Chudail (1997)

This low budget shocker follows the familiar turf of a vengeful spirit returning from the netherworld to exact revenge on those who did her wrong. The film begins when a Tantrik of considerable repute is summoned to a grand haveli where the Lord is dying of some mysterious ailment that has left the city doctors and specialists flummoxed. The Tantrik strides in purposefully with his aide and prepare for the exorcism, but just as he is about to begin, he glimpses the ample bosom of the Lord’s daughter. He is seriously distracted from his duties after that.

Later on, he moves on the sultry daughter and finds that she is a most willing partner. The two of them are busy when Raja sahib regains consciousness and starts edging towards the room where the “strange sounds” are emanating. In his horror at discovering his precious daughter going at it with the fraudulent Tantrik, he has a stroke and dies on the spot.

The Raja’s daughter, Sundari, is left to fend for herself in the vast and lonely haveli with no one to keep her company. The gormless, senile neighbour is hardly going to be the tonic for her ravenous sexual appetite. So she continues her liaison with the lecherous Tantrik, who teaches her all his black magic rites in return and even grants her the same immortality he has. Though delighted at the prospect of remaining gorgeous and youthful for eternity, Sundari is stunned to find that her role in life is to be the muse of the Tantrik, and he shall not permit her to feed her voracious sexual appetite by keeping her lovers. Sundari uses the spells she learnt off the Tantrik to bring an abrupt end to his immortality by stabbing him with a “Kaali” dagger.

When news of Sundari’s lustful romps reaches her uncle in the city, he dashes over to the haveli to put a swift end to them. Though the uncle doesn’t accept the tales of Sundari’s dabbling with black magic, he finds no other explanation for the horrors that confront him upon arrival at the haveli.

A mighty Tantrik known as Jeet baba is summoned to trap Sundari and destroy her. Jeet Baba gathers all his strength and compels Sundari to the exorcism ritual, where through deft use of some holy exploding lemons, he manages to get her in a state where she is helpless. Jeet baba has three metal nails hammered into her skull, which unsurprisingly leaves her stone-cold dead. The uncle and Jeet Baba’s accomplice then shove Sundari’s corpse in a box and bury it deep in the earth. The evil is therefore buried, but indeed not for too long.

Time moves on several years, and we are shown a group of unlikely archaeologists heading out for the site where we know Sundari met her grisly end. As the excavation begins, things start going mysteriously wrong with a worker plunging to his death in a crack that opens up quite suddenly where he had been digging. The archaeological unit discovers Sundari’s coffin and makes the terrible mistake of opening it up. Her rotting corpse is sent to the hospital for examination, and then the horrors start to mount. The evil tantrik’s assistant overhears the police talking about the discovery of Sundari’s body. He dashes off to a cave, pulls out his mystical tantrik drumming kit, and starts pounding away like crazy, obviously in a trance.
Meanwhile, the patient’s trolley bearing Sundari’s rotten corpse goes mad and streaks around the hospital corridors as though possessed. Her coffin starts following suit, and there are scenes of total mayhem at the hospital as the tantrik’s pounding seems to bring an unearthly life back to the veins of Sundari’s corpse. Indeed the two of them team up like Dracula and Renfield, and she plots her strategy of vengeance and plans to enjoy plenty of young men to make up for the lost time.

Unfortunately, like most of its kind, the film tends to suffer due to an unnecessary romantic sub-plot injection. All this does is slow things down considerably and force the poor viewer to endure some genuinely wretched performances by the lead pair….and the long and boring songs make things even more tedious. Then there is the putrid attempt at some crowd-pleasing comedy (Paintal) which is torturous at best. Other than the dull romance and comedy scenes, the film holds together surprisingly well. There are some excellent moments, such as the scenes at the hospital.

Usha Khanna’s atmospheric music score enhances the horror considerably (though her songs are awful) and Sundari’s theme and demented cackling have a knockout effect. Poonam Das Gupta does brilliantly as the blood-lusting Sundari and her deranged sidekick Renfield also perform to the hilt. In a thrilling climactic exorcism scene, the tables are turned dramatically as Jeet Baba’s might is rendered useless by the marauding power of the black magic preaching Sundari. In a departure from the usual, the mighty Tantrik is left for dead as the ghastly Chudail continues her murderous rampage. Fortunately, there’s still the holy swastika book as a last resort.

Though the special effects are easily as cheesy as most of the acting and the witch itself could have been a little less scarecrow-like, the film has enough energy and horrible sequences to elevate it from most Bollywood horror. Not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination, but reasonably entertaining with enough moments of blood-curdling Bollywood style terror to satisfy. We’ve certainly seen a lot worse.