Mondo Macabro | Review by Douglas A Waltz
Mondo Macabro has taken the mystery of Bollywood and lifted the veil ever so slightly to us Westerners. There are the things that you hear about the flicks made over there; like how the movie comes to a screeching halt for a song and dance number. While that is true, these movies aren’t quite as bad as all that. This collection gives us two.
First up is BANDH DARWAZA (1990) this comes across as an Indian version of Dracula. Sort of. A childless woman visits the lair of this evil magician/vampire who can impregnate her with the child her husband wants so badly. The deal is that if she bears a male son that she may keep him and extend the lineage of their family. If it is a female child she must be turned over to the monster for his unspoken purposes. Wanna guess what gender of kid she spits out. Well, if it had been a boy this would have been a pretty short movie and since the running time is listed as 145 minutes we all know that she’s gonna have a girl. The new mom throws a monkey wrench into the proceedings by refusing to give up the baby. Wow! Real surprise there. One of the evil monster’s minions captures the child and poisons the mother. Dad has had enough and goes on a hunt for the monster. He seemingly kills the beast and takes his daughter back from the evil people at the temple.
Time passes and the monster is revived by his followers. First thing on his agenda is to get what is rightfully his. Unfortunately, for him, his daughter has no intentions of coming along quietly and her friends will do anything to destroy the beast once and for all.
BANDH DARWAZA is a good example of Indian cinema. We get the religious trappings of their beliefs intertwined in this tale of supernatural goings on. It is nice to see what a different culture can do with the supernatural and we see aspects that are never touched on in Western film making more by ignorance and indifference than anything else. It makes for a breath of fresh air. That said that there are a couple of odd things in the movie. To give a sense of danger there is an awful lot of lightning going on in this flick. It’s a wonder that everyone in India isn’t friend to a crisp with the amount of lightning strikes that occur in this movie. I started counting them, but got bored with it half way through the picture. Yes, there are a few musical numbers, but they are actually integrated into the actual storyline. The main characters do the singing and dancing and it’s relevant to what is going on in the picture so it doesn’t have that forced feel to it. The running time seems a little long, but they throw everything into this baby. You get horror, musical, comedy and some wicked fight scenes that are usually relegated to chopsocky flicks.
The second feature on our imported double bill is PURANA MANDIR. This time around we have a demon being killed by a king. But, before the demon perishes he curses the king’s family in a way that all female members will turn into hideous monsters and die at childbirth. We flash forward to the present and the monarchy is no longer in place, but the last descendants of the king consist of a man and his beloved daughter. His daughter is falling in love and the father knows what will happen unless he interferes. The daughter discovers the curse and decides that it is time to confront the demon from the past and put an end to the curse once and for all.
PURANA MANDIR is a lot like BANDH DARWAZA. We get something that happens a long time ago and then something in modern time is affected by the past. In both cases it’s a daughter’s life that is threatened and a father willing to go to any lengths to make sure that she is safe. The demons are different, but they both have a reach from beyond the grave. The concept is similar, but the delivery is different. BANDH seems more polished that PURANA. Both films have a running time of two hours and twenty five minutes and in both cases a lot could have been trimmed to make the story flow a lot faster. But, that isn’t the way of Bollywood and this collection is here to show us what mainstream films in foreign countries are like, not bend them to our narrow view of cinema.
Included with the two disc set is an interview the man who plays Saamri the demon in PURANA MANDIR. We get a lot of text notes and essays along with a really informative documentary on South Asian horror that explains the whole Bollywood phenomenon.
THE BOLLYWOOD HORROR COLLECTION Volume 1 is indispensable to the true horror aficionado.
