Full details and individual covers for Mondo Macabro's upcoming BOLLYWOOD HORROR COLLECTION!
Next up is our first ever box set! BOLLYWOOD HORROR!!!
The seven Ramsay brothers – sons of the radio manufacturer Fatehchand U. Ramsay – were India’s biggest producers of horror movies. They were active between 1972 and 1994 and produced 25 films, the vast majority of them in the horror genre, although they also worked on thrillers and even a children’s film – which also included a monster of sorts in a huge friendly Yeti…
This box set is the first collection of their films to be released on Blu-ray and is packed with extra features and interviews with cast and crew along with an 80 page full color book written by Indian film expert Tim Paxton.
NOTE: Final box art TBA
DISC ONE – AATMA (2006)
Dr Aman Mehra leads an enviable life. A successful and much admired physician, he is married to the beautiful Nehra and lives with her in a splendid villa in the best part of town. Then, one night, just as they are celebrating their first wedding anniversary, the doctor and his wife are disturbed by a late night caller. Answering the door, Dr Aman is confronted by a very serious and rather scary looking man who tells the doctor that he will perform a post mortem the next day on a man called Avinash and that he must write a truthful report about the cause of death. If not, the stranger warns Aman, terrible things will happen.
The next day the doctor is shocked to discover that the man on whom he is to perform the post mortem is the man who came to see him at 1am that morning. 4 hours after his body was brought into the hospital. From that point on Aman’s charmed life start to turn into a nightmare as events crash around him. He finds himself threatened by gangsters who want him to falsify the autopsy report and he then discovers that the dead man, Avinash, was an expert practitioner of the black arts. Eventually Aman’s wife becomes possessed by the dead man’s avenging spirit. There is only one course of action left to him - an exorcism to free his wife from her spiritual bondage and then to tell the truth about the body in the morgue. But will Aman have the courage to do what he knows is right?
Released in Indian cinemas in May 2006, Aatma is the last horror film to date from the famous Ramsay family of film makers. Very much in the style of their 1980s classics but with updated special effects and more explicit love scenes, it delivers all the familiar Ramsay trademarks of intense, horror-based set pieces, thrilling action scenes, vibrant cinematography and sexy dances. Perhaps overlooked on its original, release, in this newly restored version, Aatma is two hours of top class entertainment!
DISC TWO – PURANA MANDIR (1984)
The film begins two centuries in the past. Raja Harriman Singh is stranded near the Black Mountain when the wheel of one his carriages is broken,. While they wait for the wheel to be repaired, Hariman Singh’s daughter Rupali wanders off to explore the nearby deserted temple. There she is captured by the evil magician Samri. He sucks out her lifeforce, turning her eyes white as she dies. The Raja catches Samri and orders his death. The monster is decapitated, his body buried in one location and his head kept in another. That way, so it’s believed, he can never be brought back to life. Before he dies, Samri curses Harriman Singh, saying that every female member of his line will die in childbirth.
In the present day – the mid 1980s – a descendent of Harriman Singh is a successful businessman with a teenage daughter, Suman. She has a boyfriend, Sanjay of whom her father disapproves. She thinks it is because Sanjay is not of royal blood. Finally, he tells Suman of the family curse. He forbids Suman to see Sanjay again. Suman persuades Sanjay and his friends to come with her to the ancient temple in the countryside where the head of Samri was buried. There, she believes, they will be able to lay then curse to rest and she and Sanjay will be free to have a relationship.
The most successful of the Ramsay’s many films, Purana Mandir is something of a legend in Indian film circles. It’s the movie that singlehandedly kicked off the brief mini boom in horror that swept through the Indian film business in the late 1980s. Then film benefits enormously from the performance of Anirudh Agarwal as Samri. He is an evil force of nature as he rampages through the film, determined to eliminate every last member of Harriman Singh’s family.
The film has some of the very best horror sequences in the entire Ramsay catalog and is a genuine tour-de force for all involved. An essential classic of Indian horror cinema.
DISC THREE – PURANI HAVELI (1989)
A girl takes a group of her friends to visit an old mansion in the country, owned by her family. Unknown to any of them, the mansion is haunted by an evil entity. Many years before, the monster was trapped inside the mansion by an elderly man who now acts as its guardian. When he is killed, the evil is released and all who come near the mansion are its potential victims. Statues come to life, hairy beasts roam the corridors, and the bodies pile up.
Another hit for the Ramsays, the film contains some of their most intense horror scenes. There are also two monsters! The hairy beast and the giant, horned suit of armour that seems to have a life of its own. Unusually for a Ramsay film, the evil is finally thwarted not by the use of the familiar “AUM” symbol, but by Christian iconography.
* Disc includes original trailer
DISC FOUR – TAHKHANA (1986)
Two sisters, separated as children, share the secret of a hidden treasure. Years later, their secret falls into the hands of a bunch of sleazy adventurers. What none of them know is that the treasure is guarded by a hideous monster, animated by the blood of a vengeful black magician.
