Merry Monster Mash: Veerana

 Veerana (1988) is billed as a vampire movie, and there is certainly a blood-drinking creature of the night who leans heavily into vampire tropes, but this is also a partial remake of the 1983 American horror movie Mausoleum, and that's just the start; this movie is a rich stew of cultural influences, mixed together with a bit of gore, annoying comic relief, and as much sex as the filmmakers could get past the censors.

The movie was written and directed by the Ramsay Brothers, and every good Ramsay movie needs a curse.   This time heroic Thakur Mahendra Pratap (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) and his brother Sameer (Vijayendra Ghatge) discover that something is preying on the villagers and drinking their blood, so Sameer goes out looking for the creature responsible, armed only with a jeweled Om given to him by his brother.  While driving through the woods he's approached by a mysterious woman (Kamal Roy) with a bat pendant and fantastic hair, and she invites him back to her haveli.  After chatting for a while, Sameer decides to take a bath, and the woman invites herself along, but at the last minute he snatches the bat pendant and she transforms into the hideous witch Nakita.  Sameer subdues her with the Om and takes her to the village, where the villagers hang the witch and seal her in a coffin.

What they don't know is that Nakita has help.  Baba (Rajesh Vivek) is an evil wizard who lives in an underground lair decorated like the cover of the 1978 AD&D Player's Handbook, assisted by a cabal of black-robed monks straight from a classic Italian horror movie and a silent circle of rock-headed guys who wandered onto the set from a Hercules movie.  Baba retrieves Nakita's coffin and vows vengeance.  Soon he gets his chance when Sameer is driving Thakur's daughter Jasmine (Vaishani Mahant) back to her boarding school.  the car breaks down and Sameer wanders off to find water for the radiator, giving Baba the opportunity to hypnotize Jasmine and take her back to his lair, where he performs a ritual to bind Nakita's soul to the girl.  Sameer follows them to the lair, but he is quickly overcome by the evil monks.

Baba brings Jasmine back to her home and explains that the car met with an accident and Sameer died.  A grateful Thakur offers Baba a job in the house as a creepy servant, and strange things start to happen, because this is now The Omen.  Jasmine occasionally acts very strange, and she's oddly hostile to Sameer's widow Preeti (Rama Vij).  Things escalate, and when Preeti mysteriously dies (not that mysterious, since she was alone with Jasmine and screaming "she's going to kill me" at the time) Thakur sends Sameer and Preeti's daughter Sahila to stay with her grandmother in Bombay.  

 Time passes - twelve years, to be exact.  Sahila (Sahila Chaddha) has passed her exams, and Thakur invites her to visit and celebrate.  She makes her way back to the village, accompanied by her cousin Hitchcock (Satish Shah), an aspiring horror filmmaker.  They are waylaid along the way by a large henchman (Gorilla - that is the actor's screen name) sent by Baba, but fortunately they are rescued by Tarzan.  Well, they are rescued by Hemant (Hemant Birje), but the script makes sure to remind the viewer that Birje played Tarzan in the 1985 movie Adventures of Tarzan.  Hemant needs a job, so Sahila invites him to join her, and after a short interlude in a strange hotel and a dance number, the pair are in love.

Meanwhile, Jasmine (Jasmin Dhunna) has grown up beautiful and strange.  She spends most of her time in her room, but occasionally wanders in the forest and around the village, seducing lonely men and taking them to secluded places where she can kill them and drink their blood.  All her family knows is that she's still having fits, and the family doctor (Narendra Nath) says that she needs a psychiatrist.  Fortunately he is a psychiatrist, which means that they don't need to introduce a new character.  On thew other hand, skeezy servant Raghu (Gulshan Grover) knows more than he's telling; he tends to follow Jasmine when she wanders, so he knows about the seducing lonely men but not about the blood drinking.

 

And then the movie spins its wheels for a while; the bodies keep piling up, Jasmine is acting stranger than usual and occasionally shows her true face, but it takes a while before anybody manages to connect the dots.  Instead, the movie keeps cutting back to Raghu's bitter feud with Baba's pet cat.  Eventually Hemant realizes that there's something suspicious about Baba the sinister bearded manservant who carries a black cat everywhere, and the movie rockets to a suitably bonkers conclusion, complete with a genuinely clever method to permanently dispose of the vampire.

