Dirs. Shyam Ramsay and Tulsi Ramsay
What can I say? It's A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984),
Bollywood horror style! This film was one I considered covering for last year,
the first of Halloween 31 For 31, but it was only now I saw it. And sadly all
that anticipation was for little. As much as I was openly hoping for something
ridiculous, I always desire it to be this way with affection for the film,
sympathy even, finding the concept of laughing harshly at a movie's incompetency
repellent. I desire to laugh because there is quality to said film or out of
delight of the film trying at least. I was hoping Mahakaal would be a legitimately good film even - just because its
ripping off a Wes Craven film doesn't
mean it couldn't be good. This is not the case.
The premise is somewhat the same.
A being able to kill young college students in their dreams targets people
surrounding a young woman and her police commissioner father. Unlike the
original, the mysterious claw gloved man has a personal vendetta against the
father rather than a whole community, and will take his remaining daughter too
along with anyone else because he is evil to the point of being an actual
demon. With Mahakaal, the one main
concern with the usual structure of Indian cinema becomes obvious, what could
be the biggest advantage for certain films but also the greatest, crippling one
for others. Bollywood cinema is usually up to three hours long. On the plus
side, it would allow depth for a film, but on the negative side, if the film
hasn't enough material to fill the length out, it will feel laborious. The
other issue is that traditional Bollywood cinema doesn't stay in one genre. The
musical numbers, for most films, are there to stay, but they can also be
action, romance, horror, melodrama, westerns, and even more than those
mentioned. This hybrid of these two aspects, to give Indian audiences a night's
entertainment worth their cinema tickets, can work and was what I was hoping
for - for example Yash Chopra's Darr
(1993) about a psychopathic stalker which yet has musical numbers and
cricket jokes that's been on my mind for years since seeing it. With Mahakaal, it becomes apparent the
structure is a disastrous mess when the main villain, after an opening scare
scene, is only properly introduced after thirty minutes in a film that's only
two hours, twelve minutes long. It's still drastically longer than the original
Wes Craven film, but since average
Western made films can be up to two hours long, only those extra twelve minutes
stand out. But by the one hour mark, the film feels like two unremittingly dull
hours already.
When it does actually be A Nightmare On Elm Street, Indian
style, it shows how it could have been a good film. The jump in style - bright
colour, Evil Dead-style prowling
camera shots - makes it interesting, and even in vaguely recreating scenes from
the original film, it does its best at something spectacular. It brings in
snakes, torture dungeons, even borrowing a famous moment from Day of the Dead (1985) with great
aplomb. Gems of a potentially great film are lost in one that is just a dreadfully
made, incoherent mess. The requisite songs are in the wrong places, and in some
desire for action, kung fu fight scenes are included with people who do not know
kung fu. The guiltiest party in the
badly put together nature of the film is the chubby comic relief Johnny Lever. Possibly a great comedian
in another film, here the movie has betrayed the skills he may have
horrifically. At first it's hilarious that he walks in dressed like Michael Jackson, with the same hair and a
tune, that (with some copyright infringing balls) recreates the tempo of Thriller, playing as he enters. Quickly
into said scene I couldn't help but wish the dream stalking killer put the
character on his To-Kill list, especially as later on the desire of the
directors for comedy sketches with him becomes a jarring series of inclusions.
The actor eventually gets shoved into the viewer's face until it destroys the
pace of the film, the main plot suddenly being ditched so he can rescue two
girls from near gang rape as a clumsy, comedic superhero, ?!, or for his unknown
half siblings played by him to wander in for a running gag that isn't funny. Mahakaal is only half its length about
the main story, half an actual horror film, and the results are hellishly
disjointed to sit through. I like unruly, atonal films, but the ones I grow
fond of still have some focus. Say what you want with Turkish Star Wars (1982), but no matter how bad it can get technically,
it still focuses on a plot or a consistent idea and the abrupt tangents
interfere with this for a great, unforeseen effect. Godfrey Ho, no matter how bizarre he can get, literally needed some
consistency so when he stitched together two different films together he could
try and make it actually make some sense despite the massive gaps in the
results. Mahakaal is far too messy
in its structure to be entertain, and the results are despairing. Sadly it
proves that remakes/ripoffs of something from another country should be treated
with caution because quality even in terms of amusing may be nonexistent.
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