Just one look and I can hear a bell ring.

 

The late eighties and early nineties were something of a golden age for star-crossed romance in Bollywood, and the young lovers in Banjaran (1991) are if anything more star-crossed than usual.  The film pairs the usual young aristocrat with a member of the nomadic Banjara people, set in a corner of Rajastan which has been stricken with drought since the pair were murdered in their previous and equally star-crossed incarnations.

The titular Banjara is Reshma (Sridevi), daughter of Sardar Malik (Sudhir Pandey).  She is young, but for once she is not carefree; every month, on the night of the full moon, she suffers terrible recurring nightmares, and to make matters worse, her father has arranged her marriage to Shakti Singh (Gulshan Grover).  Shakti is not only obviously evil (he is played by Gulshan Grover, after all), he's also a vain drunkard with a truly awful mullet.  Everyone says that Shakti once killed a lion with his bare hands, though nobody seems to have seen him do it.

 

Meanwhile, Kumar (Rishi Kapoor) has just returned to his ancestral palace after completing his studies.  His aristocratic father Rana (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) and mother (Anjana Mumtaz) are thrilled toi see him, and so is childhood friend Neha (Renu Arya).  neha obviously has feelings, and he is just as obviously not interested, but he does agree to paint her portrait.  However, the painting doesn't go as planned; Kumar seems to go into a trance while painting, and when he finishes he hasn't painted Neha, he's painted a mystery woman who looks exactly like Reshma.  Since neither Neha not Kumar have met Reshma yet, they're both mystified.

 

The mystery deepens when Kumar and his parents are invited to attend a Banjara festival to celebrate the band's ancestral ties to Rana's family.  Reshma is the featured dancer, and when she sees Kumar in the crowd she recognizes the literal man of her dreams.  She pulls him into the dance, and he performs well, but that ought to be the end of the matter.

 It is not the end of the matter.  The pair keep meeting, at first by accident, but they are clearly drawn to one another, and there's a mystery there, a mystery that only deepens when they take refuge from a dust storm in a ruined mansion, and the mute caretaker Girja (Sharat Saxena) seems to recognize them and points to another painting of Reshma on the wall.  Kumar and Reshma are gone by the time Girja has fetched the local sage Thakur Baba (Pran), but Thakur Baba is sure that his daughter has been reborn and that his penance is finally at an end.

Reshma and Kumar inevitably fall in love, but there's no way that a young aristocrat can marry a Banjara.  They are both promised to other people, and Neha's father is violently opposed to Kumar marrying anyone else, though Neha, to her credit, knows when she's not wanted and doesn't want to push things.  Rana and Sardar Malik, on the other hand, have a furious argument and both take stupid vows of vengeance.  Kumar leaves thew house after a confrontation with his father, while Sardar Malik takes his daughter away, imprisoning her until she agrees to marry Shakti.  Reshma is so opposed to marrying anyone with that haircut that she stops eating and throws things at Shakti every time he shows his face.  The Banjaras start to believe that she is possessed, and send for an exorcist, which gives Kumar a chance for shenanigans.

Reincarnation melodrama is a well established subgenre in Bollywood, though this one plays out a little differently than usual, since the people who remember Reshma and Kumar from their previous lives are repentant rather than malevolent; we have Pran to explain things to the angry parents rather than Amrish Puri menacing the hero's mother.  The reincarnation really acts as more of a frame story, allowing the movie to speed through the falling in love part and get to the star-crossedness, and allows the young lovers to have a happy ending and meet a tragic end.

 

This is very much a movie of its time, with wild swings in tone and mood, long and elaborate dance numbers,a nd entirely too much slapping in the second half (though most of the time it's not Sridevi getting slapped.)  Still, it is a well-executed movie of its time, and Sridevi is luminous as always. 

 

When you're a Bichchoo, you're a Bichhoo all the way.

 

Two street gangs, both alike in dignity

(In lovely Goa, where Josh (2000) lays its scene)

 From recent grudge break to more mutiny

Where filmi blood makes filmi hands unclean.

Now shadowed o'er the star-crossed lovers are,

For Shah Rukh Freakin' Khan is in the cast

Thru schemes of real estate, a silly car

And baking pranks, the end will come at last.

 Josh is loosely (very loosely) based on Romeo and Juliet; there's some strong influence from West Side Story (including an awful lot of snapping in the choreography)  but the end result is closer to Shakespeare than to Broadway, while being very much its own thing.