 

This is probably not a very good movie, but I really enjoyed it.  The film has tremendous style.  Actually it has several styles, but when it;s concentrating on horror it echoes classic European Gothic horror movies from the seventies, and the cinematography is genuinely good.  Jasmin Dhunna is magnetic, Satish Shah is less annoying than the usual comic relief in this sort of movie (Hitchcock even gets a moment of heroism), and Hemant Birje quickly settles into his role as a modern day Peplum protagonist who wandered into the wrong genre.  It's a wonderful blend.

 

A bonus screenshot for Ek Chatur Naar.

 It doesn't fit in the review, but I really like it!

 

 

This isn't technically a snake movie, but it deserves an honorable mention.

 The first thing we learn about Mamta (Divya Khosla Kumar), the protagonist of Ek Chatur Naar (2025) is that she loves watching TV serials about shapeshifting snakes bent on revenge.  Mamta watches them with her mother-in-law Radha (Chhaya Kadam) while her son Sonu works on homework for his online school, and they do it all in the dark because they're hiding from loan shark Thakur (Yashpal Sharma), who is still trying to collect on a debt owed by Mamta's late husband.  They're poor, in other words, and likely to stay that way for the rest of their lives.

Mamta works at a metro station in Lucknow, and she happens to be watching the CCTV when a passenger drops his expensive phone and a thief runs off with it.  Mamta is hoping for a permanent job at the station, so she gives chase and nearly recovers the phone, but winds up with a gash on her head for her troubles.  Or at least that's what Mamta wants you to think - she really hired the thief, because she wanted a nice phone for Sonu to use for his homework.  Before she gives the phone to Sonu she needs to see what's on it, and there's . . . actually quite a lot.

The phone belongs to smarmy accountant Abhishek Verma (Neil Nitin Mukesh), who is rich, handsome, charming, and corrupt, working with shady government minister Qureshi (Zakir Hussain) to siphon government funds intended for poor farmers into their own pockets.  Abhishek is married to Anjali (Rose Sardana) and having an affair with his secretary Tina (Heli Duruwala), and he was careless enough to leave evidence of both the affair and the government corruption on his phone.

So what's a hardworking woman like Mamta to do?  Obviously try to blackmail Abhishek.  It doesn't feel like a fair contest; Abhishek has wealth, power, political connections, and the help of Police Inspector Triloki Singh (Sushant Singh), while Mamta has her wits, moxie, and the help of her alcoholic mother-in-law, so you would expect that she's going to wipe the floor with him.  However, Abhishek is ruthless and has a certain low cunning, so he eventually shows up at Mamta's house, threatens Sonu, and has Radha arrested, which  means Mamta has to escalate by getting a job in Abhishek's house as the new maid.

This is a black comedy rather than a straightforward crime drama, so while there are real stakes and a genuine sense of threat, the constant escalation and one-upmanship feels more like a Bugs Bunny cartoon than the usual filmi noir; Mamta transforms herself into a trickster figure, using her beloved snake serials as a motif.   Still, the mystery plays fair, and after the big twist everything makes more sense rather than less.

Ek Chatur Naar translates to "a clever lady," and that is exactly what you get with this movie.  It has a flawed but compelling protagonist, a charming but despicable villain, a solid mystery, family drama, and some solid jokes.  Very filmi, sort of noir, and a lot of fun.

 

 

Cultures clash again.

 Bollywood romance isn't really dead, but it doesn't rule the box office in the same way it did back in the Nineties.  Still, people keep trying to bring back old-fashioned romance with movies that tend to involve Janhvi Kapoor.  Param Sundari (2025) certainly fits the bill - in fact it may be a little too old-fashioned, despite the frequent references to apps, algorithms and AI.

 Param Sachev (Siddharth Malhotra) is a charming young man living in Delhi who loves the electronic world; he uses apps for everything, especially dating, and he's borrowed money from his father Parmeet (Sanjay Kapoor) to invest in a string of failed tech start-ups.  This time, he thinks he's found his "unicorn": Soulmates, an app which matches people based on their spiritual energy rather than looks or personalities.  Param is willing to try the app out, and he is matched to a woman living in a village in Kerela named Thekkepattu Sundari Damodharan Pillai (Janhvi Kapoor), but she doesn't have a social media presence so there's no way to find out much about her.  However, Param is going to try, especially since Parmeet has threatened to force him to work in the office if this investment doesn't work out.  Param needs to find his soulmate, and he's got a month to do it.

