Bees Saal Baad (1962)

We're in Hello everyone, and welcome to the Baliwood Cinema Club, where we take a look at Indian cinema through the lens of well, what we happen to be Westerners. We like to give our love to Indian cinema because hey, as Westerners, I think we don't know enough, and I know we don't know enough because it's woefully underrepresented in well in the dialogue, as at least film watchers in this country, we don't talk enough about Indian cinema at least in my opinion, my opinion being the humble opinion of yours, your host, Kristasu of the Culture Cast, where this show spun off from. On this episode, we're gonna be talking about nineteen sixty two's bees Solbod and I am joined by my good friend he was on the first episode of this show.

We're talking about Rogue, which feels like a lifetime ago at the point, well literally, but between the two of us, it's been almost three months since since we recorded that episode, but it really feels way longer. Oh my god, Yeah, I thought you were gonna say six months. That's what it's In a lot of ways, what it feels like you're a friend in mine all the way from Pope dash Serenade. You've been on the Culture Cast, and you've listened to those Indian Cinema films episodes you've heard him on there before. Mister Colin Gallagher, thank you for having me back and for letting me suggest this movie.

Yeah, this, this came as a direct suggest question from you and I again, I have, I have. I'm not gonna say no because I haven't seen enough to say no to. Because you know, I've watched about as much Indian cinema. I've watched a little bit more than everybody else I've had on my show show only because I've seen all those episodes that I've been on, and I watched a handful before that. So like I'm well learned in Indian cinema.

It's more like this is a journey together. So I'm never gonna say no to a suggestion, especially one that's based off of the Hounds of the Baskerville. The Hound of the to be a lot of oil in this, yeah, and some third man. Yeah, there's a lot going on. So yeah, we're gonna be talking about nineteen sixty two's bees Cell Bod So the film is directed by brennag It stars Beeswajeet Wahida, Rahman, Madinpuri and Ausit Sen and the film, as many Indian cinema films, Due, is a period piece slash.

It's a period peace thriller that involves time jumps, but it centers around the story of a village, Chandage, the village of Chandoggat, where a young girl is raped and murdered and or she's raped and then she kills herself and the thakhor or the kind of the the lord of the the area, he's the one who did it and she kills herself, and then his punishment is metered out by the locals who kill him. And then his son is killed as well, and then their grant, his grandson comes back to the village to find that maybe, just maybe there are still people dying out in me. I guess I would. I was gonna say the Moors, but I mean the swamp. It's the swamp.

But if it were Conan Doyle, it would be the moors. In be sebot Is it is definitely the swamp. So Cullen, I want you to tell me a little bit about what drew you initially to suggesting b Selbod because this is this I think is now the oldest Indian cinema film that I've seen. So I'm, you know, still very new to Indian cinema and I've loved everything I've seen, but I love horror movies and I don't really hear people talk about Indian horror movies. So I just started googling around and this was one of the first that popped up.

And you know, it's from what I gather, it's a very famous movie that was celebrated in its time. It's somewhat of a classic. Especially the music. That Conan Doyle connection sounded really neat. I you know, I like this uh sort of you know international fusion where you have you know, Indian you know, films working with this classic British mystery writer.

As I was watching it, I kept thinking, oh my god, there's so many like American film noir influences and that brings into, you know, some German expressionism. It was really a transnational film, so it seemed really exciting. So with all that out of the way, what did you think about the movie after you watched it? Loved it? I from the very beginning, I think I started if I didn't text you, I started to and then deleted.

Uh, you know, the fog is just so thick. I kept thinking like, oh my god, this is like Edgar Olmer there, you know, like like Detour or something. You haven't seen this much fog since, you know, a poverty row Hollywood film in the forties really had no money for a set, so they just had to put more fog up. Right right when he when he's you know, the main character, when he's trying to you know, catch you know, not a cab, but he's waiting for a carriage to take him to the family estate, there's so much fog you can't even see anything. You just hear the voices and it's all disembodied.

And that alone starts giving the film this sort of like spectral horror element. I thought it was, you know, exciting. I love the sets. The songs were incredible, and I really liked how they sort of different, you know, they sort of alternated between these really dark, moody, haunting songs, you know, at night out in the swamp, and I think that's sort of the voice of you know, the moths so to speak, you know, calling him out, you know, you know, presumably to be murdered. And then you know, during the day they're these love songs that are you know, quite funny, and you know, from the perspective of the love interest, she thinks that the Baskerville Air is kind of a dumbass, and I love that she's sort of toying with him and h Anyway, I thought it was a really successful fusion of horror noir, Gothic mystery with music.

No I I agree, you know, I will say, like I kind of mentioned at the at the top, you know, it is this is the oldest Indian cinema film that I've seen now, and in a lot of ways, it's interesting to see the way that the medium was being used in Sick sixty two in India by Indian filmmakers, because we have our expectations of what we know they were doing in our country in sixty two and the kinds of films that were being made here in the West. But the frame of reference that I had for something like this is effectively zero. It felt a lot of my references went back to like forties, early fifties, and especially I kept thinking of like The Abbot and Costello horror movies, because there is a real sense of humor to this film.

