Khooni Panja (1991)

Another ultra-cheap horror quickie from the prestigious production line of the infamous Talwar clan.

Proceedings begin with a tacky bedroom scene in which an unfaithful husband is caught entertaining his mistress when suddenly the merrymaking is interrupted by his vengeful wife, who has been spying on the proceedings. The enraged woman pulls a gun on the adulterous pair and demands that her husband shoot his lover. Unfortunately for her, the tables are abruptly turned and she is instead riddled with bullets courtesy of her evil husband.

The murderous couple then enlist the services of a crooked gardener to help dispose of the body on the obligatory dark and stormy night. Just as they are about to lay the still-warm corpse to rest, the wife springs back to life and has to be hacked down with a sword, one hand being rather tellingly chopped off in the process, before being unceremoniously shoved back into her shallow grave.

Years pass.

We learn that the murderous husband has been more or less excommunicated by the rest of his family due to his questionable lifestyle, though they remain blissfully unaware that he is also a murderer. Unfortunately for him, the vengeful spirit of his deceased wife continues to lurk in the vicinity of her grisly demise waiting for an opportunity to settle old scores.

Meanwhile wedding bells are ringing as the murderer’s younger brother prepares to marry a college siren and volleyball champion named Pinky. Quite why Bollywood remained so obsessed with names such as Pinky, Bunty, Dolly, Chunky and Bubbly remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of Indian cinema.

Pinky’s troubles begin during an innocent volleyball match with her scantily clad chums. When she wanders off in search of a lost ball she is attacked by a severed rubber hand which, unsurprisingly, appears to belong to the murdered wife. Thereafter Pinky develops that mysterious affliction common to so many victims of Bollywood horror.

She begins smiling constantly.

She also acquires a pair of spectacular contact lenses.

The transformation is complete.

Soon it becomes evident that Pinky is being possessed by the dead wife, who sees the forthcoming marriage as the ideal opportunity to gain access to her former husband and exact her revenge.

The first victim is a lecherous servant who attempts to molest Pinky while she is taking a shower. As he flees in terror he is pursued by a familiar looking rubber-faced zombie creature and sent hurtling through the air to his doom.

Pinky’s increasingly rude and erratic behaviour soon arouses suspicion in her elder brother, played by the ever-reliable Anil Dhawan. Determined to discover the cause of her strange conduct, he begins investigating. Unfortunately Pinky remains several steps ahead of both her family and the authorities while making full use of her supernatural accomplices, namely the severed rubber hand and the rubber-faced zombie who pop up whenever a murder needs committing.

Thus begins the race to stop the possessed Pinky from wiping out an entire family before she can finally settle accounts with her former husband’s killer.

The film is an entirely by-the-numbers effort from Talwar, offering nothing remotely novel or original. It is a stale, uninspired and thoroughly uninteresting production whose central gimmicks feel as though they were borrowed from a previous film and recycled with minimal effort. Though newcomer Sargam strives heroically to appear menacing as the possessed Pinky, she never quite succeeds.

Indeed, the most frightening aspect of the film is not the severed hand, the zombie or the possession.

It is Jagdeep.

Yet again cast as a moronic servant, he subjects the audience to long stretches of excruciating comedy which are considerably more painful than anything the supernatural forces can inflict.

The film bombed at the box office, helping hasten the decline of the horror boom just as satellite television and the lamentable Zee Horror Show were beginning to dominate the landscape. Soon afterwards the theatrical horror cycle spluttered to a halt.

The cast consists largely of the usual suspects. Anil Dhawan once again appears exactly as he has appeared for the last forty years. Mac Mohan, Seema Vaz and company provide familiar support. The budget must have been virtually non-existent because there is scarcely a frame on screen suggesting that money was spent on anything whatsoever.

The film is dire from beginning to end and one would struggle to identify any genuinely redeeming feature. This particular Panja ranks among the most abysmal examples of the genre, which is saying something given the competition.

Yet there remains a certain fascination in witnessing something so staggeringly cheap and woefully inept.

For students of Bollywood horror at its absolute lowest ebb, that alone may be reason enough to seek it out.