Nagin (1976) is widely regarded as the first proper Indian snake movie; there are older movies with snakey themes, but this one codified the tropes, presenting a shapechanging female snake taking revenge on the men who killed her love. Wikipedia confidently claims that Nagin was inspired by the 1968 French film The Bride Wore Black, a revenge drama with a similar theme and a complete lack of shapechanging snakes, but I have another theory.
Vijay (Sunil Dutt) is wandering in the woods when he saves a man being attacked by an unconvincing vulture. He explains to the man that he's not here to hunt, he's researching a legend about snakes who gain the ability to take human form after a century of penance. The man, Naag (Jeetendra), replies that yes, all of that exposition was indeed accurate, and that he is in fact a shapechanging snake. As a reward for saving his life, he will permit Vijay to watch the new moon ceremony in which Naag and his beloved Naagin (Reena Roy) will consummate their union. They've been waiting for a century, and it's kind of a big deal.
Vijay immediately contacts his five friends, including strident atheist Uday (Kabir Bedi), family man Suraj (Sanjay Khan), ladies man Rajesh (Vinod Mehra), hot-tempered Raj (Feroz Khan), and Kiran (Anil Dhawan), who is not very smart. They all laugh at him, so he invites them to join him in spying on the ceremony. They see Naagin dancing in the moonlight, but when Naag, still in snake form, appears, Kiran shoots and kills him.
Vijay springs into exposition mode, explaining that they need to find and bury Naag immediately, because the female snake will swear revenge, and can see the faces of Naag's killers by looking in his eyes. They wander around the forest for a while, long enough for the dying Naag to get a good look at each of their faces, then they leave. Naagin finds the dying Naag, swears undying vengeance, and looks into his eyes to see the faces of his killers.
And then it is time for vengeance. Kiran doesn't survive the night, because he is really not smart. Naagin takes the shape of Rajesh's girlfriend Rita (Yogita Bali) and eliminates him too. Vijay takes the others to visit a sage (Premnath Malhotra), who gives the men protective amulets. They will be safe as long as they wear the amulets, and so, one by one, Naagin tricks the men into removing the amulets.
So, to recap, a man who is already interested in and knowledgeable about shapechanging snakes convinces his five friends to join him in observing a ceremony, one of the men acts impulsively leading to a death, and a snake woman takes her vengeance by hunting them down one by one, only to fall to her death at the end of the film. Yes there are similarities to The Bride Wore Black, but this is Cult of the Cobra, Universal's somewhat obscure killer snake woman movie. It just replaces Cult of the Cobra's Orientalist nonsense and misplaced lamia with nagas from actual Indian folklore.
To be clear, I haven't seen any direct evidence that the filmmakers were inspired by Cult of the Cobra, but I haven't seen any direct evidence that they were inspired by The Bride Wore Black, either. If I'm right, though, then this is the greatest Bollywood stealth remake of a western movie ever, an act of cultural reappropriation, and it manages to cast actual Indian actors in the Indian parts, to boot.
Nagin also draws form vampire movies in ways that later snake movies don't. The protective amulets are obviously reminiscent of the crosses and garlic that Van Helsing is always trying to get people to wear, and they work just about as well. Mirrors reflect Naagin as a snake rather than a woman, and that's a minor but important plot point later in the film. And when she's attacking her victims, Naagin tends to lean into their necks, even though the actual bites don't reflect that.
And there's subtextual overlap as well. This is not a deep movie, but it does touch on changing attitudes toward sex. Part of what makes Naagin dangerous is that she can take the form of a more sexually liberated version of their significant others.
Nagin is not a perfect movie. It's long, there's a subplot about financial misdeeds that goes nowhere, and the comic relief interlude with legendary comedienne Tun Tun falls flat. Still, it was a hit, it made Reena Roy a star, and it managed to launch a new subgenre in Indian horror. It was the first snake movie, but it would be followed by many others.
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