Yeah, this movie is it's a horror movie, but it's it's it's like calling Hitchcock a horror movie, like it's it's it's it's a psychological thriller, but it has horror elements. I rewatched The Hammer Pound of the Baskervilles um after watching this, and you know, a lot of the story elements are very similar to what Conan Doyle was working with, so I I think it kind of gets the supernatural gothic mystery overtoned very well. But one of the things I liked is that the character that would have been doctor Watson, he's he's just like you know from Abat and Costello. He's bumbling around, he's goofy, he's not very good at his job. You know, you can almost imagine, you know, some Scooby Doo sound effects is you know, when he's like running away, And I thought that was a nice bit of levity to add to this story.

Well, and that's the thing about the story, I mean, obviously kind of like I mentioned in the synopsis for the film, it's it's not exactly handling easy to talk about subject material theoretically, but I think because the movie essentially just sets it up and says, this is what happened, and we're going from there, and it never returns to that kind of dark point that obviously getting in the movie is I think not upsetting, but obviously the subject material of someone being raped and then killing themselves is not It's it's just serious stuff obviously, But like you said that, they immediately just start breaking that up with some like interesting scenes of comedy. I mean, pretty quickly into the movie, you have biz Wait interacting with m Wahita Raman and he and she's like, are you blind?

Are you deaf? And it's like, like you said, she's just toying with him, but it's like it's helping to break up a movie that starts at a really low place. But I think because it starts there, it does kind of inform you as the audience like this movie is going to have some darker elements to it. So I kind of want to if we can pause for a second about their meeting, and I'm going to just call them by their character names. That's a little bit easier for me to pronounce m biz Rosit plays Kumar and Wahita Raman plays Rada.

And I thought this was actually one way that the film distinguishes itself from The Conan Doyle, and that in The Conan Doyle, the main characters, of course are Holmes and Watson, right, in this film, it's the Baskerville stand in the Kumar who becomes the lead, right, and you know, he's kind of playing the detective, but you know, he's not even really a detective sending he's he's trying to figure it out, but he's you know, caught up, you know, he's he seems part of it. Yeah, And I thought that was a really different sort of take. And at least in The Hammer Um Hounded the Basketvills, which would have been three years earlier. In fifty nine, Christopher Lee plays the character. He's not charming.

He's stuck up, he's pompous, he's cold. You know, he's much more like the landlord type. And they keep referring to, uh, you know Kumar and his you know, grandfather and grandfather, Oh, the landlords. Kumar's a lot more charming, um, except when he meets Rada, he's so struck by her beauty that he doesn't say anything. He had been hunting, and apparently he was such a bad hunter that he couldn't even hit birds.

And she comes over with a rock and he's like, you scared my goats with your gun. Maybe I should, you know, And you can't even hit the birds, maybe I should, you know, try and kill something. And she's like, oh, I'll throw the knot at you. And I just love the way she's mocking him. It's very she's emasculating him, toying with him, but like in a fun, in a playful way, and there's a little bit of antagonism in it, yeah, which which I enjoyed.

Like it's not like she's she doesn't say right off the bath, oh, I really like you. Like, just from that opening scene, you would think, does she actually hate him or does she hate him so much because she has this like innate attraction to him, And I think that's what it is. And I like that it doesn't enunciate her attraction. She doesn't go home to her dad and or her uncle and swoon, Oh I met this cute boy, Like she complains that he like got you know, scared her goats, right, And so I thought their relationship is really interesting because it's not until the end where she finally says yes, I love you, and when she does, that's a big moment. Before she does that, though, there's one of the songs begins with her with a gun, you know, sort of mining the way that he would hunt.

And again she's emasculating him. She's taking the phallic symbol, you know, the symbol of the gun. And yeah, I thought, I thought she was a really lovely character, very different than anything in the Conan Doyle well, and I think, like you mentioned the idea that they've taken this story that really does and I guess would center around I guess doctor Pandy and to the detective, I guess would be like close stand ins. So the detective is Watson, and I still haven't read the Conan Doyle original, but from what I gather Sherlock Holmes appears like midway through where he's already there and Watson had thought he was dead, right because this was after the Reichenbach Falls thing with Moriarty. And in this movie, when the detect the Watson type character thinks he brings the killer to the police station, the killer takes off a mustache and he's actually an inspector, and so I think that's supposed to be the homestand in so it is different.

They're not working together, but you can you can clearly see the writer of this film taking elements direct from Conan Doyle. Some of it's just verbatim and some of it's you know, you know, they're they're reworking to make their own story. Well, the other thing about this story that the Conan Doyle story has that this one doesn't. They're at the end of this there is no supernatural element. No, and the Conan Doyle story there is.

There's still at least the hound still exists, the Hound of the Baskerville, Yeah, is an actual thing in this there is no there is no monster, which I like that change, I guess I don't. I don't think it matters either way. I think it's a different story that they're telling, so that part of it gets inherently less focused than it does in the Conan Doyle story. I mean, that's almost I kept thinking of in like Aban Costello, though in some cases the app and Costellos do have you know, real mode, but right, you know, at at the end, sometimes it's like, oh, it was a human being, all along. It's like a Scooby Doo.