 In the year 2000 Shah Rukh Khan was Bollywood's King of Romance, but he was also old enough that no one would buy him as Romeo.  Instead, he's playing Tybalt, or the 19802 Goan equivalent.  Khan plays Max Dias, leader of the Eagles, one of the two street gangs that dominate the town of Vasco.  The gangs have split the town neatly in half, and Max is quick to defend his territory, but he also hangs out with his twin sister Shirley (Aishwarya Rai) and still finds time to harass sensitive and classy violinist Rosanna (Priya Gill.)

 The other gang is called the Bichhoos, led by Prakash (Sharad Kapoor).  While the Eagles are locals, the Bichchoos are largely from neighboring Maharastra, and they are Hindu while the Eagles are Christian and wear bright pastels while the Eagles wear leather.  The Bichhoos also have something like a regular racket; Goa's transition from Portuguese possession to Indian state caused many of the landholders to leave suddenly, so squatters are common and who owns which property can be hard to figure out; the Bichchoos help large real estate companies by driving inconvenient people from potentially valuable locations.

The situation is tense but stable, at least until Prakash's brother Rahul (Chandrachur Singh) returns home from college in Mumbai.  He's keen to take his mother (Suhas Joshi) and brother back to Mumbai with him, but they do not want to go.  Meanwhile Rahul decides to roam the streets and see the sights.  He wanders into Bichhoo territory and catches sight of Shirley.  It's love at first sight for Rahul and he follows her around for a while before approaching her in church.  It is not love at first sight for Shirley, though - she laughs in his face and tells him that if he wants a guide, he should ask Max.  

That's not the end of it.  Rahul is a man in love, and he decides to stay in Vasco and open a pastry shop.  Shirley is not exactly interested, but she is impressed by how Rahul stands up to Max, and makes a bet with the brave baker; if he dares to approach her in front of her overprotective brother she'll give him a kiss.  And there just happens to be masked ball coming up . . .

Rahul and Shirley move closer to a relationship, Max finally manages to win over Rosanna by remembering that he's played by Shah Rukh Freakin' Khan, and the movie stops being Romeo and Juliet for a while and focuses on real estate shenanigans as Prakash hatches a scheme to sell off the town square, a scheme made possible because Rahul accidentally discovered that the incredibly wealthy landlord Alberto Vasco had a couple of secret heirs.

Star-crossed lovers aren't exactly rare in Bollywood, and both Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story are easily adapted to Indian sensibilities.  In some ways Josh manages to improve on its inspirations, since the relationship between Rahul and Shirley actually develops over a period of time rather than jumping immediately to true love.  Shirley is kind of a terrible person for much of the first act, but she does improve considerably.

However, it's really not their movie - the relationship is a catalyst for what happens, but Max is played by Shah Rukh Khan and oozes screen presence, which means that Josh inevitably becomes a movie about Tybalt, and Max gets most of the big dramatic beats in the second half of the film.  It's really a great part for Khan, combining the goofy charm he's known for with the intense menace that made him a star.  

Colors are bright, emotions are big, the plot is twisty, and the music is fun.  I don't think Josh makes many top ten lists, but it's a fine example of late nineties Bollywood.

My Brother the Car

 

 Kutti Pisasu (2010) looks like a bit of a mess, a confusing blend of genres which includes vengeful ghosts, transforming robots, a spunky kid, a tiny evil guru, and the Invisible Man, all with Shaktimaan-level special effects.  But there's more to this movie than meets the eye: this is a devotional movie, and the end result is something like "Devi Maa meets Transformers."

Gayathri (Sangeetha) and Pichumani (Ramji) are a happily married Brahmin couple with a very nice house which they share with their precocious daughter Priya (Baby Geethika) and Gayatri's pandit father (Delhi Ganesh).  Priya is about five, but she's such a talented dancer that she gets to star in a big televised dance number, and this has no bearing on the plot whatsoever.  The art contest she won at school is a bit more impactful, as her teacher and classmates are all impressed by the yellow antique car she claims to have drawn without noticing.

Priya is slightly odd in other ways as well - when her grandfather asks her about favorite family members, she mentions a dark brother who only appears in her dreams, and she keeps repeating things that Gayatri's deceased friend Savithri (Kaveri) used to say.  And sure enough, on a dark and stormy night Priya is possessed by Savithri's spirit.