Param and his sidekick Juggy (Manjot Singh) travel to Kerela, where they discover that Sundari runs a small boarding house with her terminally online sister Ammu (Inayat Verma).  Param and Juggy check in.  Their cover story is that Param is writing a book about his travels through the area, but he's really there to conduct a full, filmi style charm offensive, complete with a little light stalking.

If you've seen one of these North meets South Bollywood romances, this will be pretty predictable; Param, tries to fit in with the villagers, leading to cultural misunderstandings, and he makes a poor impression on Sundari's stern and overprotective guardian Bhargavan (Renji Panicker.)   He does start to bond with Sundari, especially after a simple act of kindness, but he keeps missing her references to someone named Venu, so he's completely blindsided when Venu (Siddhartha Shankar) shows up and is revealed to be Bhargavan's son and Sundari's childhood sweetheart.  And then Bhargavan announces that it's time Venu and Sundari get married, because that's what her parents always wanted.

Param is worried on multiple levels - if Sundari marries someone else, his investment fails and he has to work in his dad's office, but he's also developed genuine feelings for Sundari, so he feels he has to do something.  He fixates on helping the village win the competition surrounding the upcoming Onam festival, reasoning that if he can win the village over, the girl is sure to follow.  The trouble is that despite being a fit young man Param is hopeless at all the games, except for rowing, and what are the chances that the competition will come down to a climactic boat race?  

The plot is very predictable.  Of course Sundari is going to walk in right when village nurse Jincy (Gopika manjusha) is putting the moves on Param.  of course Juggy is going to pick up a love interest of his own.  Of course Parmeet is going to show up at exactly the wrong time, and of course the truth is going to come out.  (Also, of course the app is a scam.)  Predictable is not bad when it;s done well, though, and this movie certainly tries.  The cinematography is fantastic (Kerala really is gorgeous), the music and dancing is good, and the leads are both charming (though Malhotra is better at "solid and dependable" than he is at "rogue with a heart of gold.")

The problem is that the leads are mostly charming separately; the chemistry never quite works, and that's kind of important for a romantic comedy.  And while this is an old-fashioned story, it's also hip and modern and self-aware which means that the characters often directly reference classic romances when it should not be inviting comparisons.  The movie is fine, it's fun, but this is not the film to put romance back on top.

 

Don't mind me. Just posting a map.

 This is random, but hosting an image for another internet thing.

 

 

Home for the Holidays

 Greater Kalesh (2025) is a Netflix-original short film, but it manages to perfectly capture the feel of a holiday-centered TV movie, and I have to think that that is deliberate.  This time the specific holiday is Diwali, but the idea of the adult child returning home for the holidays and resolving family drama is pretty much universal.

The adult child in question is Twinkle Handa (Ahsaas Channa), who has a good job in Bangalore working with computers but is finally returning home to Delhi to surprise her family and attend their annual Diwali party.  Twinkle loves Diwali, and she loves her family, and she looks forward to sharing it with her father Ranjan (Happy Ranajit), mother Sunita (Supriya Shukla) and annoying younger brother Ankush (Poojan Chhabra).  But her wistful voice-over comes to an abrupt stop when she gets to the front door of the family home and overhears a bitter argument.  She rings the doorbell and Sunita lets her in, but everyone insists that everything is fine.

 Everything is not fine.  It takes persistence, but Twinkle learns Ranjan father never actually owned the house; his brother did, but now the house is going to be sold and this will be their last Diwali in what they thought was their home.  Sunita is planning to join her daughter in Bangalore (which is a surprise to Twinkle), and everyone is also mad at Ankush because he's apparently dating an older woman.  (Ankush is not dating an older woman.)  Twinkle is keeping her own secret as well - she's in a serious relationship with Rishi (Aditya Pandey), but can't bring herself to introduce him to the family.

Fortunately, Twinkle also has Pankhuri (Akshaya Naik), the obligatory plucky best friend, to give her advice.  Pankhuri points out that the problems in the home aren't actually about Twinkle, and with that added perspective, Twinkle decides to use the Diwali party to solve everybody's problems for them.  (She may have missed the point of "it's not actually about you.")  And her plan starts with inbviting Ankush's college friend Karan (Keshav Mehta) to the party.