Yeah, it's very Scooby Doo adjacent because it's I mean it's literally like they pull the mask off and it's well spoilers. I mean, again, this movie from sixty two, but you should watch this movie obviously, but the spoilers. It's Rada's uncle who turns out to be the See his daughter was the one who was raped in the opening scene, right, he's Rota's uncle, but he's also his daughter was the was the one who the thought or essentially caused to kill herself. So and I'm obviously, I mean, I think the twist works. I think it's I'm not gonna say it's like obvious, but it had to be one of the characters that we had met in the movie.

But I think it's I think it's interesting that there is no supernatural element here. Actually, Like it's an interesting choice because the movie leads you on to think that so hard throughout, and it leads on those conventions and subverts it. Really, I think it's a really interesting subversion of the expectations. It's really I agree, and I can't remember the line verbatim, but you know, they sort of talk about, you know how this one act so many years ago has just determined all of their lives and it's you know this you know sort of this violence be getting violence, and that's something that the Rada keeps saying, like, oh, you know, my love can break the curse. Yeah, I thought it was.

I liked the plotting, the screenwriting. I thought it was very well done. Yeah, and like you mentioned, turning the character that would be I guess, kind of a secondary character in the original source material, turning them into the lead. I think it is it. Yeah, like you meage, it's an interesting choice because again it allows you to kind of go in a different direction with the story and change the way that character is written, because he's not Kumar's not all that clever.

No, because the the you know, you know Home and Watson, they're using deduction and you know, so forth to figure what's going on. I mean in this basically Watson taught the Watson stand in um detective Goupi chand he basically, you know, you know, is you know, talking to people and they're like, oh, yeah, I saw someone hiding over you know, hiding over there. Though that was actually a bit of a red herring because that was a clue given to him by her uncle. Yeah, but uh yeah, none of these characters are all that bright. And I think, I mean, Kumar's strategy assentually boils down to I'm going to go into the swamp, like yeah, that his strategy is, if it's here for me, I will place myself in the center of it and see if it comes and gets me.

And I hope that somebody is essentially there to stop it or I can stop it. And I like that because I you know, I think it makes him a more relatable character. And I think what's also toward the end, what becomes a motivating factor for him is that people say like, oh, you know, the curse is still real because you've killed Rata And he's like, well, what do you mean And he's like, well, she's on hunger strike because her uncle forbids her from marrying you. She hasn't eaten in three days. You think she's alive And that's kind of dark.

Yeah, this guilt that he's dealing with, like oh shit, you know, like I'm bringing death to more people, Like I thought I was just gonna come here and claim my land, and like, you know, this stuff like because he also somebody gets killed because they're seen wearing his coat, right, you know, he has all this on his shoulders, and that's motivating him to, you know, solve the mystery. And I really like this convention in in some of these like Indian thrillers of utilizing like a time jump and showing like the kind of like the sins of the father being revisited on the children, because that, I mean, that is what this is ultimately. I mean, it's a story of how like I mean the title of the film alone, twenty years later, it's about what happened twenty years after an event that essentially destroyed this town internally, and what are the what are the ramifications of that if you happen to be related to the person who caused all of it.

It's interesting because it's it's asking a different question than the Conan Doyle story is. It's more it's a more humanistic approach to telling the story, at least about the characters that they're at least about the characters that are the more interesting ones from that story, that aren't, you know, inserting themselves into the story. They're the ones that are already dealing with it at the start of the story. I mean the Conan Doyle, You're right, I mean the Conan Doyle does still have the you know, the the Baskerville's you know, generations ago, still you know, raped and murdered a woman. And then you know, it's sort of this that's sort of set off this series of violence, and you know, presumably for generations people are paying for this horrendous crime.

But as we said, it's the main character is not the person solving the mystery from the outside. It's somebody who this is directly affecting. They don't have as much skin in the game. If it's not your family was the one who did it. It's just the stakes are a little different if your ass is the one that's going to be killed, which is essentially what this movie keeps saying.

It's like Kumar, there is something in the swamps that's trying to lure you out there to kill you specifically you, essentially no one else, and if they think it's you, they'll kill them by accident. Like I like that. I like that idea because, like you said, it gives the character built in stakes immediately, and I like the concept of I'm going to adapt Sherlock Holmes, but I'm going to make the Sherlock Holmes character the smallest possible character and you know, sort of remove any sort of intelligence from him. It's like that cartoon and Garfield without a Garfield or something. It's a subversion of the expectations completely, which but I'm like we've said it leans on the more interesting aspect of that story, which is the internal conflict of these characters, because essentially, like you just mentioned, the internal conflict is not really different.

