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FILM COMMENT
May/June 2002
B for Bollywood
above: Madhumati
by Travis Crawford
The Indian film industry may produce more features annually (roughly 800) than any other in the world, but the deeper one delves into the joys of Bollywood, the more confounding that statistic becomes. Even more blockbuster-driven than its American counterpart, Bollywood has only a few titles per year that could actually be classified as hits, and only a couple dozen films ever seem to make a significant cultural impact. So the question arises: Where are they hiding the 700-some movies we never hear about?
The majority of the missing titles turn out to be low-budget exploitation films, "B" and "C" movies that were never designed to compete with the newest Amitabh Bachchan spectacle. Often cranked out in a week or two for about $25,000, these productions are created primarily for exhibition in the country's so-called "B and C centers" - small towns and villages likely to be served only by traveling exhibitors. (Of India's 13,000 screens, 3,000 are touring mobile units that set up shop in tents or in public squares.) The films rely on the same readily-exploitable staples that have sustained low-rent producers the world over: sex and violence, frequently in the form of softcore sex pictures and horror movies.
Though horror is largely dismissed as "rural" fare in India, tales of the supernatural have been part of mainstream Bollywood for decades, in such upmarket productions as Kamaal Amrohi's Mahal (Palace, 49) and Bimal Roy's Madhumati (58), and in mainstream entertainment like Raj Khosla's eerie Woh Kaun Thi? (Who Is She?, 64) and Raja Nawathe's flamboyant Gumnaam (Vortex, 65), recently excerpted in Terry Zwigoff's Ghost World. But Indian horror wouldn't truly flourish until the arrival of the Ramsay family - a vast clan of shoestring cineastes led by patriarch F.U. Ramsay and embracing brothers, sons, and cousins such as Tulsi, Shyam, Kumar, Kanta, Anjali, Keshu, Kiran, Arjun, and Gangu - who became the dominant (and for a time, the only) producers of Indian B-horror. Capitalizing upon the success of their Do Gaz Zameen Ke Neeche (Six Feet Under) in 1972, over the following two decades the Ramsays concocted a multitude of poverty-row monster pictures. Keshu's debut Haveli (Mansion, 86), proved to be disappointingly restrained, enlivened only by a disco-synth score that rips off the Godfather theme. And later Ramsay chillers are often undermined by their sub-par songs and their low-brow attempts to supply a Bollywood-style "comedy track." But at their best, they possess a manic, hallucinatory intensity worthy of the notoriously sadistic, surreal work of no-budget Brazilian psychotronic horror auteur Jose Mojica Marins. Kiran Ramsay's maiden effort Shaitani Ilaaka (Devil's Domain, 90) contains more delirium (and more Evil Dead homages) in its 12-minute pre-credits sequence than most genre titles can muster in their entirety. The ghetto-gothic Purana Mandir (The Ancient Temple, 84) proved to be the Ramsays' biggest hit, and, along with the atmospheric vampire sagas Veerana (Loneliness, 85) and Bandh Darwaza (The Closed Door, 90), it is perhaps their best work.
The horror wave continued through the Eighties and early Nineties, and is best represented by such films as Mohan Bhakri's imaginative Kabrastan (Graveyard, 88), Partho Ghosh's De Palma/Italian giallo derivation 100 Days (91), and Ram Gopal Varma's genuinely unsettling Raat (Night, 91). The movement eventually subsided, undoubtedly hampered by a market filled with a slew of grade-Z khooni atrocities. ("Khooni" is Hindi for "deadly," the favorite title keyword for the horror films of the period.) As the theatrical market declined, the Ramsays turned to the small screen, creating the popular anthology series Zee Horror Show. Just recently, though, they have been talking about a big screen comeback.·
B-horror titles often gained popularity through their coy sexual content, but softcore sex films offer these taboo thrills in the form of "social drama," unencumbered by oatmeal-faced monsters. Though nudity is generally prohibited in Indian cinema, some producers have taken advantage of the leniency of regional censor boards (particularly in the small southwestern state of Kerala) to create mildly revealing romps - and if some footage does happen to be censored, there are always exhibitors in the "B" and "C" villages willing to paste the clips back in. (If no authentic censored "bits" are available, saucy footage from a totally unrelated movie may be substituted.) Recently, the full-figured South Indian sex-bomb Shakeela has become a major draw, with some of her titles even sneaking into "A" houses in big cities.
Proving that with just 12 lakhs and a couple of wet saris, an enterprising desi exploiteer can give even Kabhi Kushi Kabhie Gham a run for its money. -TRAVIS CRAWFORD
Thanks to Omar Khan, David White, and the invaluable 'Rathish.' The discussion of Indian horror in Pete Tombs' book Mondo Macabro (St. Martin's, 97) is the best resource available in English.
© 2002 by Travis Crawford
