cinema in general, Bollywood
Speaker 2: horror specifically, or you know particular memories or things to
Speaker 2: share about Piranha Mandir, let us know we would love
Speaker 2: to hear from you. In the meantime, we'll also remind
Speaker 2: you that stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a
Speaker 2: science podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On
Speaker 2: Mondays we do listener mail. On Wednesdays we do short
Speaker 2: form artifactor or monster Fact episode, and on Fridays we
Speaker 2: set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a
Speaker 2: weird film on Weird House Cinema. You can look us
Speaker 2: up on letterbox best L E T T E R
Speaker 2: box d dot com. We have an account there called
Speaker 2: weird House and we have a nice list of all
Speaker 2: the movies we've covered over the years. You can pull
Speaker 2: them up and you can also organize them anyway. This
Speaker 2: is how I was able to really quickly see what
Speaker 2: is the longest film we've ever covered and what is
Speaker 2: the shortest? Without a doubt, Piranha Mandir is the longest,
Speaker 2: but only beats out Blade by twenty minutes.
Speaker 3: All right, huge thanks to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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