Slay the house down, bhoots!
Masala monster madness returns, a stunning screen legend departs, plus a rock'n'roll ghost story, a classic giallo restored, and two events in Halifax where we can meet up in person. It must be Sunday Scaries!
To die——to really be dead——that must be glorious.
~ Dracula (1931)
Namaste my friends, and welcome back to Sunday Scaries! Next weekend I will be in Halifax for two events to kick off the Hallowe’en season, and so will miss out on our weekly get-together. Hopefully I’ll leave you with enough in this issue to tide you over.
First up, I watched another Hindi Horror this week, the 1991 classic House No. 13 (1991), a remake of the Tamil film Pathimoonam Number Veedu (1990, no subs). I have been a big fan of South Asian cinema for decades, and that includes its own special subset of horror and thriller films, a few of which are streaming on Tubi and other sites. A few weeks ago I talked about the campy eye-popping Ramsay Brothers classic Purana Mandir. Today I’ll touch on some other titles to look out for if you’re looking to spice up your viewing list over the coming days and weeks.
We can’t talk about Bollywood horror without mentioning two other blockbuster Ramsay Brothers productions, Veerana and Bandh Darwaza. Veerana (1988) is probably the peak Ramsay Brothers experience, mixing folk horror, comedy, melodrama, gothic, musical and romance into a wildly entertaining monsterpiece. A beautiful young girl (Jasmin Pratap), possessed from childhood by a vengeful spirit, wanders around lonely places to seduce and kill people, and gradually becomes lost in a dark world of lust and revenge. As one does.
If Veerana is The Masala Exorcist, then Bandh Darwaza (1990) is Dracula Biryani, which dials down the knockabout humour of the other Ramsay films and turns up the romantic horror. The first 20 minutes are packed with more movie than most full-length North American features, and then the rest is like a Hammer horror film staged in a Spirit of Halloween, yes, it’s just that good. Are there musical numbers? YES. Martial arts? YES. Cape action? YES. Are there something like seventeen endings? YES. Does Dracula have an unusually large head? YES, SICKOS. YES.
If you were a young moviegoer in the early 2000s, you became a big fan of ‘And Then There Were None’ inspired murder thriller Gumnaam (1965) without even knowing it. That’s because the astounding opening musical number Jaan Pehchan Ho (featuring delightfully energetic dancer Lakshmi Chhaya and charming crooner Rafi Ji). knocked everyone’s socks of in the 2001 film Ghost World. While the mystery itself is leisurely and low-key, the music more than makes up for it. My personal favourite is the hilarious too-much-to-drink novelty song Peeke Hum Tum Jo Chale, performed by actors Nanda, Helen and Manoj Kumar, and by the wonderful playback singers Asha Bhosle and Usha Mangeshkar.
House No. 13 (1991), which I mentioned earlier, is reminiscent of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s (heavily compromised) early film Sweet Home / The Mamiya House (1989), which itself was based on and released alongside an early Capcom video game which paved the way for the long-running Resident Evil game series. Both films deal with haunted mansions, eerie paintings, furious ghosts and imperilled children. A great double bill! Sadly, Sweet Home does not have any musical numbers——a missed opportunity if you ask me——but in every other way they are two fun movies that play well together or separately.
Finally, another treat from Tubi, the star-studded ghost thriller Bhoot (2003) with luminous Hindi scream queen Urmila Matondkar and burly bearded daddy Ajay Devgn as a couple who move into a haunted apartment with a tragic history and the incomparable film legend Rekha who takes things to a new level as the medium who helps them confront the ‘bhoot’ that is tormenting them. Has a surprising feminist subtext and is genuinely creepy. Heavy on the jumpy sound effects and score though, so be prepared.
Currently watching: After a recommendation by Horror Queer Joe Lipsett on the Murder Made Fiction podcast, I’ve just received a blu-ray of the atmospheric Mexican horror film Curse of the Crying Woman (1963). While not an especially faithful retelling of La Llorona legend, and not particularly scary, it is camp melodrama at its finest and fascinating in its own right.
I also couldn’t resist ordering the newly announced 4K special edition of The House with Laughing Windows, coming from Arrow Video. Truly one of the greatest gialli ever made, this set includes: a new 4K UHD restoration; new audio commentaries by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Josh Nelson, and Eugenio Ercolani and Troy Howarth; a new feature-length documentary and two visual essays (by Chris Alexander and Kat Ellinger, various other bits and bobs, and an illustrated collector's booklet featuring new writing by Matt Rogerson, Willow Catelyn Maclay, Alexia Kannas, Anton Bitel, and Stefano Baschiera.
And Saint Drogo has finally arrived on blu-ray, another instant purchase. I watched this online as part of the Soho Pride Horror Festival in July 2024, and just adored it. Queer indie eldritch horror for the win! Head over to the Monster Makeup web shop and check it out for yourself.
Cool Story, Bro: There’s a trick you can do with mirrors. Elliott Gish’s In Glass in the Ex-Puritan. (Come see Elliott with me at my two Halifax events, one featuring the illustrious Peter Counter, on October 5 and 6.
This Week in Horror: We lost Claudia Cardinale this week, one of the great screen beauties and, as celebrated as she was, still in some ways a severely underrated actress particularly in English. While she never starred in a full-on capital-H horror film (she came close with the 1959 proto-giallo The Facts of Murder) she played the female lead in the operatic Italian Western Once Upon a Time in the West, certainly one of the greatest films ever made with an extraordinary cast, several startling scenes of sadistic violence and exquisite suspense, and an incredible list of horror-adjacent legends behind the camera: director Sergio Leone; composer Ennio Morricone; story by Sergio Leone, Bernardo Bertolucci and then-critic Dario Argento; and writers Sergio Donati and Mickey Knox (actor in such films as Stagefright, 10th Victim, Ghoulies II, Cemetery Man, Nosferatu in Venice, Frankenstein Unbound, seriously who is this guy?). Buonanotte, Madre Cardinale.
That’s it for this week. Until next time, remember: If you want to, you can lay me over the table and amuse yourself, and even call in your men. Well, no woman ever died from that. When you're finished, all I'll need will be a tub of boiling water and I'll be exactly what I was before - with just another filthy memory!
Help me. Help me be human.
~ The Fly (1986)