Vampire movies to attract Bollywood
Bollywood Journal: Harinam Singh’s Hair-Raising Horrors
The fates have conspired. First I read a great article in Open about “The Cult of C-grade Movies” and the appeal of their shoestring sincerity, and then I discovered a podcast by two world cinema fans about the worst films they’d ever seen. It was time to dive into the darkest, strangest corner of Hindi cinema that I’ve ever laid eyes on: the low-budget fright films of director (and often producer, writer and/or star) Harinam Singh.
- If you’ve never heard of Mr. Singh or his work, you’re not alone. Even a complete list of the films he’s been involved in is hard to pin down. Using a handful of sources, I’ve come up with the following, spanning from 1992 to 2006: “Gumnaam Qatil,” “Jeb Katari,” “Khooni Dracula,” “Ramgarh Ka Daku,” “Shaitani Aatma,” “Shaitani Badla,” “Shaitani Darinda” and “Shaitani Dracula.”
Are you sensing a theme? After watching five of these films, I’m tempted to think that his love of the devilish and fiendish might be the only thing viewers really need to know about Mr. Singh. He has a clear concept of evil that repeats across many of his films: young women in skimpy clothes are raped and killed by men in rubber monster masks who pant and grunt, and a group of friends tries to catch the monster. In between essentially identical scenes of crimes and investigations are plenty of muttering police officers, monsters walking back and forth in the dark, and sound effects made by crew imitating very ill cats. In “Ramgarh Ka Daku,” Mr. Singh replaces the literal monsters with a take on “Sholay” villain Gabbar Singh, who terrorizes the village with his Amjad Khan impression.
It’s easy to assume that financial constraints prompt Mr. Singh to re-use components of his films, and their basic look changes little:… Continue reading