Bhooty Call: Chandramukhi

 If you've seen the first Bhool Bhulaiyaa, then the plot of Chandramukhi (2005) is going to sound very familiar.  There's a reason for that; both movies are a part of a chain of remakes in different languages, stretching back to the 1993 Malayalam film Manichitrathazhu.  Still, casting matters.  This is a Rajnikanth movie, so the viewer can expect extra fight scenes, plenty of dancing, a song about how Indian village life is just better, and of course Rajni's usual understated humility.

The movie opens, like so many ghost stories do, with a dispute over building contracts.  An important contract has been awarded to Ganesh Construction, run by Senthil (Prabhu), and his angry rivals respond by trying to kidnap a vanload of Ganesh employees, but they are immediately rescued by Sathil's adopted brother Saravanan (Rajnikanth), a respected psychiatrist who has just returned from America.  The angry construction thugs vanish from the movie right after that, along with the whole contract dispute plotline; they seem to be in the film in order to be beaten up, assuring the viewer that yes, this is indeed a Rajnikanth movie.

Senthil has another problem, though.  He's recently married Ganga (Jyothika), but his mother had promised to marry him to his cousin Priya (Malavika), thus putting an end to an interfamily feud.  Priya's family don't know that Senthil is married now, so Saravanan offers to explain things to Priya's aunt Akhilandeswari (Sheela) and the rest of the family, and check out the haunted castle Setnhil bought while he's in the neighborhood.

Obviously, the family assumes that Saravanan is the promised groom, and though he tries to explain they really don 't let him get a word in edgewise, so instead he goes to check out the palace.  It is supposedly haunted by the spirit of Chandramukhi, a dancer in the court of the wicked king Vettaiyan.  When he found out that Chandramukhi was in love with Gunasekaran, he killed them both.  Chanramukhi's angry ghost returned for some serious haunting, but he had the ghost sealed in a Room Which Must Never Be Opened, guarded by a giant snake, then left town.

Sethil and Ganga arrive and clear up all the confusion.  They announce their intention to move into the haunted castle, and Akhilandeswari decides that everyone will move into the haunted castle.  And they do, and everything is fine.  Saravanan meets Durga (Nayanthara), the gardener's granddaughter, and he flirts with her by acting like a jerk at every opportunity until she realizes he has a good heart after all.  Meanwhile, Ganga becomes more and more fascinated by the story of Chandramukhi, and decides to open the Room Which Must never Be Opened.

After Saravanan is called away to attend to a patient, she gets her chance.  She convinces Durga to help her get a key made, and they open the room.  Ganga is delighted, but things start going wrong almost immediately, when the blacksmith who made the new key suddenly dies.  Things start getting spooky, with a mysterious voice singing at night, Ganga's sari mysteriously catching on fire, and a near fatal fishtank accident. The family quickly decides that Durga must be responsible.

And then Saravanan returns, just in time to foil an attack on Priya, though no one gets a look at her assailant.  It is time for Saravanan to bust a ghost, but to do that, he needs to figure out who the ghost is.  (It's Ganga, obviously, but he needs to figure that out.)

As in Bhool Bhulaiyaa, there's some question about whether the ghost is real or just a manifestation of Ganga's psychological problems, and as in Bhool Bhulaiaa, it doesn't really matter.  Saravanan's psychological approach seems to help, and so does the exorcism performed by the intimidating sage Ramachandra.  The psychiatrist and sage work well together, rather than arguing over whose worldview is correct.

The narrative is a bit more jumbled this time, though.  In addition to the evil contractors who appear in the opening and are never seen again, Akhilandeswari has an ill-defined evil scheme which never goes anywhere, though it does lead to a fight between Saravanan and her personal servant Oomaiyan (a shirtless Sonu Sood.)  Even the computer generated snake gets a lot of buildup but never interacts with any human characters and then just leaves.  

