Hotel (1981)

Directed by:

Shyam Ramsay

Tulsi Ramsay

The biggest turn-off for Bollywood movies, at least to me, is the length coupled with already knowing going in that the amount of filler is going to be huge. This one runs two hours and fifteen minutes, which perhaps isn't so terrible in theory. That is, until you consider that 135 minutes includes well over an hour of horror-free primary plot set-up, various (usually completely pointless) subplots, countless characters of varying degrees of importance (some of no importance whatsoever) and five musical numbers. That's just how they roll in India.

Suraj (Navin Nischol) is still in love with the beautiful Sushma (Neelam Mehra), even though she's long since married someone else. But that doesn't stop him from masochistically thumbing through old photos of her and having a five-minute-long musical fantasy with lyrics so corny they sound like pages ripped right out of an 11-year-old girl's diary. It's revealed that Sushma's father refused to allow her to marry him back in the day because he didn't make enough money. Nowadays, Suraj is very successful, however. He's a millionaire land developer and businessman who lives in a mansion and is busy building his empire when he's not obsessing over the one who got away. He sends his crooked, amoral building contractor Chhagan Patel (Ranjeet) and assistant Lalwani (Sudhir) to the remote, picturesque area of Balipuram to purchase some land on which he hopes to construct a lavish hotel called Hotel Hilltop.

Upon arrival, Chhagan attempts to bribe government officials into letting him buy state-owned land but is unsuccessful. He then discover there's one plot in a good location. The problem? While it may be unused it's not exactly unoccupied. It's an old Christian graveyard filled with hundred-year-old graves. Overseeing it is the elderly priest Father Benevolent (Krishnakant) who is aghast that the men would even consider disturbing the peaceful cemetery. That is until he learns that Chhagan is working free of charge for a deceased millionaire philanthropist's widow and hopes to build an orphanage and hospital there. All lies, of course, but it does the trick. He returns to Suraj, lies to him about needing two million dollars to purchase the land then returns to the priest and is able to get it for free because he believes it'll be used for a good cause.

Chhagan has his sexy secretary Shabho (Prema Narayan) pose as a wealthy widow who will be financing the project, buys off lawyer Kapoor (Pinchoo Kapoor), zoning official Mr. Gupta (T.P. Jain) and even the priest's young servant Yudi (Prem Bedi) to help seal the deal. As for bad omens, during the contract signing, the power goes out, a thunderstorm erupts and a wolf howls as soon as pen meets paper. Once the priest discovers the scam he's fallen for, he keels over from a heart attack. Chhagan arranges for the bodies to be dug up and then thrown into a mass grave while he puts the grave markers in a warehouse and hopes to sell them. We're then treated (?) to another long musical dance number which, to be fair, is much better than the first because it's set at a disco, features ass-bumping (!), grinding (!!) and what appear to be nunchucks (?!) and a weird song where dueling male and female vocalists debate about whether or not she should give up her virginity (!?!)

Vijay (Rakesh Roshan), Suraj's business partner, sends his immature brother Sanjay (Prem Krishan), who typically wants money but doesn't want to actually work for it, to oversee the hotel construction. There, he overhears Chhagan and company discussing what they've done. Sanjay gets his hands on some incriminating papers but they murder him, hide his car and bury his body. When Vijay shows up, they simply tell him he took off and, since that's fully in-character for his ne'er-do-well sibling, he believes them. Besides, he's a bit distracted. A feisty village woman named Vandana (Bindiya Goswami), who makes daily ice deliveries to the hotel, has struck his fancy. He even gives her a job at the hotel as a cook.

Just in time for the grand opening, smoke rolls out of the mass grave and then a series of supernatural "accidents" occur, starting with a man getting crushed by a falling chandelier while the secretary performs a song / dance routine wearing gold lamé hot pants and go-go boots. Sushma shows up with her much-older husband Girdharilal (Narendra Nath), who's an ill-tempered, insecure wife beater she was forced to marry to relieve her father's debt. In an embarrassing "comic" subplot, Mehmood plays a guest hoping to rekindle his relationship with his whiny wife only to run across a film director (Rajendra Nath) who keeps hitting on his spouse. The director attempts to slip an herbal love spell into the wife's drink but Mehmood drinks it and ends up falling in love with him instead. He then shaves off his mustache, starts acting like a flaming queen and stalks the director around the hotel trying to "romance" him.