And that's the movie.  It's a cozy and insubstantial bit of family fluff, so while the characters have problems, nobody is a villain, and everything will be solved in the most heartwarming way possible.  It's heartwarming family drama, like a 90s Bollywood movie where they're solving their own problems instead of relying on Shah Rukh Khan.  

A Bad Bromance

 Kabir (Hrithik Roshan), the edgy loner of Yash Raj Films' "Spy Universe", was last seen at the end of Tiger 3 accepting a dangerous undercover mission in order to defeat a mysterious and terrifying enemy; his mentor Colonel Luthra (Ashutosh Rana) warns him that the mission will test him, blurring the lines between good and evil and requiring him to perform terrible deeds in order to safeguard India.  And as War 2 (2025) opens, it seems that Luthra was right.  Kabir is working as a one man mercenary battalion, slicing his way through a katana-infested Japanese temple in order to eliminate his target, befriending a wolf and blowing up a helicopter along the way.  

Kabir meets his contact in Germany, and she tells him that from now on he'll be working for a secret organization called Kali.  After the customary drugging and kidnapping, Kabir wakes up in a secret lair and discovers that Kali is an international cartel with members from all of the countries surrounding India, and that they like to protect their identities by teleconferencing with high tech red shifted holograms.  It's exactly the kind of cartel you see in older movies like Mr. India; I like to think that they are literally the cartel from Mr. India, searching for a figurehead who can match the charisma and style of Mogambo.

 Kali have arranged a test for Kabir, to prove that he's not secretly still working for RAW: they've kidnapped Luthra, and want Kabir to kill him.  Kabir is reluctant, because of course he's secretly still working for RAW, but Luthra insists that he completes his mission, and finally and reluctantly Kabir pulls the trigger.  The members of Kali are pleased, and Kabir is rewarded with a meeting with India's representative in the cartel, Gautam Gulati (K. C. Shankar.)  Gulati is a villain for the modern era, an amoral billionaire who just wants more money and more power, but who can't muster thegravitas of Amrish Puri in a bad blond wig.

However, just to be very sure that Kabir isn't secretly still working for RAW, Kali send the video of Luthra's death to Indian intelligence, and Vikrant Kaul (Anil Kapoor), the new head of RAW, puts together a team to take Kabir down, because apparently Luthra was the only person who knew about Kabir's secret mission.  (I too have seen Don.)  The team includes Luthra's daughter Kavya (Kiara Advani) and decorated veteran Vikram Chelapathi (NTR Jr.) who is introduced in his own physics defying fight scene, establishing that he's skilled, a bit of a lone wolf, and played by that guy from RRR.

 The team discuss Kabir and his possible motives, and they confidently note that Kabir doesn't have any family or loved ones outside of RAW.  In the next scene Kabir is in Spain, visiting Ruhi (Arista Mehta), the young girl he adopted at the end of the last movie.  There's a chase and a fight and a train crash, and Kabir decides that Vikram can be trusted.  The men meet secretly, Kabir tells Vikram about the mission Kali has given him, and asks the other man to stop him.  Vikram eagerly agrees, and the men perform a big dance number while singing about how they're best friends now and would give their lives for one another.

But of course there's a problem.  The movie is called War, and so these two can't be friends forever.  The previous film kept Kabir's loyalties ambiguous for much of the runtime, so there was a real question of whether Kabir or his rival/protege Khalid (Tiger Shroff) was the real villain.  This time we know Kabir is on the up and up - we saw Luthra assign the mission, and we have followed Kabir closely throughout the movie, so we know he's really good.  That leaves Vikram, though the movie does manage to make the obvious twist more complicated than "he's working for Kali."

 Hrithik and NTR have great chemistry, and the movie really does set up the bromance as something that's both deeply unhealthy and very important to both men.  The rest of the movie is kind of overshadowed, though.  The plot is basically nonsense, the action scenes range from "over-the-top" to "so over-the-top that my sense of disbelief is shattered", and Kiara Advani doesn't really have much to do.  In theory she's supposed to be Kabir's love interest, but they don't have many scenes together and it's Vikram that gets the big dance number and declarations of eternal devotion.  

War 2 does add something to the evolving Spy Universe; Kali provides the franchise with a useful and uncomplicated bad-guy operation, a Bollywood SPECTRE or Hydra (and the heroes even mention that if you cut off one head, two more will take its place.)  And it is always nice to see Anil Kapoor, even though Vikrant Kaul is probably not Arun Verma in disguise.