Surprisingly, that is a good thing.  Savithri's family have been protected by the Goddess Kali (Ramya Krishnan) for the past two hundred years, after an ancestor asked the Goddess for a boon, and while Kali clearly enjoys her work, she still takes it very seriously.  So what happened to Savithri?  A flashback eventually explains.

 Five years ago Savithri lived with her brother Karuppu (Ganja Karuppu).  She was absolutely devoted to her friend Gayatri, and for some reason as also engaged to scuzzy biker Nanjappan (Riyaz Khan.)  Nanjappan and his friends like to hang out in an apparently haunted mansion which is also a cave, and that's where they are reunited with old friend Mandhira Moorthy (Shafi), who is now a powerful magician.  Moorthy has a plan to attain the power of a god, but it requires a virgin sacrifice, and Nanjappan is happy to volunteer his fiance.  Kali appears to Karuppu and delivers a vague warning, but Karuppu refuses to interfere with his sister's wedding plans and tells the mystery woman to go away, which means that the Goddess is powerless to help.

The ritual is scheduled to take place on the same day that Gayatri goes into labor, and after dropping the mother to be off at the hospital, Karuppu goes to fetch his sister, only to discover that she's been abducted and taken to the haunted house.  He reaches the house and manages to spoil the ceremony, but dies alongside his sister, and the vengeful magician binds his soul to his car, chaining the vehicle to prevent him form taking automotive vengeance.  (Moorthy may have seen Taarzan the Wonder Car and decided to play it safe.)  

Five years later, Kali destroys the chains binding the car, and Savithri takes possession of Priya, because it is time for vengeance.  And so they take vengeance!  On Saturday one of Nanjappan's friends is ambushed down at the docks by an old yellow car which transforms into . . . well, it transforms into Bumblebee from Transformers.  Priya shows up to join in the fight, and the fire-breathing five year old delivers the coup de grâce.  Priya returns home and darkly warns that someone killed on a Saturday will be joined by someone else on the next Saturday.  And sure enough, on the next Saturday another of Nanjappan's friends is killed at an empty circus, and the security footage shows Nanjappan performing the deed.  He's arrested.

Priya/Savithri convinces Gayatri to let her continue her vengeance, but asks her to swear not to tell anyone, which I am sure will not cause any problems down the line.  Mandhira Moorthy returns and breaks Nanjappan out of prison, then sends his tiny Nepalese guru Kullumani (Kadhal Dhandapani) to impersonate Priya and convince Gayatri to tell the spirit of her friend to go.  Bad things happen, and soon it's clear that Kali will have to personally intervene; it may be what She was planning all along anyway.

I do not have the space to explain just how bonkers this movie gets, and just how bad the special effects are.  Still, the presence of Kali really ties everything together, and the Goddess is so powerful that pretty much everything can be explained.  Ramya Krishnan obviously having a fantastic time, and her performance drives the movie, which is just as well because the apparent lead, Baby Geethika, is a child who was probably cast for her dance skills rather than her acting.

Grave matters.

 

 Uppu Kappurambu (2025) begins with a dramatic voiceover explaining the history and peculiar customs of the village of Chitti Jayapuram, dramatized by children playing with traditional dolls.  The history isn't that important to the plot, but the customs are: the position of Village Head is strictly hereditary, and the villagers bury their dead rather than cremating them.  And when the Village Head dies, both customs are tested.

The late Village Head doesn't have any sons, so the position passes to his daughter Apoorva (Keerthy Suresh.)  She's shy and awkward, but her father has prepared her well, and she's armed with pat answers to most of the problems the villagers are likely to bring to her.  Unfortunately, the village is home to two rich and powerful men, and both stern and stentorian Bheemayya (Babu Mohan) and slick and vain theater owner Madhubaba (Shatru) want her to fail, so both men have their henchmen and sycophants ask a series of complicated questions to disrupt her first village council meeting.

Apoorva may be awkward, but she's quick on her feet and manages to deflect every question thrown at her, until Chinna (Suhas), the village undertaker, comes to her with a real problem: the cemetery is running out of space, and there are only four plots left.  The village laws are very strict about everyone being buried in the same graveyard, north of the village, and the surrounding area belongs to other villages.  There is no chance that anyone will agree to switch to cremation, so the four remaining plots are suddenly the hottest commodity in town, and a useful wedge issue for Bheemayya and Madhubaba to use to get Apoorva to step down.