Everyone's trapped there by a landslide, the phones go out and, in between all of the bickering, romance and comedy (not to mention a horribly choreographed / edited / sped-up fist fight on the terrace), we get the occasional supernatural murder. Someone's knocked down the stairs and impaled on a spear, another is run over by a driverless car and yet another is struck by lightning and then explodes! There's also death by boulder crushing, shards of broken glass flying out of a mirror (copied from the 1978 film THE LEGACY) and a phantom Doberman that keeps attacking. The most amusing bit is when a lovey-dovey musical number gets interrupted after the female singer discovers a corpse with its head twisted around backwards and starts shrieking mid-song. While most of this is silly there are a few standout serious horror moments, most especially the atmospheric bits in the woods where hands burst from the ground and shambling zombie-like figures in shrouds slowly lurch toward prospective victims.

What we've really got here is the epitome of a mixed bag. The long set-up is a double-edged sword. On one hand, the elaborate con game Chhagan is orchestrating is pretty interesting and motivations and characters are very well established before the horror even kicks in around the hour-and-fifteen minute mark. On the other hand, you have to wait an hour and fifteen minutes for the horror and even then it's constantly interrupted by the mood-crushing subplots. The seemingly complete disregard for pacing and tone is jarring and difficult to adjust to. One minute it's zipping right along and the next it slows to a crawl during an overlong dialogue scene or musical number, or it will immediately cut from a serious moody horror sequence to something goofy and lightweight. Both of the romance subplots, plus Mehmood's story, feature lame, half-assed resolutions because, well, they probably didn't have time for anything else. Actually, the Vinjay / Vandana one features no real resolution at all and you're kind of left hanging there.

As usual, there are a lot of Ramsay names on the crew list. Kumar Ramsay wrote the story and screenplay, Gangu Ramsay was the director of photography and Kiran Ramsay was the audiographer. Singer / dancer Leena Das appears in the second musical number. The same hotel location was used for other Ramsay films like Guest House (1980) and Dak Bangla (1987).

Though there were many soundtrack album and home video releases (on VHS, VCD and DVD) for this title in India and other parts of Asia, it was never released in America. Strangely, there was a pre cert VHS release in the UK from Orson Video but this release was only in Hindi. The later DVD release on the Indian Ultra Movies label supposedly comes with English subtitles.

★★1/2

Purani Haveli (1989)

... aka: Mansion of Evil
... aka: Old Mansion, The
... aka: Purani Haveli: Mansion of Evil

Directed by:
Shyam Ramsay
Tulsi Ramsay

Raja (Anil Dhawan) and his girlfriend Rita (Priti Sapru) are taking a drive through the country at night when their car overheats. It happens near a huge, abandoned mansion so they at least have a place to stay, except there's one little problem: The mansion also happens to be home to a white-eyed, rotten-toothed, frizzy-haired, humpbacked monster man (Manek Irani) who makes short work of both of them. A mysterious old man with a crucifix pops up just in time to drive the monster into a dungeon pit, drop the steel gate and chain a crucifix to the top to keep the beast from harming anyone else. But that's not the only horror that's kept this particular mansion unoccupied for some time. For starters, the creepy graveyard in the front yard diminishes the curb appeal. And then there's the issue of corpses from said graveyard sometimes turning up in the house. And the ground miraculously catching fire. And tombstones exploding. And this weird suit of armor (with devil horns!) that occasionally springs to life and crushes people to death. And... Well, we'll get into the rest here in a bit.

Needless to say, haveli owner Mr. Rana (Pinchoo Kapoor) can't wait to unload the place upon some unsuspecting schmuck. And he finds the perfect suckers in the shady Mr. Kumar (Vijay Arora) and his materialistic, evil wife Seema (Neelam Mehra), who've recently acquired a fortune though, technically, that money actually belongs to their naive niece Anita (Amita Nangia). After her parent's passing in a car accident, Anita was left in their custody and they've used her inheritance as their own personal piggy bank even since. While Mr. Rana and Mr. Kumar go to the mansion to have a look around, Seema conspires with her sleazy brother Vikram (Tej Sapru) to get Anita to marry him to secure them the rest of the inheritance. The issue? Anita rightfully can't stand Vikram and is already dating / in love with Sunil (Deepak Parashar), who owns a photography studio.

Seema and Vikram resort to numerous dirty tricks trying to split the two lovebirds up. They hire six goons to attack them but Sunil's able to fight them off. After Anita finds out what they've done, Seema slaps her in the face, pulls her hair and informs her that she won't allow for her to be with Sunil as it would shame the family name for a rich heiress like her to marry a lowly photographer. Vikram puts the final nail in the coffin by promising to kill Sunil if she doesn't break up with him. Backed in to a corner, Anita has no other choice but to comply with their wishes. However, her best friend Shobha (Shubha) goes to Sunil and informs him that Anita does indeed still love him and not to give up so easily.

