Bhayanak Panjaa (1997)

After a quite sensationally cheap animated title sequence there is a shot in bright sunlight of a car being parked next to a big blue truck. As the door opens, suddenly from broad daylight it’s pitch dark! The driver, a young man with an imposing moustache, reckons the car won’t restart and that he and his sister will have to seek refuge. Luckily for them, it keeps switching between daylight and darkness every few seconds, making it easy enough to spot a building up ahead.

They are greeted by a transvestite who for no apparent reason proceeds to attack them with a giant claw before transforming into a slobbering demon thing. The sister screams and wakes up safely in her own bed.

It was just a terrible nightmare.

The young Thakur does, however, travel to the Haveli and finds it in a total state of disrepair. He decides that the family would be better off selling the property and investing in a hotel in the city. It seems like a sound enough idea, but the old chowkidar who has apparently been at the Haveli for centuries fears for his job, even though at seventy years of age he doesn’t really have much of a future career ahead of him. That night, in one of the most bizarre screen murders of all time, the geriatric watchman dons the patented rubber gloves and proceeds to overwhelm the youthful Thakur without the slightest difficulty.

The next day news of the murder spreads like wildfire through the city, though nobody seems to have any details whatsoever. The editor of a cheap tabloid instructs his team to get out to Raigar and secure the scoop while the story is still hot. A rival newspaper promptly dispatches its own crack team of journalists to beat them to it.

Thus the stage is set.

Soon a collection of youthful potential victims is descending upon the old Haveli at Raigar, blissfully unaware that the most terrible fate awaits them. The rival media crews settle into the ancient mansion and begin their investigations.

The lads take some time out from serious journalism for a bit of dirt-bike racing, but tragedy strikes when one of the bikers heads straight for a young boy and fatally injures him. Stan Winston’s Pumpkinhead is clearly the inspiration for what follows as the grieving father seeks revenge through the services of a local witch who agrees to help him in his vengeful quest.

One by one the members of the media team are gruesomely whittled away by a ghastly clawed creature brandishing its horrible Bhayanak Panja in the most awe-inspiring manner. The Panja manifests itself in various shapes and forms. Sometimes it assumes the appearance of a shapely young woman whose face resembles a vat of bubbling porridge. On one memorable occasion it appears as a frisky man-eating Pomeranian.

The struggle is now on for survival against the deadly might of the Hideous Claw. Will the group live to see another day, or will they perish horribly in the wake of another murderous assault by the Bhayanak Panja?

The opening scenes are accompanied by those familiar baying wolf sounds lifted directly from the BBC’s vintage horror sound-effects archive, quite possibly Horror Sound Effects Volume 13, the very same one we used while making our own home movies back in the days of Hell Doll, Bunion, Shock Ship, Chopt and Swamp Monster.

One never expects the acting to be anything but atrocious in these ultra-cheap Bollywood horror fantasies, but this time around it defies description. Never has a more inept cast been assembled for a film and the lad Kumar Rajesh is beyond hideous. The script too is packed with gems boasting stupendous lines such as “It’s a really joke!” delivered by a supposedly savvy news reporter.

There are moments, however, that are sheer brilliance, suggesting that director R. Mittal may yet follow in the footsteps of M. Night Shyamalan.

The memorable scene involving the killer Pomeranian is the stuff of genius.

Here we have an actress who is twenty times the size of the little white pooch desperately attempting to convince us that she is being savaged by the animal. The bewildered dog is repeatedly lifted onto her and shaken about while she flails around trying to make it appear as though she is fighting for her life. The poor mutt looks about as menacing as an ant and if anything it is clearly the dog who is under attack.

Then the screen briefly fuzzes over and when focus returns the audience is expected to gasp in horror at the blood-soaked remains of the reporter and marvel at the devastation supposedly inflicted by this tiny fluffy beast.

It is one of the great dog attack scenes of modern cinema.

There is another superb death sequence in which a shower hose apparently coils itself around an unsuspecting bather and strangles her to death. Watching the actress hold the shower in position while simultaneously pretending to be fighting for her life is enough to induce a hernia.

Mamaji, who was apparently in charge of special effects, has worked wonders in these scenes and also in creating the sickeningly grotesque monster itself. The creature is essentially a man with a filthy sheet thrown over him, but there is a certain charm to the whole affair.

There are unfortunately enormous doses of the most tedious comedy along the way courtesy of Birbal, who like Anil Dhawan appears not to have changed at all during the last forty years.

Mamaji’s efforts aside, however, the highlight of the film is undoubtedly the dramatic appearance of a sultry femme fatale as the Tantrika entrusted with the impossible task of defeating the evil Panja.

In a complete reversal of tradition, this Tantrika is not some frail old mystic but a gorgeous, buxom bombshell by the name of Kali Calcuttaywali. She puts on a tremendous display of mystical powers in her attempts to exorcise the evil spirit and, let’s face it, the Panja hardly stands much chance when confronted by such a formidable and glamorous adversary.

The film is a shambles from the opening shot to the closing frame. Even within a genre where one has become accustomed to witnessing the most amateurish and infantile filmmaking imaginable, this particular effort takes the cake.

Never has worse acting been encountered by this reviewer.

Never has a more laughable creature stalked the screen.

And that includes the two Pashto horror films we have had the pleasure of reviewing recently.

This amazing film manages to take a genre already scraping rock bottom and plunge it several incredible notches deeper into the abyss. Bhayaanak Panjaa succeeds in making the work of the Ramsays and Mohan Bhakri look like polished, big-budget works of art.

Quite an achievement when one stops to think about it.