The Hot Spot Rating

Chamunda (1999)
Cast: Raj Premi, Satnam Kaur, Jyoti Rana, Haider, Afreen, Vinod Tripathi, Shabnam, Anil Nagrath
Director: Kishan Shah
Nutshell:  Evil deeds from the past rebound generations later as Saamri returns from the dead and embarks on a gruesome spree of death and destruction.
Review by: Omar Khan

Two hundred years ago, Raja Pratap Singh ruled his kingdom, but neither he nor his subjects enjoyed much peace. An evil spirit by the name of Saamri stalked the countryside, leaving terror wherever he went. Rather than living in luxury befitting a Maharaja, Pratap Singh finds his people paralysed by fear.

One day, while travelling with his young daughter Ragini, the royal carriage breaks down in the middle of nowhere. As his men attempt repairs, Ragini wanders off into the surrounding wilderness, blissfully unaware that she has strayed into Saamri's hunting grounds. As darkness falls, panic spreads through the Maharaja's entourage. Before long, a tubby fellow clad in a black Primark overcoat and sporting some wonderfully crude white eye make-up materialises through the obligatory billowing mist, cackling away as all respectable villains should. Displaying remarkable strength, Saamri begins throttling the Maharaja's men one by one, lifting them clean off the ground in a manner that would make Michael Myers proud.

Meanwhile Ragini has stumbled into an abandoned Haveli, where she innocently explores the dusty old mansion while Saamri steadily works his way towards her. Fortunately Raja Sahib and his surviving men arrive just as the monster is about to do something particularly unpleasant. A confrontation follows in which the swaggering Saamri suddenly loses every ounce of courage the moment a holy Trishul borrowed from the nearby Mandir is thrust before him. Moments earlier the unstoppable terror of the countryside, he is now reduced to a snivelling coward.

The local priest arrives to explain that Saamri has spent years raping women, murdering children and drinking blood for amusement. The verdict is swift. Saamri is decapitated beside the Mandir, his severed head locked away inside a wooden chest. Before his execution, however, he places a terrible curse upon the Maharaja's bloodline: no woman of his family shall bear children without paying with her own life. To prevent Saamri's inevitable return, the priest orders that the sacred Trishul remain beside the box containing the monster's head for all eternity.

Naturally, eternity doesn't last very long.

Two centuries later, the surviving descendants of Raja Pratap Singh have largely abandoned the ancestral estate for city life. One branch of the family, however, still clings to the old Haveli and its aristocratic traditions. The family patriarch has a beautiful college-age daughter whom he fondly imagines spends her days buried in books. In reality she is far more interested in frolicking around parks with the local Romeo while bursting into endless disco numbers. When Daddy discovers the romance he has the unfortunate boyfriend beaten to a pulp before finally revealing the dreadful family curse that has haunted them ever since Saamri's dying breath.

His daughter remains unconvinced. Modern science, she insists, has surely rendered such medieval superstitions obsolete. Accompanied by her boyfriend and another conveniently expendable young couple, she heads back to the old Haveli intending to prove once and for all that the curse is complete nonsense.

Predictably enough, it isn't.

The remainder of the film unfolds exactly as veterans of Z-grade Bollywood horror would expect. There are endless disco interludes, much wandering around dark corridors, the occasional supernatural manifestation and a procession of gloriously wooden performances before the inevitable showdown.

Anil Nagrath emerges with some dignity from an otherwise turgid cast, while Satnam Kaur contributes one of those wonderfully awful performances that somehow improve a film rather than damage it. Raj Premi, despite obvious ambitions of stardom, never quite convinces, and one familiar face from Kanti Shah's magnificent Dracula turns up to deliver her dialogue with admirable enthusiasm if precious little conviction.

Oddly enough, the film's shortcomings become its greatest strengths. The atrocious acting, laughable continuity, bargain-basement production values and complete absence of artistry all combine to produce something strangely endearing. Saamri himself, wandering around in his oversized overcoat with those bizarre white blotches around his eyes, is a magnificent sight. Mercifully there are no embarrassing comedy tracks to derail proceedings, nor even the usual rubber-mask monstrosities that plague so much latter-day Bollywood horror.

The result remains an astonishingly cheap piece of cinematic rubbish that only the most dedicated connoisseurs of exploitation cinema are ever likely to appreciate. It never quite reaches the delirious heights of Dracula, Khooni Dracula or virtually anything directed by Harinam Singh, but it still possesses that inexplicable charm that only truly dreadful films can achieve. Thankfully both the YouTube print and the Moser Baer VCD run for a merciful 78 minutes—about as much as anyone could reasonably endure.

Diabolical, dreadful, completely inept... and somehow, almost perversely, rather enjoyable.