Rana and Kumar have yet to return from the mansion after a week away (because they're dead), so most of the other characters, plus a bunch of their friends, head there by bus to find out what's going on. Although uninvited, Mangu (Satish Shah), Sunil's co-worker / friend and the obligatory must-be-comic-relief-because-he's-fat guy, goes undercover to spy. Vikram proves what a prick he is by getting drunk, spying on Anita as she's changing into her swimsuit and then attempting to rape her. Sunil arrives just in time to save her by punching Vikram out and beating him over the head with an empty gas can. Most of the mean characters (plus a few innocents) promptly fall victim to the monster that, it turns out, has supernatural powers it can use to strike out at victims from the hidden dungeon where it's locked up. That includes taking control of the statue / suit of armor, animating it and making it kill.

Narendra (Narendra Nath), the weird old man who's always lurking around, functions as both the Crazy Ralph harbinger of doom ("Death can come at any time!") and conveyor of the origins of the monster. Twenty years earlier, he and his very pregnant wife Jyoti were forced into the mansion when she went into labor during a car trip. Ignoring warnings from the female caretaker to go away because the place is an "abode of evil," Jyoti dies there after giving birth to a spirit-possessed mutant baby. The caretaker then instructed Narendra where to hide it and to always keep a holy cross on top. He's been wandering the grounds ever since then making sure his son doesn't escape. He eventually does, of course, due to the scheming of Vikram and Seema as they continue to try to do away with Sunil.

Basically a kitchen sink approach to a basic old dark house horror premise, this is structured almost identically to the previous Ramsay film Purana Mandir / THE OLD TEMPLE (1984)... only this time the formula is much less enjoyable despite both possessing the same flaws. We'll start with the positives. This is an extremely visually appealing and colorful film. There's great photography, atmosphere and lighting and the mansion (Janjira Palace), various shooting locations, art direction and sets are all excellent. This also features two really fun creature designs with the monster and the suit of armor. Some of the instrumental music and the first musical number (out of three) are good. And there are some laughs to be had here, though they're almost exclusively due to things like the God awful fight and dance choreography.

While I loved looking at this film and some of the horror scenes are well done, the rest didn't do much for me. The editing is terrible, the dialogue is poor, the amount of filler is through the roof and most of the characters are either irritating or unlikable. The lead actress is stiff as a board and seems miserable and uncomfortable during all of her awkward romantic scenes with her male costar. And there are a lot of awkward romantic scenes. I actually felt bad for Parashar trying hard to generate chemistry with the block of ice trying to squirm away from him every time he's required to hug or kiss her. Much of the rest of the running time is dedicated to 'funny' actors who are required to overact, constantly scream, mug, look directly at the camera and make ridiculous goofy faces.

I didn't care for most of the musical numbers either. Lyrics across the board are cornball, the second upbeat song is terrible and the third is simply a rehash of the first except with a female doing the vocals over the same exact backing track. The attempts at humor are consistently dire, especially the bits with an old gay bus driver named Sher Khan (Raj Kishore), who has the hots for the hairy chubby guy and keeps wanting to rub against his back side, leading to a bunch of embarrassing comments like "I'm used to coming from behind!"

The worst sin of all is an utterly useless throwaway subplot that goes on for what feels like an eternity and seems grafted on simply to give Satish Shah a second role. It involves elephant-riding bandit king Kaala Gangu, his shrill wife Bijli (Tina Ghai) and conspirator Damar Singh (Bhushan Tiwari), who plots to murder Gangu so he can become leader. After Gangu is clubbed over the head, thrown into the river and believed dead, Mangu ineptly impersonates him until the real Gangu resurfaces again alive. None of this is interesting. None of it is funny. None of it really goes anywhere. And none of it has anything to do with the main plot line. In order to stuff that and the music all in, the film's running time is a numbing 2 hours and 20 minutes, which is insane for most countries but basically par for the course in India. While I don't mind genre jumbles so much, I do mind when most of the extraneous material sucks.

As usual, if you throw a rock at the credits, you're likely to hit a Ramsay. The associate director was Arjun Ramsay (who also edited and wrote the script and thus may be the least talented of the clan based on these being the weakest elements of the film), the producer and cinematographer was Gangu Ramsay, the associate producer was Chander Ramsay and it was presented by F.U. Ramsay. Upon seeing the mansion for the first time, one character quips, "The Ramsay Brothers should have bought it for another horror film!"

One of six Ramsay horror films released by Mondo Macabro here in the U.S., this one was paired up with Veerana: Vengeance of the Vampire (1988) on their 2 DVD set The Bollywood Horror Collection: Volume 2.

★★