Veerana
 
     
Director: Ramsay Brothers
Year:  1988
Music: Bappi Lahiri
Duration: 135 minutes
Rating: 7.5
Aka - Vengeance of the Vampire

Thank goodness for the Ramsay Brothers. They may not have been invited to the finest Bollywood celebratory nights and their films may have been looked down on by the critical film press as not worthy but damn are they entertaining. Their films could not be shown in the prestigious cinemas but people found them anyways and a few of their films were huge hits. Because no matter what critics say people know what they like. Horror, blood, monsters, scares and bountiful women showing large swathes of cleavage. That is almost universal among men.  But in India for decades there was only one place to go for that. The Ramsay Brothers. A film family collective that knocked out horror film after horror film and received no respect from the industry. But now they are revered by cult fans all over the world. Leading actors would not touch a Ramsay film because they thought it would damage their career and some up and comers who acted in them found that to be true. For character actors that wasn't so much the case and you will find many of them in their films. This one has a few well-known ones.




There is some crazy shit going on here - and that was after the censors took nearly a year and many cuts to pass it. I can imagine it took so long because they all invited their male friends over to watch it and they loved it but then said let's cut that and that and that. It was India and censors back then had a heavy hand when it came to sex and skin in particular - not even kissing allowed. Still what got through was rather amazing. If you strip this film down to its component parts - acting, script, dialogue, action, comedy. music, special effects and simple logic - they are all terrible for the most part and yet the magic of cinema is that when you put them together you get this lump of coal that turns into entertainment gold. Creepiness and cleavage mixed with musical numbers and nitwit comedy. It is sort of based on the Exorcist - even with a head that turns around - but imagine Linda Blair grown up and a vampire breaking out in song and doing a dance that jiggles all of her ample body parts to seduce men. There are so many truly lovely moments here in which you don't know if you are supposed to be laughing but you are.








Somewhere in India dead men are showing up with their blood drained. It is the work of Nakita (Roy Kamal) a female vampire who is sort of the mascot of a cult who are devil worshippers (Hail Mahakal) led by the head priest Baba (Rajesh Vivek) with his fierce face and ability to roll his eyes up into their sockets. Nakita often gets hungry and lures men out on lonely roads at night to come back to her swank place filled with spider webs and dead animals mounted on the walls. But with a large bed waiting for her. The local Thakur (Kulbhushan Kharbanda), head of the village has his brother Sameer look into it. So he goes out at night, meets Nakita on the road and allows her to seduce him. Which can't be easy. Nakita to put it gently is a full-figured woman (something the Ramsay's liked - they called the actress a sexy babe) who looks like she ate the two Kapoor sisters for a snack. Sameer tells her "I want to explore every inch of you" and I thought we could be here for a while. But instead he brings out the Aum (or Om) a symbol that works like the crucifix does against Western vampires. He captures her - and the village hangs her - but we know that is just the beginning of this story.






Baba takes her dead body back to HQ - where loads of worshippers all in black hoods with deadly weapons and these other guys who sit around a table with heads that look like tree trunks chant to Mahaka - this giant scary statue  - but they need a person to transfer Nakita to. And they kidnap Jasmine, the young daughter of the Thakur and do the switcheroo. Possess her and send her home with Baba as her servant. They mean to revenge themselves on the family of the Thakur. Very slowly it seems as years later they are still living there. People notice that Jasmine isn't quite the same - she likes tearing the heads off of dolls and burying them and going for long walks in the forest. Next we know, she has grown up into a woman of physical means and a hunger (the actress is also named Jasmin). Men keep dying with throats cut and the father refuses to believe his sweet daughter is the devil's daughter - even when caught on tape saying she wants to kill them all. That would be all I needed.



But into this comes the very cute Sahila - the daughter of Sameer if you remember him. They try and kidnap her as well but who should come to her rescue? Tarzan. Almost - at least the actor who played Tarzan in the fabulous film Tarzan - Hemant Birje - who later blamed this film for ruining his career. Did he ever watch Tarzan? Sahila brings him home and notices that her Didi is a little strange - especially when she turns into Nakita- rancid skin that could use a long day at the spa, a bulging red eye, scaly hands and rotting teeth that have not seen a tooth brush in far too long. But again no one seems to care - oh she is having a bad day.  It is all so much stupid fun with a finale that is bonkers. Sahila must have set the record for reaction shots as dozens of men fight, the priest laughs maniacally, Jasmine is led into the pit of hell and the coffin opens and the ravaged Nikita leaps out. I don't know if the word shlock can still be used but this is wonderful schlock. The best kind of schlock. Intentional schlock. You can image the brothers sitting around after hours and saying - you know what this film needs - a saw cutting someone in half top to bottom or a guy sitting at a gas station reading the Kama Sutra as Jasmine seduces the attendant with a few lip licking motions.






Also of note in the film are Satish Shah and Rajendranath as the comedy relief - Rajendranath was often the buddy of Shammi Kapoor in the 1960s, Gulshan Grover as the perv and providing the music is none other than the famous Bappi Lahiri who once composed the music for 33 films in a year but is most famous for bringing disco to Bollywood in Disco Dancer!  Maybe I should say infamous but Disco Dancer is quite wonderful. Whatever happened to Jasmin after the film is an Internet mystery. She quickly vanished. Perhaps into that pit of hell.