But ultimately it all comes down to the cast.  Rajnikanth displays his usual swaggering charm, but Jyothika steals the entire movie, effortlessly switching between charming as Ganga and chewing all the scenery as Chandramukhi, within the same scene and sometimes within the same line.  Most of Rajnikanth's movies in this era were named after the character he played.  Chandramukhi is an exception, and Jyothika earns it.

Saaptember: Naga Kanya

 Naga Kanya (2019) is also known as Neeya 2, and in theory it's a sequel to 1979's Neeya, which was itself the Tamil remake of Nagin, the 1976 superhit which started the snake movie trend in the first place.  It's really a sequel in name only, but it does represent a return to snake movie basics, featuring an angry snake woman tearing through everyone who stands in her way, and trading magic stones and snake lasers for a sizable body count.  

On the other hand, Naga Kanya has its own snake lore, explaining the new rules in an animated opening sequence.  In this movie, being a shapechanging snake is a curse, and the snakes are human by day, snake by night.  Snake couples still perform special dances on auspicious full moon nights, but it's not just about serpentine canoodling, it's about recovering a sacred chain to become fully human.

Once the rules are explained, we cut to Divya (Catherine Tresa).  Divya has a problem: she loves Sarva (Jai), but he just doesn't seem to like her, no matter what she tries.  Publicly confessing her love didn't work.  Introducing herself to everyone they meet as his girlfriend didn't work.  Threatening to burn hi face with acid didn't work.  It seems hopeless, so she tries asking strangers for advice in a Facebook livestream.  This does at least get Sarva's attention; he tries to explain what a bad idea that is, and further explains that he avoids romance due to a "naga dosham," an unfortunate conjunction of stars in his horoscope which has already claimed the life of one would be fiance.  He can't marry anyone unless they also have a naga dosham, but Divya cheerfully explains that she does indeed have a naga dosham in her horoscope.  That's good enough for Sarva, so he obligingly falls in love and they become engaged.

Meanwhile a mysterious woman named Malar (Raai Laxmi) is wandering the streets looking for a man named Vikram.  A couple of shifty looking men claim to know him, and Malar follows them to an abandoned building, but it's a trap.  She's surrounded by thugs threatening to assault her, and when they don't listen to her pleading, she turns into a giant cobra and kills them all one by one.  (Turns out snakes can change shape during the day if they're angry enough.)  She asks a sage for help locating Vikram, and he has a vision, revealing that Vikram is Sarva, and he's just married Divya.

On the wedding night, Divya has a terrible dream about a giant snake.  She confesses that-she doesn't have a naga dosham at all, and faked her horoscope to be able to marry Sarva.  He's already invested, so he forgives her and consults with his family astrologer, who tells them that there's a priest living nearby who can remove the curse, but until then they must remain celibate.

They do as the astrologer advises, but the ritual will take some time to prepare, so they get a room at a nearby hotel called Le Poshe, which is not quite as classy as the name implies.  Malar is also staying at Le Poshe, after killing her sage friend in a fit of anger.  She tries to make contact with Sarva, but he doesn't remember her.  She tries turning into Divya to seduce him, but he's taking the astrologer's advice seriously, so that doesn't work either.  The situation calls for a flashback.

So the movie cuts to Malar's past life as a college student named Pallavi, who is in love with Vikram, Sarva's last incarnation.  Pallavi's father is a powerful man with an army of goons, and since Vikram is of the wrong caste for his daughter, he's decided to kill the young man.  (If I were a crime lord and my daughter's boyfriend came to my house and beat up my entire supply of goons, I think I would view this as a recruitment opportunity and welcome him into the family, but that's just me.)

Pallavi and Vikram elope.  On the way they stumble across a small shrine, with a chain hanging from the statue, so Vikram picks it up and gives it to Pallavi as a mangalsutra.  Unfortunately, the chain belonmged to a pair of snakes, Devi and Devan (Varalaxmi Sarathkumar and Manas, respectively), who were using it to break their curse.  Devan tries to recover the chain, but Vikram assumes he's one of his father-in-law's goons,and a fight breaks out.  In the struggle Pallavi accidentally kills Devan, leading a  furious Devi to spit poison in Vikram's face, killing him.  She curses Pallavi to be reborn as a snake tormented by memories of Vikram, then kills her too.

