Wednesday 9 October 2013

Representing India: Mahakaal (1993)


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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