Bhooty Call - Nishi Trishna

 Nishi Trishna (1989) doesn't actually use the word "vampire" when describing its undead monster; the subtitles refer to bloodthirsty spirits instead.  But it's a fanged creature that sleeps in a coffin, hunts for blood by night, hypnotizes victims with its terrible gaze, and rips off several plot points from Dracula, so I feel confident in saying that this is a vampire movie.

The film opens with photographer Tony snapping some pictures of his lovely model (and possibly wife?  The subtitles aren't clear) Milli.  (Nishi Trishna is obscure enough that the IMDB doesn't list the characters the actors played, for the most part.)  There's a carriage parked across the road, and after some mildly comic business with two policemen bantering with the mute carriage driver and discovering a coffin in the back, we cut to Milli, dead, with fang marks on her neck.

At Milli's funeral, the priest notices her hand sticking out of the coffin.  He investigates, and discovers that the corpse is surprisingly lifelike and yes, has prominent fangs.  So he orders the coffin closed and continues the funeral as normal.  As he and Tony walk away from the grave, a sudden burst of wind knocks over the cross.  The priest warns Tony that the death was unnatural, then walks away without doing anything.  This decision does not come back to bite him, but it does come back to bite Tony.

Cut to a group of attractive young people planning a road trip.  Anjan is a doctor, and is dating Sanjana; her mother, Doctor Banarjee, is the hospital administrator.  Paul works for an antiques dealer, and the group are going to stop off along the way at Gorchampa Palace to examine some items his boss is interested in buying.  Along the way their car breaks down, and the villagers are not willing to go anywhere near the palace after dark, but they manage to get a ride from local dancer Shimli (Moon Moon Sen), who insists on going along for reasons of their own.

It is well after dark when the little party arrive and are greeted by Mister John, the creepy owner of the creepy palace.  John invites them to stay the night, and spooky things begin to happen.  Shimli finds her missing identical twin Kamli chained up in another room, delirious and ranting about someone drinking her blood.  Paul follows the sound of a mysterious voice, and discovers a mysterious woman with ghungroos singing a song about the thirsty night.  Paul and Shimli fall in love, which, granted, isn't actually that spooky.  But nobody shares any information with each other, because the real monster is poor communication skills.

No, wait, the real monster is vampires!  The group's pal Tapas picks up the car and is bringing it to the palace when he is attacked and killed by Vampire Milli, still wearing they skimpy nightie she died in.  (Did they bury her in it?)  And Sanjana is attacked by a terrifying living corpse with hypnotic eyes, which proceeds to drink some of her blood before she is saved by Shimli.  It takes some convincing, but the boys finally agree that there's something terribly wrong with the palace, and the group briefly hold Mister John at gunpoint, sneak past the vampire as he lies down in his coffin, and go home.

The whole episode is kind of like if Johnathon Harker brought friends while visiting Dracula's castle, and none of them were terribly observant.  Like Dracula, the vampire then follows the group back to the city, but there's no need for a boat, so his servants load the coffin into the back of a truck and drive it to town.  

More women around town are attacked, and Anjan has just about realized that there's something supernatural going on when the Van Helsing of the picture reveals herself - it's Doctor Banarjee!  She tells the men the story of her college boyfriend, who wanted to know the secrets of life and death, so he turned to the occult, procured a corpse, and summoned a bloodsucking spirit to inhabit it, only to wind up as the resulting vampire's servant.

And with that, there's nothing left to do but to get the gang together, drive back to the palace, and kill the vampire.  Which they do.  Yeah, it's pretty abrupt, and the not-terribly-shocking reveal of Mister John's true identity doesn't get more than a minute of screen time.  Roll credits.

The characters in Nishi Trishna don't really communicate with each other, but I don't think the scriptwriters were communicating, either.  In theory the scenes of the movie connect together, but nothing has any real impact from one scene to the next.  Shimli's twin sister meets a tragic fate, but now we're worried about Sanjana.  Paul held Mister John at gunpoint to escape his creepy palace, but his boss is still doing business with the man.  The group crept past a vampire returning to its crypt, a vampire which has already attacked two of the group and demonstrated supernatural powers?  That's interesting, but they're still skeptics until Doctor Banarjee explains things.  They are a shockingly oblivious bunch for horror movie characters, and that is saying something.

The movie does have its good points.  It's very atmospheric, and the mood is enhanced by the back and white footage.  The fearless vampire hunter being somebody's mom was a nice twist, though they didn't give her much to do.  Shimli was an intelligent and competent protagonist, though she really needs to learn about sharing information.  And the film's real hero, Mister John's mute manservant, had a few brief shining moments in the sun.

The end result is still pretty disjointed, though, and comes across as the world's most cursory adaptation of Dracula by someone who only skimmed the first few chapters.