Back in the present, Malar bumps into Sarva while visiting the shrine, and convinces him to take a tour of the area while she tells him about his past life.  Meanwhile Divya has realized that something is up, and she goes to seek divine aid.

Naga Kanya is as bonkers as it sounds, and sometimes it is bonkers in a way that I like.  The final confrontation is a clash of snake themed Indian movie monsters, as Divya temporarily transforms herself into a vishkanya by drinking a large jug of venom, and the day is saved by literal divine intervention in the form of a squirrel.

However, the movie never quite manages to come together in a satisfying way.  It's never anything more than the sum of its parts, and some of those parts are not great, particularly the hotel employees who conspire to drug and sexually assault Malar.  They fail, because shapechanging snake woman, but for some inexplicable reason the whole sequence is treated as comic relief.  It makes for a curate's egg of a movie: good in parts, but rotten in others.

 

Saaptember: Prem Shakti

The shapeshifting snakes of Bollywood are surprisingly versatile.  They can be vengeful killers, doomed lovers, mystical guardians, or, as in Prem Shakti (1994), fairy godparents.

The film doesn't start with the snake, though, it starts with Gangwa (Govinda) and Gauri (Karisma Kapoor), literal star-crossed lovers.  The families aren't feuding or anything, and Gauri's father actually likes Gangwa, but he is an astrologer and their star charts say that they cannot be together in this lifetime.  In fact, even trying to be together will lead to disaster.  He sends his daughter to stay with her uncle during the upcoming full moon, a time which will be particularly dangerous for her.  

Naturally, Gangwa comes to rescue her.  They flee into the night, and discover a secret and spooky cavern underneath the village well.  Entering the cavern, they stumble into a snake movie already in progress, as a wicked sage (Puneet Issar) tries to force Nagraj (Nitish Bharadwaj) to give up his Naag Mani as part of an overly complicated bid for immortality.  Gangwa intervenes, causing the sage to miss the chance for immortality for another twenty five years, and the angry sage curses them, turning Gauri into stone and killing Gangwa.  Nagraj vows to protect the petrified maiden, and time passes.

Twenty five years later, Gauri is . . . well, she's a statue, so she hasn't moved.  Gangwa has been reincarnated as Krishna, adopted son of an idol maker (Sulabha Deshpande).  Krishna is an artist, haunted by the half-remembered image of a beautiful woman he's only ever seen in his dreams, and tormented by his failure to recreate her image.  Encouraged by his mother and his childhood friend/half-hearted love interest Pinky (Neela) he stops dreaming long enough to get a job making mannequins.  his first assignment is to make a male figure, but working late into the night Krishna falls asleep, and Nagraj appears and transfers Gauri's spirit into the new mannequin, transforming it into a perfect likeness of her.

Krishna is fired, naturally.  He tries to buy the mannequin form his former boss, but before he can borrow the money it's sold to someone else.  Krishna wanders the streets on a rainy night only to see his creation in a department store window.  he's chased off by the security guard (Shakti Kapoor) but the next day he saves the life of the store owner and is given a job working with the flamboyant window dresser Romeo (Kader Khan).  That night, when Krishna is alone with the mannequin, she comes to life, introducing herself as a miracle, as "Krishna's Karishma."

And nothing's gonna stop them now, because from this point on the movie is a pretty straight adaptation of the Kim Catrall movie Mannequin, interspersed with scenes of the evil sage trying to kill Krishna again and Nagraj protecting the young lovers from the shadows.  Krishna and Karishma frolic through the store after hours every night, and her creative outfits are a huge hit, reviving the store's fortunes and foiling a takeover attempt by the owner's wicked uncle.  People start to notice that Krishna has an unhealthy fixation on a mannequin, but Romeo isn't particularly worried.