It is the same. Like you are having to deal with things that are happening to you because of decisions that were made by someone else, and that is like, that's here and that's there, except in this one you you understand and you're getting to see that character deal with it the other you know, in the other thing, it's like you're watching them deal with it now. It's like they're the centerpiece. And I think it's I think it speaks to Indian cinema as a whole, that the focus of, like you mentioned a Conan Doyle story, are the humans at the center of it, not the humans investigating the humans at the center of it. And to go back to something we touched on earlier.

Something that I find really interesting watching this movie being an American is just how much American and Hollywood in British cinema influence there is on the style of this movie, which makes me, you know, first say like cool, I need to be more familiar with British cinema before, I mean Indian cinema before this, because I don't know how much is coming from you know, you know, Indian cinema. I don't know what traditions this film is building on. I don't know what sort of position that Conan Doyle would have had in India at this point, but clearly this director loves Hollywood in British cinema. And the biggest clue for me is something they add is this basement. He's a catacombs and he films them just like The Third Man.

And the climactic chase involves Kumar and the police all chasing you know, the uncle into the catacombs and they have their flashlights and they're shooting. You know, that's straight up Third Man chasing Harry Lyme. I think that was a really unexpected influence. I was expecting how cool it's gonna be Gothic Okay, we're gonna have some homes, gonna be some mystery, and then I'm like, where the hell did you pull this third man out of? Like that's a really neat you know fusion well, and like you said, it's interesting to see those influences in a way that like I'm not expecting or you're not expecting it.

Clearly, I know the director was an art director before he made this, and then he made only one other movie. Clearly has an understanding of you know, atmosphere of sets of props, of lighting and composition and the usage of the black and white to make it feel. Again, this movie, similarly to another film we did another more of a horror, straight horror movie than this tombod It has like a dreamlike quality. Like again, it's it's not this is less of a fairytale than Tombod is, but it's like fairytale adjacent in a way, like the feeling of it. It's more gothic fairytale than folk fairy tale, but it still kind of feels in a way you have the voice in the swamp calling you, and there's a monster maybe, but there's you know, it has that it has that fairytale quality to it at least, like you've mentioned Western fairy tale quality tropes.

Maybe not Indian fairytale quality or folk story, but definitely what leans on Western fairytale conventions. And from what I gat or this was a This was a hit when it came out over there. This was popular. Yeah, well it was. It was.

It was based on another movie from fifty one called Jinghasa, which is based off of The Hound to the Baskerville. So this is an adaptation of an adaptation as well. So people already wanted had seen and like that movie had want clearly wanted more. And yeah, like you mentioned, I mean, this was a this was a massive hit when it came out. Also, the song from the film Kahin Diep Yale, I mean that I don't know many times you hear it in the movie a lot um, but you know that song is That song is sung by Lata mong Jakhar And I mean, she's one of the most influential playback singers in Indian history, passed away earlier this year.

But again, like that's another just another drop in the bucket of this movie. Is it has not only some really good performances, it's based on a book and movie that are already successful. But it also has really well done music. Like you said, like the music almost is so good that the parts that have the music feel like a different movie. But I'm glad they're in this movie because they break up the tone of the movie in an interesting way.

Like you mentioned, they're a lot more lighthearted than anything else. For the most part. There are few of the numbers at night that almost calls that's the word I'm thinking of. That's what I thought. It had a siren call quality to it, and visually I kept thinking of more now Sunrise, some of the creepy shots you know, you know, because even that movie goes out, you know, sort of into the swamp like territory and you see the camera sort of moving through the you know, the reds, you know, so to speak.

Um, there's something really spectral. You know, he's sort of Kumar is walking, he's listening. The camera kind of goes off on its own. Um you know, he you know, he sees other people that he doesn't know who they are, like talking, and he tries to find them and they run away, like you know, it's it's it's quite interesting. Well, a lot of those first person shots in the swamps too.

I mean, I was not expecting that, but you're getting essentially a fair amount of POV shots in the swamp moving through the swamp, and then you get even POV shots from the uncle's point of view before he starts killing people, which I also really appreciate because again in the hand come up in front, My God, it's a it's a that's I mean, that's a that's a horror movie convention that they're still using today. I mean, that's you know that it's so successful. And the reason that it's successful is because you know in this movie they're using it kind of to a little bit subversive effect, because you are thinking it's a monster, and you think they're not showing you because it is a scary monster, or it's going to be an interesting creature, and it's not.

And that's they're subverting your expectations in this movie and a lot of the other things where you're seeing it from that point of view. It's doing that because it's easier to do that than show the creature or create a full body creature that's as kind of believable and or as successful as that first person shot with like an arm or something just tends to be whatever they use it. So something that I was thinking about as I was watching this, and I you know, we can come back to the film itself proper. But this is not an obscure movie, no popular And you know, one of the things you were talking about at the beginning of the podcast is this is about introducing Indian cinema to Western audiences that will love it if they can find it.

And this was a movie I just said, like Indian horror. I absolutely loved it. You don't need to have this grounding in, you know, Indian culture and literature to enjoy this movie. If I had those things, I would get more out of this. But this is just a damn entertaining movie.

