Saamri (2000)

Bollywood horror fans will recall that Saamri was the beastly demon that tormented hapless travellers in Ramsay’s infamous Purana Mandir. Due to the film’s storming success, he was resurrected for follow-up episodes. However, this new Saamri bears no relation to the previous one and has nothing to do with the distinguished House of Ramsay.

The film opens with the obligatory group of college students and their (ditzy, air-headed) teacher travelling through the darker corners of the Indian sub-continent. They have to break the journey in a remote area because the connecting bridge has fallen apart and will take some days to repair.

So the group of suitably moronic and overage college students are taken in by a kind Maha Tantrik (read Witch Doctor) who also runs a guest house in his spare time with a shapely and scantily clad young accomplice. The Tantrik gets shirty with his accomplice one day when she asks him why he always has two plates of food for supper even though he always eats alone. We find out that many moons ago, while the Maha Tantrik was out strolling in the forest he came across a toddler who was being forced under the monstrous spell of Saamri’s spirit. The tot becomes possessed in a scene that will have you rolling on the floor in splits of hysterical laughter.

A fearsome tussle of wills follows between the Maha Tantrik and the spirit of Saamri before the good Tantrik manages to capture the evil spirit in a little cube and carries home the young child and chains him up!

We then learn that the child has turned into a most grotesque, unsightly beast-thing called Saamri. His face appears to have melted somewhat on the one side, and his left eye juts out rather incongruously from the middle of a badly mutilated cheek. Otherwise, he appears to be rather hairy, a tad unkempt and in urgent need of a manicure. The Maha Tantrik has kept him alive in this terrible condition for the last twenty years, and Saamri awaits the moment that he might be able to turn the tables on his tormentor.

Meanwhile, in a town far away, the parents of the child who has been lost for all those years remain distraught and continue to advertise in the papers. They have offered a prize for their son’s recovery to a whopping $1500. (Doesn’t say much for how much they value their child). The father also moans that his business has suffered due to the loss of his child. Worse still, his luscious wife has fallen silent for the last 20 years and wastes away pining for her lost son.

Back in the sticks, one of the students – a blind girl – somehow ends up in the cellar where Saamri seizes his moment by disguising his voice as that of a fragile old lady (Dimmy, Why you do this to me?) and gets the girl to unlock his fetters and unleash the spirit locked in the little cube.

Once that murderous, filthy cad Saamri is on the loose, the body count begins to mount as one by one he dispatches the brain dead students in methods that usually involves him squishing them to death in an assortment of horrible ways.

It takes yet another major exorcism with loads of exploding holy powders being thrown around to bring Saamri down but still, it doesn’t work. Just when all appears lost and almost everyone in the cast has been squished – Love conquers all as the mute wife pleads to Bhagwan “mera suhaag na ujarne de” and in the time-honoured tradition of the true Bhagwans – a miracle is unleashed. In a shattering climax struggle featuring the most dazzling special effects, the all-knowing Bhagwan releases his deadly trident, which ends up putting paid to Saamri nefarious blood-lusting plans – for the time being at any rate.

This movie continues in the finest tradition of Z-grade Bollywood horror with atrocious special effects, worse acting, filmed on what seems like a non-existent budget. Yet, miraculously, it manages to move jog along at a fair rate. The occasional synchronized song sequence provides the few moments of genuine terror in an otherwise virtual laugh riot.

One would have thought that with the advent of the 21st century, some of the special effects and make-up effects might have undergone some development. Not so, delightfully, we are still firmly in vintage rubber mask territory.