And then things go a bit off the rails.  Krishna tries to introduce his mother to Karishma, but she doesn't answer because she is a mannequin.  He's furious, and vows to quit the store and never speak to her again.  Karishma is heartbroken, but Nagraj assures her that they can make it if they're heart to heart.  Before that happens, though, they'll have to deal with corporate espionage, mannequin-napping, evil magic, entirely too many comic relief characters, and an abrupt ending that doesn't explain a thing.

Despite the bonkers premise, Prem Shakti may just make more sense than Mannequin does; having a clear cosmology helps.  That doesn't mean it makes very much sense, though.  There's a lot to nitpick here, starting with the fact that the evil sage could have won if he'd focused on finding Nagraj rather than taking his revenge on the young couple he already took his revenge on twenty five years ago. 

Prem Shakti is nonsense, but it doesn't pretend to be anything else, and it is at least reasonably entertaining nonsense.  Govinda and Karisma can dance, the plot moves along briskly, and the costumes really have to be seen to be believed.

Saaptember: Sheshnaag

 Sheshnaag (1990) shares a mythology and a few key cast members with Nagin, but a different genre.  Nagin was a horror movie with a sympathetic "monster" and unsympathetic victims, but Sheshnaag is a fantasy film with a pair of heroic snakes acting as mentors and protectors to Rishi Kapoor. 

The movie opens with an unconvincing lunar eclipse.  In a hidden temple dedicated to the divine snake Sheshnaag, shapeshifting cobras Pritam (Jeetendra) and Banu (Madhavi) use their magical powers to reveal a hidden hoard of treasure, to be distributed carefully by a secret society of philanthropists.

However, the secret treasure is not quite secret enough.  The evil sage Aghori (Danny Denzongpa) knows about the treasure.  He also knows that the ritual can be used to grant him immortality.  To do that he'll need Pritam and Banu, so he sends his disciples out to kill all the snakes in the area; this should force the pair to come out of hiding, and his disciples can make a tidy profit by selling the snakeskins.  And it works!  Pritam and Banu face Aghori in a magical duel.  Aghori wins, wounding Banu in the process, and the couple are temporarily separated.

Banu is nearly captured by Aghori's minions, but she's saved by Bola (Rishi Kapoor), a flute playing innocent who is devoted to Shiva and recognizes snakes as his fellow devotees.  Thanks to Bola, she is able to escape and be reunited with Pritam.

Meanwhile, Bola has problems of his own.  His father has just died, so Bola has to go and live with his sister Champa (Rekha) and her husband Bansi Lal (Anupam Kher).  Champa is kind, virtuous, and determined to look after her naive little brother, but Bansi is a cruel and abusive drunken gambler who is determined to spend all day playing cards with local nogoodnik Ganpat (Jack Gaud) and his cronies.  

Bansi allows Bola to stay and tries to put him to work herding cattle, but Bola is distracted by a forest shrine to Shiva and loses the cows.  Pritam and Banu return them, but at that point it's too late.  Bansi beats Bola, then threatens to beat Champa until Bola leaves.  Bola can't let any harm come to his sister, so he leaves and takes shelter in the woods.  But Bansi is not finished; during a drunken gambling spree he loses all his money, the house, and even Champa's mangalsutra to Ganpat.  Then he wagers Champa, and loses her too.

Ganpat goes to claim his prize, flanked by his sycophantic goons.  Champa tells him that he's full of it, that Bansi can't actually wager another person, and that it didn't work out so well for the Kauravas when they tried the same thing with Draupidi in the Mahabharata, but Ganpat contends that the Kauravas failed because they weren't evil enough.  Champa runs, Ganpat and his goons chase her, and she throws herself into the river to escape them.