Some of their films, such as Mahakaal and Bandh Darwaza, are certainly “inspired by” western sources; however, Tahkhana is very much the Ramsays revisiting their own past. In this case, their breakthrough 1984 film Purana Mandir. The cast features a number of the same names and the plot is very similar – a group of kids go back to an old mansion in the countryside to defeat an ancient evil. Here the story is spiced up with a number of baroque trimmings. It’s like a gothic novel in its use of secret passages, lockets, hidden treasure, lost siblings etc etc. Unlike Purana Mandir, there is no lengthy comic sub plot and the film, at two hours, is of reasonably modest length for a Bollywood movie. Much of the action takes place underground, in the dungeon of the title. This allows for some tense set pieces and a claustrophobic atmosphere that mark this one out from the more familiar Ramsay fare. The Ramsay’s films are essentially monster movies and hence stand or fall on the effectiveness of the creature at the heart of the story. The evil walking corpse in Tahkhana is a spectacular beast, with an interesting back story and dramatic demise.
DISC FIVE – VEERANA (1988)
In Veerana: Vengeance of the Vampire, Jasmin - a local landowner’s daughter - is possessed by the spirit of a dead witch and becomes a bloodsucking seductress. On the next moonless night, she will be used in a hideous ritual to raise the evil witch from her tomb.
After having the biggest hit of their career – Purana Mandir – the Ramsays cast around for a strong follow up. In the mid 1980’s, the video revolution was in its first flush of popularity. Lots of previously obscure movies were being released on the format. The Ramsays would watch just about anything they could lay their hands on, looking for ideas. One of the titles that struck a chord was Jose Larraz’s sexy horror classic Vampyres (1974). This became the very loose inspiration for Veerana, which began shooting in 1985. The Ramsay’s films are essentially monster movies and the monster is usually a man in some form. Veerana featured their first female monster and the film’s combination of suggestiveness, sex and violence got the Ramsay’s into hot water. They were initially refused a certificate and had to recut the film for release. The movie’s real coup is Jasmin, playing the girl who gets possessed by the spirit of the dead witch Nakita. Jasmin came more or less out of nowhere and made few other films, but she makes a real impact here with her jet black hair, white skin and huge, scary eyes. She’s also not shy of showing an inch or two of flesh. And the bathroom scene where she croons along to Bappi Lahiri’s yearning Saathi Tu Kahan Hai is surprisingly hot for its time. Veerana performed well at the box office and has gone on to be recognized as one of their most enjoyable productions.
* Disc includes original trailer
DISC SIX – BANDH DARWAZA (1990)
A childless women visits the lair of an evil magician in order that she may conceive. When she gives birth to a baby girl, the magician demands that she hand her over. She refuses and has the magician killed. Years later he is revived as a fully-fledged member of the undead. He comes looking for the now teenage girl, intending to make her his slave.
Essentially the Ramsay’s version of Dracula, Bandh Darwaza stands out from other Dracula films due to the astonishing performance of Anirudh Agarwal as the king vampire. Genueinley terrifying, he ranks as one of the greats in his portrayal of the evil bloodsucker. Made towards the end of the Ramsay’s cinematic reign of terror – before they moved to TV production -, then film is light on comedy and strong on horror. Cinematographer Gangu Ramsay earns his statis as “India’s Mario Bava” with a bravura scene in which the vampire stalks his victim in her house at one point peering at her through a series of red, blue and green glass panes.
* Unfortunately, the film elements of Bandh Darwaza were no longer usable due to damage and storage problems. The film is presented here from a standard definition source.
SPECIAL FEATURES INCLUDED ON DISC SIX -
Interviews with: (Interviews produced by Sandesh Shenoy & Bollywood Crypt)
* Anirudh Agarwal (Actor- Purana Mandir, Bandh Darwaza, Saamri)
* Dhruv Somani (Film historian, archivist and author - A Touch of Evil)
* Priti Vinay Sinha (Producer- upcoming Ramsay biopic Webseries, Darr Sabko Lagta Hain)
* Satish Shah (Actor- Purana Mandir, Purani Haveli, Veerana)
* Prem Chopra (Actor- Saboot, Telephone, Saamri)
* Gittanjali Elizabeth Singh (Author/Numerologist/Widow of Music Composer Ajit Singh; Purana Mandir, Tahakhana, Purani Haveli, Ajooba Kudrat Ka)
* Arti Gupta Surendranath (Actress - Purana Mandir, Tahakhana, Purani Haveli)
* Deepak Ramsay (Director - Aatma/Koi Mere Dil Mein Hai/Zee Horror Show, Assistant Director - Veerana, Bandh Darwaza, Mahakaal)
* Mondo Macabro episode on Indian horror
* More TBA
LIMITED EDITION FEATURES
* 80 page book on the history of Indian horror by MONSTER!'s Tim Paxton
* lobby cards
* 3000 copies housed in an exclusive to-be-revealed hard box
Goes on sale this upcoming Monday, October 31st at 9 AM Pacific (google what time that is where you live), only at mondomacabro.bigcartel.com!