And where I'm going with this is why the hell is this movie so hard to see. It's not like I'm trying, you know, I'm a scholar who knows these obscure films that you know, no one's heard of, and I'm trying to find them. This is a big movie and the only copy we could find is on YouTube, and then we had to get the subtitles from an alternate website. It's on eros now, but it actually doesn't have the subtitles like they claim it does. It says that has English subtitles, and it doesn't.

And so so if anyone wants to watch this, go to YouTube. There are three copies of the movie on YouTube. Two of them are stretched to widescreen and have like watermarks. Avoid those. There's a third one that's a little bit further down the search results, which is the proper you know, one three three aspect ratio and I think it was subcene dot com.

You search for the subtitles and it says in the comments this fits YouTube. But it's such a shame because I think this is the type of movie that a lot of audiences here in America would love. So many people that love classic Hollywood noir, horror, mystery, sammer films, they would love this movie because clearly the director loves those things too. And I think this could be a really good, you know, point for people to jump into Indian cinemas because they're gonna watch it, they're gonna understand some of the references. It'll be a little familiar, but there'll be a lot that's new, and I think that's really important.

And then there's just no way to see this end. I was I was happy with the crappy quality because at least I could watch it, But um, I just think how many audiences over here might be turned off because it's a little pixelated. It's three sixty well, I mean, it's one of the lower quality things that I've ever watched. For it, for an episode of anything, I've worked one. But at the same time, we're still talking.

Look that you watched the same version that I watched, because you gave me the version that I watched, because the version that I gave you didn't work because it didn't actually have the subtitles. So even through all of that, we're still talking so glowingly about the movie. And I know, and we couldn't even help beautiful. Yeah, we can't even see the visuals really like we can see them. But there is no way that we are There is no way that anyone listening to this can expect that if you go and watch this, you will not one hundred percent understand what we're saying, and also one hundred percent understand that when people were watching this movie in sixty two, one of the things that was really being a huge success was the visual quality of the movie.

That's the problem here. The visual quality of the movie is so good that it sucks that we can't see how good it is. You know, with these boutique companies, I won't say their names because there's so many, and I love what they're doing, and we have contentaries on some of them. I can't wait until they start digging into this Indian cinema treasure trow. I'm so happy that they're starting to do more Hong Kong cinema.

I feel like there's now starting to be stuff that you know, it wasn't even on DVD originally, so I am excited. But I see something like this, and I'm like if this and his the director's follow up movie, which is called I Have a Right Here Cora from nineteen sixty four. It it's supposedly an adaptation of Rebecca, which had been made by Hitchcock, with some elements of Psycho added in. Like you put both of these on like a blu ray box set, Arrow Keno Lorber, somebody would eat that up because it's high because it's high brow. This is That's the other thing about this movie, Like say what you will about you know the quality of a movie and whether or not denotes highbrow, like this is a high brow movie, because this is a movie that's influenced by very important movies and is in and of itself an interesting look at how Indian cinema synthesizes Western influences into something unique and interesting and uniquely Indian.

I mean, this is just has like you know, what is it, like transnationalism written all over this, Like this is the type of movie that someone could do, you know, you know, PhD, you know, sort of work on talking about you know, you know, all of these influences coming together in a film like this, right, and again, it's a remake of another movie that's a Bengali movie. So it's a remake of a movie that's an adaptation of the Hounds of the Baskervilles, along with being an adaptation of a Hemendra Kumar roy book. I wish I was qualified in worldly enough to begin to understand how deep this movie is in all of its references, how it interacts with culture and art um But I know enough to know that, Like I'm not smart enough, and the movie still rules.

And I anyone listening that you know, take take take a look. I think you know, if you if you like horror. You'll you'll really enjoy it. But um, especially if you understand these aspects of Indian cinema, write some articles about this movie and put them online, because I think it's it's right for you know, research, and it needs people that are really qualified. Well, it needs like you said, it needs, it needs to be part of a discussion, maybe even the discussion of international adaptations of Arthur Conan Doyle stories, which is again, like you mentioned, an interesting entry point and avenue to what this movie is, because again, it is an adaptation.

But to call it that is to miss the point almost entirely. It's an adaptation in that it takes the setup that you know and does something with it. But it's you know, it's it's not the Hounds of the Baskerville's set in Mumbai. It's its own story completely. It's just like even like even like you said, even the parts of the original story that are so big and prevalent and kind of again, like you mentioned, the main characters are sidelined here to talk about the human element of the story, the human element at the core of the story, as opposed to the mystery the who done it?

I mean, we solved the who've done it, but in this movie it's almost not secondary. But it's not the drive of the movie. No, And I did not expect that going into it. Right, This movie has a lot of surprises. Yeah, it has a lot of new ideas.

It's it's a really smart movie. And I mean I feel like if you're gonna do an adaptation, especially if something as I mean canonical as Holmes, like I mean, by this time, Sirlock Holmes was still you know, Holmes is the classic British mystery. Right to take something like that and put a new spin on it, it's that's not easy, and this film does it very well. Not only is it not easy, but it's one of those things where you know, I look at this story and I say, okay, so the entry point, like you've mentioned is Conan Doyle, but then once you get into it you find out there's, like you said, there's just so much more going on that it kind of asserts itself in a way that I wasn't expecting itself to as a movie.