Bola doesn't take the news well, so to protect him, Banu takes Champa's shape, acting as his sister.  She uses her snakey powers to lead him to hidden treasure.  Bola buys a fancy house, and Pritam joins the household by posing as a servant.  Everybody's happy.

And then she walks into their lives.  Kamini (Mandakini) is the daughter of Lalchand (Raza Murad), a wealthy dealer in animal skins and secretly one of Aghori's disciples.  She's sort of engaged to Vikram (Dan Dhanoa).  After Bola saves her from a bear, he's immediately smitten, while she falls for him after he uses the power of song to summon a crowd of animals, and she cools on Vikram after he and his men start shooting said animals.  (The subtitles consistently refer to Kamini as "Fireplaces," and I have no idea why.)

And then Bola finds Bansi and brings him home, and things get really complicated.

The special effects in Sheshnaag are delightfully terrible, starting with that lunar eclipse, which was clearly created using cardboard cutouts over a light.  The plot is . . . well, it doesn't always make sense, but there's certainly a lot of it.  The sudden shift in genre to martial arts move late in the film is a little jarring, though.

And the cast?  The cast is really great, full of highly respected veteran actors who take this ridiculous movie completely seriously, and play their parts without a trace of irony.  It's delightful

What is not delightful is that Pritam's magical duel with Aghori cuts to footage of an actual fight between a mongoose and a snake.  It's clear that some animals were harmed in the making of this movie, and the song about being kind to animals is kind of undercut by the fact that there's someone just offscreen throwing birds at Rishi Kapoor. 

Saaptember: Nagin

 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.

Saaptember: Cult of the Cobra

 (For whatever reason, my computer won't read this particular DVD, so no screenshots this time.  I'll have to settle for the movie poster.)

 

The plot of Cult of the Cobra (1955) sounds very much like an Indian snake movie: six men traveling in India anger a woman who is also a snake, and she follows them home and kills them one by one.  But it's not an Indian snake movie, it's a Universal horror movie, with all of the careful research that implies.

 

In 1945, six American airmen are exploring a city bazaar in n unnamed Asian country, though the set dressing, costumes and the matte painting behind them all strongly imply India.  The important ones are Tom (Marshall Thompson) and Paul (Richard Long), who are roommates back in America and are both in love with Julia (Kathleen Hughes), and Nick (James Dobson), who is an avid photographer and not very smart.  They meet a snake charmer (Leonard Strong) who poses for a picture with his cobra, and Paul takes the opportunity to expound on the mysterious Lamian cult, snake worshipers who are supposed to live in the area.  The snake charmer reveals that he is in fact a member of the mysterious Lamian cult, and he will sneak them into a sacred ceremony for a hundred dollars.  Everyone agrees, mostly because Paul keeps going on about it.

And it turns out the snake charmer was telling the truth! Fortunately the members of this particular snake cult all wear hooded cloaks, so it's easy to sneak in.  The snake charmer warns them, repeatedly, that they should not under any circumstances try to take pictures.  Cue the dance number (50s B-movie style, not Bollywood style) and Nick starts taking pictures, with a flashbulb.  There's a fight, the temple is set on fire, Nick tries to steal a basket containing a dancer, and the cult's high priest (Edward Platt) curses the intruders.

The airmen make their escape in a jeep, but Nick is missing.  They quickly locate him collapsed in an alley, suffering from snakebite.  They take him to the hospital and it looks like he's going to make a full recovery, but the nurse leaves a window open, and the snake returns and bites him again.  He's dead by morning.  

The rest of the men return to the US.  Julia and Paul become engaged, ending the love triangle pretty decisively.  Tom is devastated, but he gets over it pretty quickly when he meets the mysterious new neighbor Lisa (Faith Domergue).  He offers to show Lisa around New York, and things go . . . okay.  Lisa seems to like him, but she's determined to keep her distance.

