Phir Wahi Raat (1980)

Asha (Kim) suffers from recurring nightmares. After walking through several corridors and various stairways, she finds herself trapped inside a dungeon with a witch-like cackling woman as her companion. As the dream witch (Shashikala) advances towards Kim with arms menacingly outstretched, Kim awakens with a scream, much to the disgust of her fellow college companions. They are utterly sick of having to spend sleepless nights due to Kim’s neurosis. The convent girls complain to the administration, and soon Kim is pressured to leave the institution. Meanwhile, she is recommended psychological therapy and somebody suggests the name of Dr Vijay (Rajesh Khanna), a well-renowned master of psychology.

In scenes reminiscent of The Heretic; Exorcist 2, Kim is induced into a hypnotic dream world where she is made to confront her fears. She slips into a trance as Khanna asks her to “go deep… deep” (One of the few scenes inspired by one of the most fabulous Turkey’s of them all – Exorcist 2; The Heretic). Later, Kim finds herself walking down the same familiar corridors of the dream and descending the steps to arrive at the dungeon where the Pagal Aunty awaits. This time, Khanna allows her to discover more about her dream, and she finds that her irrational fears and recurring nightmare are due to the trauma of having witnessed her mother’s murder at the hands of the crazed Pagal Aunty. Though it seems that Khanna is well on the way to curing his patient cum girlfriend, it is agreed that it to exorcise Kim’s demons indeed it would be best to return to the old Haveli, which is the scene of her nightmares and to see for herself that there is nothing left to fear.

At first, Kim appears quite happy at the old Haveli with sidekick Aruna for company. Then the nightmares and hallucinations start to take over and seem more accurate than ever before. Kim summons Khanna to stay with her and Aruna and newly arrived cousin Danny at the Haveli if she needs his help with the constant hallucinatory lapses. Kim’s nightmares return with a vengeance and but this time; the strange thing is instead of Pagal Aunty, we have another equally insane looking scarred woman menacing poor pathetic Kim. She goes whining to Khanna – who promises to help her get a grip. Yet, just days later, at her birthday party in a house full of celebrating guests, Kim starts to have her visions and has a major panic attack which ends up with her plunging the cake knife into an advancing guest who she thought was the woman of her dreams. The stabbed woman happens to be the wife Danny (Kim’s cousin) wanted to get rid of, and then we discover that Aruna, the faithful sidekick is not quite the goody-two-shoes she makes herself out to be.

The plot thickens nicely, but just at the moment when the director needs to turn the screws and increase the tension leading to the climax, he does precisely the opposite by introducing the obligatory scourge of Bollywood horror-comedy, the insufferable Jagdeep and his painful bagful of dead stale antics. Just when the film’s pace needed to be upped as it approached the final reels, it goes for a severe meandering session from which it never recovers. There are several good sequences during the film, but they almost all come from the first half of this uneven experience. The dream sequences are excellent, with brilliant background music, weird lighting, and frenetic camera-work evoking a suitably nightmarish scenario. Shashikala is stunning as Pagal Aunty in a brief but memorable role, but Kim, the director of Danny’s girlfriend when the film was made, is as duller as ditchwater. Rajesh Khanna’s career was flagging seriously at this point, and he was forced to start accepting “alternative” films, even if this ends up being more of a thriller than an actual horror film. Danny scowls a lot and looks menacing doing his usual thing, and Aruna Irani lends solid support.

A pity that the film ran out of steam so disastrously, having set a crackling pace in the first half. The first hour promises so much, yet the second half fails resoundingly to deliver the goods, leaving the movie doubly frustrating. Danny shows flashes of visual flair though the failure of this film chastened him into not trying his hand at direction again. There is much that is good about this little horror-mystery-thriller, yet unfortunately, it loses its way so badly that there is little prospect of recovery as the second half progresses.

Later discovered that the film was “inspired” by an old Hammer film named Nightmare from 1964, and the entire plot lifted. Ultimately, a pretty mediocre rip off of Nightmare, but Shashikala as Pagal Aunty is in no mood to mess around and turns in a magnificent and terrifying performance.