It's like, we're going to do something drastically different here with this story. It's such a loving movie. I don't want to say a loving movie about movies. But clearly this guy loves cinema so much. And you know, I think it's hard to have that element of humor of like sort of making fun of Watson and still have it be you know, it's really love.

It's loving, it's warm, it's fond. He's not making fun of homes, he's not making fun of that tradition, and yet he still finds a way to inject humor without turning it into farce. Which is the which is the very slope with something like this, is it becoming a farce of Sherlock Holmes, which I mean we've seen before plenty of times. I mean, oh, I mean before Will Farrell and John c Riley were doing it in the last couple of years. I mean, parodies of Sherlock Holmes, satires of that kind of story have existed since that story existed.

Oh yeah. And I think one of the ways that they manage to pull this off is by like balancing, Okay, you're gonna have some levity. They were going to take you dark like that ending when they're chasing him through the catacombs. That's not funny at all, that's frightening, Like that's really tense. Yeah, and it's really well shot in a way that it kind of it It helps induce claustrophobia because you keep waiting for that set to really come into place, because they introduce it early on.

And I think Kumar discovers it because he reads an article. It's like at the scene of the crime that discovered there was something underground, which I think is funny. He's not He's at least he reads right, Yeah, there's he doesn't, you know, ask the right question. He doesn't stumble upon it. It's just like, oh, he reads and it's like, oh yeah, someone already else, someone else discovered this, and there's like snakes down there and the detectives down there, and they even make a joke.

I oh, it's the only place to be alone. Well, what's interesting is is to take the to take the like the Holmes and Watson characters and really give them the bulk of everything to do, but not seeing them do it. It's it's such an interesting idea because, like you said, Kumar does not solve this. It's incidental that this gets that that the uncle gets found out, and the only reason Gopi Chandi's doing any detective work is. He wants the he wants the money, he wants the reward right.

He makes no bones about it. He's just pure dread. And I think that. I think the character of ram Lal the uncle, I think it is an interesting character. He's written.

He's written a little maybe there's a little bit of mustache twirling a little bit, but it feels kind of by the end of it, like I'm not saying he should feel like he should be able to do what he's doing, but I mean, you understand where he's coming from. At least I did not see him as being the villain. Interesting, Like I I liked this sort of like third act twist where you know, he's like, oh, now you tell me you love this Kumar, dude, sorry, Like that's breaking my heart. Like nor and you know, her familiar familial devotion. She's really torn and she's like, okay, like I guess I'm you know, I'd rather be the one who dies.

I don't want to. I don't want you to die of a broken heart. I don't, you know. And then the you know, he sort of turns around and it's just like, oh, okay, I see this is real love. It's okay.

Like when he gives that. You know, I fell for it. I thought it was sincere because I felt a bond between those two characters, and I'm like, you love your niece, You're not going to do something to hurt her. So yeah, that that caught me by surprise when it turns out he was the big bad. As I'm saying all this, I'm realizing, I you know, this was a red herring.

This was a trap that I fell for. They wanted me. So despite having seen all the reference points that this movie is working from it, I fell for it. Hook line and Sinker one. I mean again, there is a little bit of mustache twirling, but it almost comes at the end when he's running around in the catacombs.

I mean, it's like you said, it's not. Throughout the movie, his character is played in this kind of almost straight essentially right, Like, Yeah, I don't know how else to describe it. He's just played straight, and once you find out why he's doing what he's doing. Yeah, like he said it was his daughter that died at the beginning of the movie, I'm not sure hiding out in the swamp and trying to lure people out there is the most efficient way to do any of this. But it's definitely the most gothic yeah radio of it, that's for sure.

There's yeah, I'm not gonna fuck with the spirits now, but there are no spirits apparently. It's just it's just him making noise out in the swamp. I reminded of a movie I saw it a spectacle last weekend called Curse of the Dog God. It's a Japanese film from the seventies, and it begins with a bunch of jackass guys who work for like a uranium company or something, driving carelessly. They see a shrine like a mini shrine at the side of the road, so of course they swerve and they hit it, and so you know they're cursed at this point.

Then they see a dog in the middle of the road and they don't stop in time and they hit it. And then the little boy runs down the road, look, oh my dog, my dog, and he's you know, destroyed, and then these jackasses just a drive off. And where I'm going with this is that these guys become you know, cursed by the dog God, and wild packs of dogs start chasing some of them in killing them in the streets. So it kind of has a bit of a Baskerville's element to it. But what I really like is that as the movie goes on, you're like, Okay, so the dog God is real, it's a curse.

And then someone's like, wait, this might actually be like a human who's doing this and just using the curse. And then at a certain point, a guy someone else is so angry that he tries to invoke the dog God himself, which backfires in a severed dogs head starts attacking him. But I really like this idea in that movie where there is the curse and it's real, but then there's also the humans pretending, you know, they're doing what the you know themselves, what everyone else is attributing to the curse. So you have these this confluence where it's just like there is both the supernatural bad and the human bad, and I as the movie goes on, there's so many more different types of badness and evilness and bitterness.