And then the airmen start dying one by one, and it's Lisa.  Lisa is the snake woman.  The movie makes no effort to conceal the killer's identity form the audience (and it's just as well, because the movie poster shows Lisa turning into a snake) but the characters haven't figured it out yet, so Tom continues his pursuit of Lisa.  Honestly, he's coming on a bit strong, picking a  fight with an old friend who dared to dance with her at a party and breaking into her apartment.  And against all odds, she starts to fall for him as well.

Paul, on the other hand, is suspicious.  He's noticed that his friends have started dying shortly after being cursed, and while the police aren't willing to accept his "curse" story, they do run blood tests on the dead men and discover that they were all killed by cobra venom.  Lisa realizes that Paul is suspicious and decides to kill Julia for some reason, perhaps because she walked in on Julia reading one of Paul's many books on snake cults.  (Why does Paul have so many books on snake cults?)

In the end only Paul and Tom are left, and the police are starting to close in.  Lisa and Tom attend Julia's new play, giving her one last chance to try and kill Julia before meeting a rather undignified end; turning into a snake is great for stealthy kills, but there are some severe disadvantages when humans know you're there.

Cult of the Cobra does bear some slight resemblance to Indian folklore, but I think it's a coincidence rather than the product of actual research; even the snake cult always refers to Lisa as a lamia, which is the wrong mythology from the wrong continent.  That's just the tip of the iceberg, though; the obvious problem is that "Asia" is a sound stage filled with mostly white actors dressed as people from India; Rama Bai is the only Asian name in the cast list, and she played "Woman in Asian Market Square."  They did have Indian actors in 1955 - Bollywood was thriving at the time, and the highly regarded Shree 420 came out the same year.

However, location shooting and international actors cost money, and this was not a big budget movie.  It was originally released as part of a double bill with Revenge of the Creature, the first sequel to The Creature from the Black Lagoon.  The low budget is Cult of the Cobra's secret weapon, because atmosphere is free.  The movie draws heavily from Val Lewton's work, and especially Cat People, relying on shadows and intimation rather than flashy special effects.  Lisa takes long walks through the darkened city streets, animals are terrified of her, the lighting shifts across her face as she's torn between her mission and her growing feelings for Tom.  To be clear, this is not as good as Cat People, but emulating Cat People is a great choice given the budget.

The budget means that the movie has one real advantage over India's later snake movies.  There are a few shots of actual cobras, but most of the time when Lisa is in snake form she appears in silhouette or is represented by an unconvincing rubber snake on a string.  Indian snake movies tend to use real cobras and a lot of them die.  I'm happier with the snake on a string.

I *think* everybody learned a valuable lesson?

 Pandurangadu (2008) is a devotional film, a genre which I always find interesting but really hard to review, since in the end these movies are an expression of faith, and that's hard to critique.  Fortunately for me Pandurangadu is an expression of faith with a wild shift in tone and an ending which is theologically sound but narratively unsatisfying, so I've got something to talk about.

Pundarika Ranganadhudu ,known as Ranga (Balakrishna), is a devoted follower of Krishna . . . in a very limited sense.  Krishna is his role model, but not in a spiritual sense; he's much more interested in Krishna's youthful pranks and flirtatious relationships with the gopis.  Ranga is so devoted to chasing women that he runs away form home when his parents ask him to get married, and as the movie opens he's only just returned.  His father asks him to swear never to cause his family to weep again, and Ranga does so.  It's a vow that he will break almost immediately.

In a nearby village, Lakshmi (Sneha) is a genuine and sincere devotee of Krishna, so much so that when the Krishna idol in her village suddenly and miraculously turns red-hot, she is able to cure it by applying dust from her feet.  her faith is so inspiring that the wives of Krishna (Balakrishna in a double role) as their husband to find a good spouse for Lakshmi, and he assures them that he has chosen one: Ranga.

And at this point in the movie, the scenes in heaven are lighthearted and fun.  The wives of Krishna act as audience surrogates and a kind of Greek chorus, with the trickster sage Narada (L. B. Sriram) providing sarcastic commentary.  This is one of the few movies in which Narada isn't responsible for the ensuing complications.

