I have to be honest. Saamri, the monstrous villain of Purana Mandir
(1984) is never actually referred to onscreen as a ghost or bhoot or
anything of the sort. (Early in the film, before being decapitated,
he’s referred to as a demon or “shaitan”, but that’s hardly the same
thing.) Still, I’m making a judgement call; Saamri haunts a house and
appears as a spectral disembodied head, and that’s ghostly enough for
me.
I was never quite sure whether Saamri (Ajay Agarwal) was an actual demon or just a particularly melodramatic sorcerer. Either way, he’s a very bad man. Bad enough that the local king sends in troops to have Saamri brought before him in chains. He consults with his advisers, and after the wise old pandit he keeps on staff for exactly this sort of situation says that they should burn Saamri’s body because that’s the only way to destroy him, the king decides instead to cut off Saamri’s head and keep it hidden in his palace, while burying the body behind the nearby temple.
Before being executed, Saamri has enough time to curse the king; as long as his head and body are separated, the women in the king’s family line will all die horribly in childbirth (and based on the one example we see onscreen, will also turn into the Salt Vampire from Star Trek.) This is the point at which I would be suggesting adoption, but then we wouldn’t have a movie.
Fast forward to 1984. The latest patriarch of the family is Thakur Ranvir Singh (Pradeep Kumar), who is horrified to realize that his daughter Suman (Arti Gupta) is of marriageable age. When he discovers that she loves a poor but good-hearted young man named Sanjay (Mohnish Bahl) he decides to play the stereotypical stern Bollywood father. When that completely fails to drive Sanjay away, he reveals the truth about the family curse, and Sanjay promptly sacrifices his love. (And again, what about adoption? Or at least the time-honored tradition of hiring a prostitute and flying her to Switzerland for a year so she can bear your child?)
Suman isn’t willing to give up so easily, though. She convinces Sanjay to try and end the curse, and the best plan they can come up with is a road trip. Suman, Sanjay, Sanjay’s best friend Anand (Puneet Issar, Bollywood’s Superman), and Anand’s girlfriend Sapna. (Sapna is so obviously doomed that the IMDB doesn’t bother crediting her by name.)
After spending the night in the (now abandoned) temple, the four friends arrive at Suman’s creepy ancestral palace, where they meet Durjan (Sadashiv Amrapurkar), the creepy caretaker, and Sanga (an unrecognizable Satish Shah), the even creepier woodcutter. And having arrived at the palace, our heroes just move in, without any attempt at active investigation.
Since this is Bollywood, there is always time for a subplot. Sapna tries and fails to get Anand to stop working out long enough for a literal roll in the hay, and stomps off into the jungle, where she is chased by tribesmen wearing Halloween masks on the backs of their heads. The tribesmen are lead by the cackling Daku Machar Singh (Jagdeep), and without warning the film becomes a Sholay parody dealing with Machar Singh and his rivalry with local nobleman Murdhar Singh (Rajendranath), who has no arms and has had spiked shoes made so that he can use them to kick Machar Singh to death. There isn’t much to the Sholay subplot; there’s a reward on Machar Singh’s head, so Anand captures them, then rescues him so he can collect on the reward again. It feels completely tacked on, and serves mostly as an excuse for slapstick and really bad jokes.
Suman, meanwhile, is being haunted by disturbing visions and strange apparitions (like the aforementioned disembodied spectral head.) No one really takes her seriously until the shower begins to spray blood, at which point they all suddenly remember that they’re supposed to be investigating a curse and the main plot picks up again. It isn’t long before Saamri is released, and . . . well, haunted house, rampaging monster, our four heroes and an angry mob. You do the math.
Purana Mandir was written, directed, and produced by the Ramsay family, who spearheaded the Bollywood horror renaissance of the seventies and eighties. The Ramsay films are frequently compared to the Hammer horror line, and from what I’ve seen the comparison is pretty darned apt. This is horror of the “Grr! Monster!” variety, rather than a chilling tale of suspense. Be prepared.
I was never quite sure whether Saamri (Ajay Agarwal) was an actual demon or just a particularly melodramatic sorcerer. Either way, he’s a very bad man. Bad enough that the local king sends in troops to have Saamri brought before him in chains. He consults with his advisers, and after the wise old pandit he keeps on staff for exactly this sort of situation says that they should burn Saamri’s body because that’s the only way to destroy him, the king decides instead to cut off Saamri’s head and keep it hidden in his palace, while burying the body behind the nearby temple.
Before being executed, Saamri has enough time to curse the king; as long as his head and body are separated, the women in the king’s family line will all die horribly in childbirth (and based on the one example we see onscreen, will also turn into the Salt Vampire from Star Trek.) This is the point at which I would be suggesting adoption, but then we wouldn’t have a movie.
Fast forward to 1984. The latest patriarch of the family is Thakur Ranvir Singh (Pradeep Kumar), who is horrified to realize that his daughter Suman (Arti Gupta) is of marriageable age. When he discovers that she loves a poor but good-hearted young man named Sanjay (Mohnish Bahl) he decides to play the stereotypical stern Bollywood father. When that completely fails to drive Sanjay away, he reveals the truth about the family curse, and Sanjay promptly sacrifices his love. (And again, what about adoption? Or at least the time-honored tradition of hiring a prostitute and flying her to Switzerland for a year so she can bear your child?)
Suman isn’t willing to give up so easily, though. She convinces Sanjay to try and end the curse, and the best plan they can come up with is a road trip. Suman, Sanjay, Sanjay’s best friend Anand (Puneet Issar, Bollywood’s Superman), and Anand’s girlfriend Sapna. (Sapna is so obviously doomed that the IMDB doesn’t bother crediting her by name.)
After spending the night in the (now abandoned) temple, the four friends arrive at Suman’s creepy ancestral palace, where they meet Durjan (Sadashiv Amrapurkar), the creepy caretaker, and Sanga (an unrecognizable Satish Shah), the even creepier woodcutter. And having arrived at the palace, our heroes just move in, without any attempt at active investigation.
Since this is Bollywood, there is always time for a subplot. Sapna tries and fails to get Anand to stop working out long enough for a literal roll in the hay, and stomps off into the jungle, where she is chased by tribesmen wearing Halloween masks on the backs of their heads. The tribesmen are lead by the cackling Daku Machar Singh (Jagdeep), and without warning the film becomes a Sholay parody dealing with Machar Singh and his rivalry with local nobleman Murdhar Singh (Rajendranath), who has no arms and has had spiked shoes made so that he can use them to kick Machar Singh to death. There isn’t much to the Sholay subplot; there’s a reward on Machar Singh’s head, so Anand captures them, then rescues him so he can collect on the reward again. It feels completely tacked on, and serves mostly as an excuse for slapstick and really bad jokes.
Suman, meanwhile, is being haunted by disturbing visions and strange apparitions (like the aforementioned disembodied spectral head.) No one really takes her seriously until the shower begins to spray blood, at which point they all suddenly remember that they’re supposed to be investigating a curse and the main plot picks up again. It isn’t long before Saamri is released, and . . . well, haunted house, rampaging monster, our four heroes and an angry mob. You do the math.
Purana Mandir was written, directed, and produced by the Ramsay family, who spearheaded the Bollywood horror renaissance of the seventies and eighties. The Ramsay films are frequently compared to the Hammer horror line, and from what I’ve seen the comparison is pretty darned apt. This is horror of the “Grr! Monster!” variety, rather than a chilling tale of suspense. Be prepared.
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