The Hot Spot Rating
Murdaa Ghar (1999)
Cast: Shakti Kapoor, Anil Nagrath, Jyoti Rana
Director: Kishan Shah
Synopsis: Z-grade kitchen sink horror with no little style and no imaginationreturns from the grave for revenge
A dark stormy night, the kind that seems contractually obliged to open every Bollywood horror film ever made, is in full swing. Inside a crumbling old haveli an artist struggles to complete his masterpiece while a moronic servant prattles away in the background, doing everything possible to destroy the fellow’s concentration.
A knock sounds at the door.
In steps a drenched young woman seeking shelter from the storm.
The artist, understandably distracted by this unexpected visitor, asks whether she would mind posing for a portrait. She agrees, but moments later his eyes begin playing tricks on him. On closer inspection she does not appear nearly as beautiful as she first seemed.
Sadly, the killer shock ending to this opening scene falls rather flat because the startling transformation amounts to little more than the woman slipping on what appears to be a dime-store rubber mask.
From here we move to a family returning to their ancestral home in the village.
It doesn’t take long for romance to blossom between the family’s young stud and a spirited local beauty, giving the audience an opportunity to endure several lengthy disco interludes during their courtship. We are also saddled with a painfully unfunny Jagdeep clone whose sole purpose is to provide comic relief for the front-bench crowd. Needless to say, he fails miserably.
An excruciating antakshri sequence follows.
Eventually the film remembers that it is supposedly a horror movie.
Strange things begin occurring around the haveli. Most memorably, the family lawnmower suddenly develops a personality of its own, starts baying like a wolf and scurrying about the grounds before ingeniously lassoing the eldest brother and dragging him to his doom.
It is an astonishingly inept sequence.
One almost has to admire the filmmakers for possessing the sheer audacity to present such material to paying audiences.
Meanwhile a mysterious woman in a white sari wanders endlessly through the mist singing melancholy songs and looking vaguely menacing.
Later in proceedings, Shakti Kapoor — the only recognisable name in the cast — turns up to provide some explanation for the vengeance that seems to have engulfed the unfortunate family.
This eventually leads to the obligatory climax in which a trishul-wielding tantrik with an alarming cleavage attempts to combat the evil spirit through the medium of endless mystical gibberish.
The spirit, meanwhile, counters with an assortment of terrifying weapons including rubber fangs apparently purchased from a local joke shop, a henchman sporting yet another bargain-basement rubber mask and a booming laugh that echoes across the soundtrack every few minutes.
Murda Ghar is yet another reminder of why Bollywood horror virtually collapsed during the 1990s.
Everything about the film feels hopelessly amateurish. The acting is dreadful, the dialogue painful and the horror scenes are frightening only because of how spectacularly inept they are. Even by the modest standards of low-budget Indian horror, this is a remarkably poor effort.
The whole thing resembles little more than an overextended home movie assembled by enthusiastic amateurs with access to a fog machine and a handful of novelty-shop props.
Murda Ghar possesses no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
Its greatest virtue is that it is mercifully short.
Although while watching it, one could be forgiven for thinking otherwise.