Krishna appears to Lakshmi in a dream, telling her that she is destined to marry Ranga.  She sends her father over to make the arrangements, but they are reluctant because they've met Ranga, and they fully expect him to refuse and/or mess things up completely.  So Lakshmi goes herself, and immediately charms everybody.

Everybody except Ranga, that is.  He's currently besotted with the dancer Amrutha (Tabu),  and he has absolutely no intention of settling down.  Lakshmi sits in front of the house, vowing not to eat or drink until Ranga agrees to marry her, but it doesn't work.  Finally, Krishna takes action, inspiring Amrutha to ask Ranga to marry the girl.  Ranga agrees, but he keeps sneaking off to spend time with Amrutha rather than consummating his marriage.  It's all predictable devotional movie stuff - Will Lakshmi be able to win over her husband through her unwavering devotion?  Of course she will, especially after Krishna disguises himself as Amrutha to give Ranga a shove in the right direction.

So, the happy couple are properly united, the family is thrilled, and Amrutha is taking a long look at what her life has become.  And then things get a little weird.  Amrutha's mother lures Ranga  to her house, claiming that Amrutha is dying and wants to see him one last time.  When he arrives, she gives him an incredibly complicated poison which makes him hypersensitive to sound for three days, and trick him into signing over his own house.  Ranga returns home during a noisy religious ceremony, and rather than explain anything he yells at his family, threatens to hit is wife, and causes everyone to leave in disgust, then Amrutha's mother arrives to throw him out of the house as well.

So, the family's scattered.  Lakshmi returns to her home village, hoping to enter the shrine and look at Krishna's idol one last time before she dies; unfortunately, the shrine's priests are still mad about the "dust from her feet" thing, and refuse to let her enter, so she slowly starves just outside the shrine.  Ranga becomes more of a jerk than ever before, makes a pass at three river goddesses, threatens to kick a holy man, and winds up paralyzed, an affliction that will only be cured by properly making amends with his parents.  And Krishna's wives are still acting as audience surrogates, practically begging Krishna to get things back on track.

And he tries.  He absolutely tries his best, appearing personally on Earth in order to convince Ranga to ask for the right boon, which will fix everything.  Unfortunately Ranga has learned his lesson too well, so he ends the movie with spiritual salvation, leaving several unresolved plot points behind him.  Yes, eternity is more important than getting your house back, but your family needs a place to live, Ranga! 

The tone of Pandurangadu is all over the place.  Ranga's early misadventures are downright bawdy, then the film switches back and forth between love story and soap opera, finally diving headlong into homily, which is where this kind of movie usually starts.  It's an entertaining ride, but watch out for that sudden stop.

        

It was a graveyard smash.

 Naangam Pirai (2013) , also known as Dracula 2012, hints at an intriguing premise; what if Dracula traveled to India, and had to navigate an entirely different supernatural world while quenching his blood thirst.  That was the premise of Hammer Studio's Kali, Devil Bride of Dracula, which was never filmed but later was released as an audio drama, The Unquenchable Thirst of Dracula.  Naangam Pirai, on the other hand, flirts lightly with that premise but instead answers an entirely different question:  What if we remade 1992's Bram Stoker's Dracula, only set in India and with a budget of thirty five dollars?

 

Roy Thomas (Sudheer Sukumaran) and his new wife Lucy (Priya Nambiar) are traveling to London for their honeymoon, but at Roy's insistence they spend a few days at Bran Castle in Romania.  Roy has always been fascinated by the legend of Count Dracula, and he hopes to find his way into the sealed room in the basement where, as everybody knows, Dracula was entombed after being defeated by the Romanian Bishops.  Before making the attempt, though, he calls his guru, the pandit Suryyamoorthy (Nassar) to confirm that Indian spiritual practices can invoke foreign spirits.  Suryamoorthy says yes, and does not ask any follow up questions, which in retrospect was a poor decision.