 Apoorva doesn't step down yet, though.  She asks for time, and then consults with Chinna to find a solution.  Chinna knows the graveyard business, and he's clever, caring, loyal and highly motivated, since his own mother (Talluri Rameswari) is very ill, and her dying wish is to be buried in the village, in the shade of a large tree.  

And that's the plot; Apoorva and Chinna try to solve the cemetery problem while dealing with  a village of eccentrics and a cluster of unexpected deaths, and along the way they develop a genuine respect and an unlikely friendship.  (Just friendship - the lack of a romantic subplot is kind of refreshing.)  This is a quirky comedy, so everything rests on the characters, and these charcaters fit the bill.  They're flawed but compelling, and it's worth spending some time to watch them grow.

Merry Monster Mash: Thamma

 It was bound to happen sooner or later.  The Maddock Horror Comedy Universe has been dropping hints about vampires for a few movies now, and the bloodsuckers arrive in force with Thamma (2025), bringing us that much closer to Bollywood's own House of Frankenstein, though perhaps not Abbot and Costello Meet Stree.

This is Bollywood not Hollywood, and like the other Maddock movies the film mixes movie monster mythology with ancient Indian legend; strictly speaking these are Betaals rather than vampires, created to protect the world by drinking the spilled blood of the demon Raktabīja.  We first see the Betaals in action as they feast on the armies of Alexander the Great, but by the present day they appear to be confined to a stretch of forest in northern India, and bound by a strict code that forbids the drinking of human blood.  Not every Betaal is happy with this arrangement.  In particular, Yakshasan (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), the sire and leader (or Thamma) of this sect believes that they should grow their forces and use their power to take over the world.  He is confined to a cave and bound by mystical chains until one of his descendants breaks the law and sires another Betaal, though, so it should be fine.

Mild-mannered journalist Alok Goyal (Ayushmann Khurrana) is not fine.  His attempt to create a viral  video clip has gone viral for all the wrong reasons, so he's gone camping with some colleagues deep in a secluded stretch of forest in northern India.  His selfie is photobombed by an enormous and angry bear, and he is chased through the woods by said bear, finally collapsing in a makeshift center, so he doesn't notice when something tosses the bear away and rescues him.

 When Alok wakes up, he's being tended by the beautiful but mysterious Tadaka (Rashmika Mandanna).  She promises to take him home when he's recovered from his bear-inflicted injuries, and that gives them plenty of time to fall in love, though every time Alok tries to kiss the girl, she vanishes.  (Mostly because she doesn't want to be tempted to drink his blood; Tadaka is obviously a Betaal, and the movie doesn't try to hide that fact.)  Tadaka is not supposed to keep humans in Betaal territory, though, so they are captured and brought to answer for their crimes.  They escape, and Alok convinces her to return to Delhi with him, because it's time for some fish out of water comedy.

Alok was declared dead after he went missing in the forest, and while his mother Sudha (Geeta Agarwal Sharma) is just happy to see him, his father Ram Bajaj (Paresh Rawal) is suspicious, especially because this striking woman appears to be interested in his son.  The comedy gets more complicated when a group of Betaals are sent from the forest to bring Tadaka back, Tadaka reveals her true nature to Alok while defending him and herself from a gang of rowdies, and Police Inspector P. K. Yadav (Faisal Malik), assigned to investigate the fallen rowdies, turns out to be a member of an urban faction of Betaals. Yadav insists that Tadaka go home.  She does, Alok follows, and after a fatal car crash Tadaka has to make a choice.  She chooses to save Alok by turning him into a Betaal, and then things get really complicated.

 Thamma is deeply rooted in the Maddock Horror Comedy Universe; Alok's father consults with Elvis Karim Prabhakar (Sathyaraj), the faith healer and exorcist from Munjya, and series stalwart Jana (Abhishek Banerjee) is also consulting with Prabhakar on a werewolf-related problem, leading to a cameo by Varun Dhawan and a completely gratuitous "Wolfman vs. Dracula" clash.  

On the other hand, this is a slightly different genre than the other Maddock movies.  They were all intensely personal hauntings that happened to resonate with particular social issues, while this is a story of star-crossed lovers set against a background of grand vampire politics.  Thamma is funny, but it's romantic-comedy funny rather than comedy-comedy funny.

Still, Thamma hits the necessary romantic beats, giving Tadaka a bit more agency than the usual star-crossed heroine while letting Alok display the appropriate dogged determination.  The movie has a great cast and some interesting world-building, and it sets up big things for the future of the franchise while still delivering a satisfying and self-contained story.

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!