The ultimate point of that movie is everyone is bad, everyone is cursed, the world's side, Where's the dog God take us all? Anyway, very good movie, but it I kept thinking about, you know, this idea of curses versus you know, you know the human agency as I was watching this movie, because I'm sure that Japanese film was also inspired by you know, Basquerrils a little bit well, And like like you said, I do like that that idea of people, people who know the curse playing with it and doing you know, invoking it or making it seem like it's real. Because again, like you said, the curse, somebody could be cursed, but whether or not you believe in the curse, if somebody else is is trying to make you feel like you are cursed intentionally, that I mean, that's kind of what we're talking about here.

It's you know, all vengeful spirits in the swamp luring you out. But no, it's it's not a vengeful spirit at all. It is the it is a vent. It is someone full of vengeance, but not not a spirit. But yeah, you know, I think I don't think it needed to have the supernatural element in this I think it works without it.

No, I would agree. Yeah, this is a good movie. This is an interesting also, just like an an interesting kind of movie because again we kind of mentioned this before. I never know what to expect because I just my frame of reference is is Western cinema with a ever growing pool of Indian cinema, and with this film, it, like you've mentioned, it's so informed by so many Western decisions, but they're so transformed that it's interesting to see those influences but also to see how those influences are really changed in a transformative way into something uniquely Indian, even down to just like we've mentioned, the music also being extremely popular from this movie. I like how when I you invite me on to talk about Indian films, I walk away with a list of like several more to see.

It seems to be always the way it is every time with everybody, because they're just all so good every time, you know, like it's I haven't seen one yet where I've been like, man, I would rather be watching something else like no I again, even the quality of the version that we watched to this movie aside, This is a worthwhile endeavor, especially one that's a little bit more work to track down. But I think if you track it down, you will be pleasantly surprised. And I mean realistically, someone should reach out to Aroos now and say, hey, fix the subtitle on your movie, because if that had worked, we wouldn't have had to worry about any of this. I have a feeling was it's a metadata mistake on their part because on Amazon, like the Amazon Eros channel, it's clearly says no subtitles.

Yeah, and the eros now thing on their app and says if you pay the premium you get access to the subtitles, which is not the case. No. There it claims that there are subtitles and there are not. So yeah, no, you're you're right, Like the big I think the big bummer for me with this movie is just lack of ease to find it. And look, yeah, I get that we're in America and the lines of transmission of Indian cinema from nineteen sixty two was not great then and it's only gotten better now.

But they're not worrying about movies from sixty two, it would seem, which is unfortunate obviously because if this is, if this movie is as good as it is, we know there have to be movies that are as good, better, more interesting, as interesting. Yeah again again, what I think about when I watched this is you throw this in any of the film classes I took in college in grad school. This would fit totally in, Like there's no reason that a movie like this cannot be understood and appreciated by Western audiences like I just feel robbed, like stuff like this should be more readily available. Yeah, I know, I agree, and yeah again it is. It is on eros now, But for US Westerners who want to be able to watch it and understand what's going on, there's there's not an option.

There's not a good option. There are options, but they're not They're on Amazon Prime Video, where I mean, there are so many of the movies that we've talked about so far on this show, I've been just on Prime either for free with Prime Video or able to rent for a nominal fee, which I mean again, I'm not complaining about having to rent it, but I wish that there was I wish that there was a better version of this that even you could just rent. So yeah, so Colin final thoughts on be Solvo. This exceeded my expectations. I had a feeling I would like it, and I walked away so full of ideas.

You know, I've watched it twice, I'll be watching it a third time. I'm going to try buying a DVD on eBay to see if it looks any better. I don't know, I wish. I feel like I've talked so much over the past hour. I truly love this movie.

It's it's it's superb. How about you, Chris, No, I'm with you. I mean again, I don't know really anymore. When we talk about these movies, you know, the synopsis very rarely actually gives away more or less what happens in the movie. We're the opsisis for these movies are woefully shortly written intentionally because I don't want the movie given away for me ahead of time.

And this movie goes all kinds of interesting places that a synopsis would have given away, and I'm glad that they didn't. And I'm glad that again, like these whenever I watch these movies, I never know what to expect. By the end of them. I am always pleasantly surprised on the journey that I've gone on with the film, with the filmmakers, with the actors, with the songwriters and everybody. Like you said, this is a movie that was a hit in sixty two.

It's a adaptation of things that are still being talked about even today, with Conan Doyle's stuff, and it mixes horror and thrillers and noir in a way that I was not expecting at all, in a way that is more definitely done than even the people who are being lauded as the ones making these movies. Yeah, what's that all about. I'm so stled to check out the director's the next movie. The sophistication in his style just blew me away. I think it's a shame he only directed two movies because clearly, you know, a great command, you know of technique, a deep understanding of cinema history.