Roy finds his way into the secret room in the basement, because security at the castle consists of one guy stationed outside.  he succeeds in contacting Dracula's spirit, and Dracula explains, in English, that he needs to possess a dead body in order to walk freely through the world.  The door opens, and Dracula enters in the form of a genuinely terrible CGI demon bat thing.  Said demon bat thing slooowly kills Roy, over the course of an entire day, while Lucy and the police search the castle.  Then Lucy goes back to the hotel to take a bath, and Dracula, now in Roy's body, shows up to bite her.

Back in India, Roy's brother, a policeman named Benny (Krishna) and the rest of the family are worrying about Roy and Lucy, who have vanished without a word.  Meanwhile, Raju (Aryan) delivers a set of long boxes filled with dirt to the mansion of one Doctor William D'Souza.  D'Souza is strange (and is also Roy.Dracula using an alias), but Raju is easily impressed, especially after D'Souza saves him from a pack of wild dogs and invites him to stay overnight.  And D'Souza is absolutely fascinated when he spots a picture of Raju's fiance Meena (Monal Gajjar), who is, of course, the reincarnation of the Princess of Transylvania, Dracula's long lost love.

Meena is Suryamoorthy's daughter, but the old pandit is away on a pilgrimage.  The real problem for Dracula is Meenat's sister Taara (Shraddha Das), who has sensed unspecified danger and is performing a ritual to keep her family safe.  Dracula uses Raju to gain an introduction to Taara, and asks her about the ritual.  She explains that once it's finished, the family will be safe from supernatural attack, which means that Taara is suddenly Dracula's first target.  He puts on his fightin' cape and interrupts the ritual.  Taara bravely defies him until he tears off her protective amulet, then she's immediately overcome by his hypnotic powers.

Meanwhile, Benny has been approached by the mysterious Doctor Paul Robinson (Rabhu), who explains the whole vampire business and steps into the Van Helsing role.  And when Suryamoorthy returns from his pilgrimage and learns what happened to his daughter, the stage is set for an epic battle of good versus evil.  or it would be, if the fearless vampire hunters weren't so incompetent.  They make too many mistakes to list here, most crucially, they know that Meena shouldn't be left alone at night.  Meena explains as clearly as she can that she shouldn't be left alone, because she can't resist Dracula when he's with her.  They promise Meena that they will not leave her alone.  Then they immediately leave her alone so that they can grab something from outside, only to be menaced by a swarm of easily avoided bats.  

Fortunately for Meena and the world, Dracula is also not very good at his job, which means that the fate of the world comes down to Raju and Dracula having a shirtless fist-fight in a cemetery.

 Nangaam Pirai has a low budget and it shows, especially in the Shaktimaan-level special effects.    And that's fine, even when they insist on bringing back the unconvincing demon bat thing over and over again.  The acting is . . . . not subtle, and that's fine, too.  A bit of scenery chewing can be fun sometimes, and good writing makes up for a lot.

And then there's the writing.  I don't generally like the "Mina is Dracula's reincarnated lost love" plotline, but it can absolutely work in an Indian context.  It does not work here, because the movie doesn't do anything with it.  It's an excuse for Dracula to go after Meena, but Dracula doesn't need an excuse to go after Meena.  He's a vampire!  It's what they do.

The real problem with the movie is that you can see occasional flashes of a better movie, which then get dropped.  Taara is set up as an intriguing foil for Dracula, then she immediately crumbles and becomes one of his brides.  Both the brides of Dracula have fleshed out characters and a real connection to the heroes, but they vanish for most of the movie.  Suryamoorthy musters all his spiritual strength and calls upon his Goddess, promising an epic supernatural climax, but nope, shirtless fist fight.  

Ignore the hints of a better movie, and Naangam Pirai is reasonably entertaining nonsense; for all its many flaws, it's not boring.  But if you try to take it seriously, it's a bit frustrating.