Shaitano Ka Honeymoon (1998)

Shaitano Ka Honeymoon begins with Charan Raj of Pratighaat fame enthusiastically off with his gorgeous new wife to the hills of Ooty to enjoy their honeymoon. Still, just as they enter what looks like a very ominous jungle with bats and snakes peeking out from behind the shrubbery, their car comes to a mysterious halt. Charan Raj discovers that the axel has snapped.

Though his wife is thoroughly irritated, they soon come upon a reasonably well-kept Haveli attended to by a mother and son pair who shelter them and put them up in one of the several rooms. Dolly Minhas instantly dislikes the old lady even though she appears to be nothing but helpful and welcoming. Ganga, her son, helps out with errands and farms some of the adjacent lands and wears a particularly glorious moustache a little on the lines of the most impressive gods.

The next day the jungle seems empty of trees and thick undergrowth, allowing Charan Raj and Dolly Minhas to perform a sizzling synchronized dance before returning to the Haveli/Guest House. Once again, the mysterious old lady takes care of their needs and explains to Charan Raj a bit of the history of the Haveli. Some old Raja Sahib built it to help those who get lost in the forest. A man of keen foresight.

All seems well, and after steamy lovemaking, session things start to go south as Dolly screams upon seeing a ghost prowling outside singing a lament about how wretchedly life has treated her like a path full of thorns. Unlike many others in the genre, this ghost doesn’t wear anklets, thus making following her even more difficult than usual. Charan Raj tries to appease his wife, finds the ghost, and tells her to tone it down slightly, but he fails. To his dismay, he returns a little later to find that Dolly is missing and is most befuddled. However, it seems he waits until the following day, changes his outfit and then returns to his search in daylight, but his efforts don’t bear fruit, and Dolly seems to have vanished into thin air.

Disappointed and rather sad, he returns to the room where he is surprised by some hideous cackling sounds a bit like those from Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead and following the sound, he figures that it is coming from somewhere below his room. He finds a secret door in his room below the carpet and ventures the steps where the cackling increases in awful resonance.

Once in the hidden basement, he is confronted by several swaying skeletons and is battered by an unseen force until he conjures the courage to fight back. Ultimately, he finds a figure in a black hood and gives it quite a pounding, but the hooded figure manages to escape but much to his relief Dolly is there, and they safely reunited.

The newly-weds accuse the old hag of having a sinister plan to cause all this havoc, which she denies and stuns them by telling Charan Raj that she was doing all this to save her granddaughter claims is Dolly. She also claims that Dolly has two warts on her back which turns out to be untrue.

Flummoxed and distraught, the old lady then explains that she was confident Dolly was her long lost granddaughter Sonia who was the spitting image of Rajni (Dolly). She proceeds to explain in what turns out to be a very long flashback about the sad fate of Sonia, whose life was cut short by four hoodlums who stopped at the Haveli 12 years ago and caused havoc in their lives.

The film goes into familiar rape-revenge territory with the four hoodlums committing a heinous act and then throwing poor Sonia’s corpse into a shallow muddy hole. However, the mud soon starts to ooze blood (arguably the films finest moment), and it’s not long before the four men are stalked and brought to justice in horrific style by the vengeful ghost of Sonia.

The horror is piled on thick as Sonia’s corpse returns to menace the evildoers one by one, but once that plays out as expected, there is still a twist in the tail that will have viewers gasping at the very end.

Charan Raj doesn’t quite have the presence in N. Chandra’s Pratighaat but cuts a stylish figure in his matching clothes and nifty dance steps. Dolly Minhas does full justice to her title as “Sensation of Beauty”, but most impressive of all is M.N. Lakshmi Devi as Daadi Maa (The old hag). The make-up effects are not the worst ever seen, with pair of charred and bloodied hands being the highlight.

Shaitano Ka Honeymoon follows the path of many other shoestring budget horror movies. There is almost some startling gore, but it’s either been censored or doesn’t quite go far enough to be shocking. The cobra and the bat are featured frequently but never actually strike out and serve to provide a menacing backdrop to the jungle. It is entirely predictable for the most part. Still, it manages to roll along without putting the viewer to sleep thanks to not overdoing the songs and lacking tedious comedy sequences.

Shaitano Ka Honeymoon is strictly for the hardened addict of z grade Bollywood horror movies though technically, this is a dubbed film probably originally in Telugu or Tamil. One or two good moments and an excellent title but otherwise a run of the mill effort almost but not quite saved single-handedly by the sinister Lakshmi Devi. That said, to its credit, there are no rubber masks, no sleazy excessive nudity (a shame!), and generally, it doesn’t get bogged down with needless frills as in songs and comic torture.

On the whole a pretty dire film, yet as the world faces a pandemic, there could be worse films to take your mind of some of the real horrors with which humanity is confronted.