I feel like he should have been a bigger thing. Well, I mean unfortunately, I mean he passed away right after the film that you're talking about, Cora came out. He passed away at age forty two, so I didn't know that. Yeah, Beer and Nogg passed away in sixty four, the same year Kora came out. So I mean it's you know, again, I haven't seen Cora, but would stand to reason, given how good this movie is, that that movie is probably just as interesting, at least a movie or an adaptation of the book and the Hitchcock film.

But yeah, I mean, cut cut down too short. Clearly, at least for this this movie is so good I would agree just based off this movie alone. So I think we found out the next thing we're talking about the next time we do one of these episodes. I mean, if you're down for that one. I liked to do this show organically.

If we find things that we want to talk about while we're talking about things, let's just do it. Isn't that what this is all about. I mean, that's the idea behind this show in my mind, is we're motivating ourselves to watch more of these movies, the ones that we want to watch, because we've already found the ones that we like watching. True, we did Rog. We didn't find anything from Rog until we found b Selbo, which was the other movie that you had talked about.

Now I'm cool with doing Cora. That would be fun. I still I found good Art, which is the Asphalt Jungle remake, and I bought it from somebody that because it came with subtitles. However, when I started looking at the subtitles, I saw them referencing MP three's I have a feeling that it's not a real subtitle track. I think they probably just used some sort of auto software so it might not be watchable.

So before I send it to you as a possibility, I'm gonna watch it. Yeah. I'm always just shocked and kind of pissed staff that when I watch these movies they're not obscure, and yet they're they're obscure here. Yeah, and I'm just like, God damn it. But again, eros now has it.

It's just where it's just it's missing the one thing that we need to be able to watch it, like unless you understand Hindi, which I know some basic Hindy, but not enough to be able to follow along. And this is a movie unlike some of the other Indian cinema that we've talked about, where you do need to have the dialogue and the characters. Some of these movies, the characters are so broadly painted you don't need the dialogue. But in this movie, the dialogue is so well written. Yeah, it's it's it's a joy to be able to follow along.

I mean, like something like Doom, which Richard had him and I talked about, like that's a big motorcycle racing movie where you don't really need the dialogue. I'm not saying don't watch it, but you don't you don't need to focus on it as much as what it's trying to show you with practical effects. This movie it's all about those character interactions and the dialogue and the way that it's written and those those interesting character interactions between Bizwajeet and what he'd romand so and and we kind of didn't even mention it. But Kumar as played by Bizet fantastic. First time I've ever seen him in anything.

Oh yeah, we didn't talk about him. No, he's great. He's fantastic. Like he said, he plays kind of the put upon, bumbling but lovable idiot in a really endearing way that also doesn't come off fakey, which is the big concern with that kind of role normally is it feels a little uh, it feels like a put upon And if you look at those screenshots, oh those are good screen grabs. There is a good copy of this movie with English subtitles out there.

Why don't you just message this person? Hey, that's I don't know if they still have a I don't know if they still have the they still post of Nope, good look, I'll I'll take I'll take a look around myself and see because if we're if you're seeing those images, then Benett exists, so it doesn't look like they're on Facebook anymore either. Yea, their Facebook account is down. Well, next time we do this, let's talk about Baron nobs Cora, the Rebecca adaptation, because that will finally give me an opportunity to watch Rebecca, which I've never seen. It's quite good.

I'd like to read the book. And before I do that, let me see nineteen sixty four. There was a movie I sent you on Facebook. McCall, Yeah, I remember Mohakall from nineteen ninety four. It's the Bollywood Nightmare in Elm Street.

You want to do that? I mean, I'll see if I can find it's on I think that one's on one's on YouTube. It's gonna find it's gonna find the subtitle tracks. Yeah, I'll take a look on some of my sights to see what I can find. Let me stop recording so we don't incriminate ourselves.

So, Colin, when you're not here with me talking about Indian cinema, where can people find you? Um? I should be at Pulpadesh serenad dot com and I hope to be there more frequently. Yeah, that's probably the best place to check. You can also just go to a Colin Gallagher dot com which has links to you know, my various music projects on bandcamp and uh, you know, if I publish any essays, um like post links there as well.

I really need to get better at self promoting when it comes to these these outros. I'm always terrible self promotions hard Nobody ever said it was easy. Where can people find you, Chris? You can find me over Weirdingwaymedia dot com, which is where nineteen plus shows can be found all uh, pop culture, weird, spooky, supernatural movies, TV, all kinds of things. You can find them all there.

Just go to Weirdingwaymedia dot com. As for this show, Bollywood Cinemaclub dot com, Bollywood Cinema Club on all social media networks. But all I gotta do is just listen, like, rate and review on Itune, share it, I mean share it? Why not? And you know what, totally check these movies out.

Don't just listen to the episodes, watch the movies too, because these movies are awesome. And if you haven't realized that by how much we've been gushing over them, myself included every episode that we've done, I'm telling you right, now, so Colin, thank you so much as always for joining me. It's my pleasure. Thank you for having me and for programming the movie as well, and we'll catch you on the next episode.