You are now listening to the Someone's Favorite Productions podcast network.

Hi there, and welcome back to Wildside, the official Monda Macabre Podcast.

We had planned to do this in October, but with the Halloween sale we got pushed a couple of weeks and now we're glad to share with you our Bollywood centric episode.

I am Ryan Verel and with me is Chris Haskell, who's always here.

Hello, and we.

Got a special guest this time.

If you are familiar with any of the Bollywood horror releases from Monta Micabre in this box set, you have likely seen the name, maybe seen the face and heard the voice of one mister Tim Pax and Tim, thank you so much for joining us.

Oh, it's a pleasure.

I love coming on and talking Indian movies and try to smooth it out for people who are terrified of them.

There's a lot of people in that boat, so let's dive into that.

How did you get so enamored with Indian cinema?

At the beginning, it goes back really far.

My mom was a hippie pretty much, and I live in Oberlin, Ohio, which is a small liberal arts college, so there was a lot of like alternate religion, alternate stuff going on all the time.

And what really interested me got me interested in India's that we used to go to this Harry Krishna restaurant all the time and I would see these comic books with a lot of these blue skin gods and everything.

You are never able to buy them because they just had them for people to look at.

It that piqued my interest, and I was a big monster fan since I was little, because my mom was into monster movies in the thirties and forties, so she made sure we always watched this sort of stuff.

So basically I kind of heard about Indian horror films, although the only real film from that area that I knew anything about was the Dracula and Pakistan so called movie, because when I went to Indian video stores back in the eighties looking for any kind of Indian horror films, I was told there are none.

That Indians don't make horror films, they make beautiful films.

It wasn't until somebody sent me a bootleg copy of Verana on VHS that I got my full I view of what the hell was going on, and it really got me interested.

But in the eighties, and nineties.

It was so hard to find any Indian films and the only time I was able to get in these I went through I used to go through a Thai media place called E Thai CD or E Ti Media.

I don't think they're around anymore, but they used to have Indian horror films that were dubbed into tie and it was that got me really interested.

I mean not a lot basically they had mainly mythological movies.

But so I was able to find a company that I was able to buy VCDs from VCDs and some DVDs, and I ended up spending a lot of money for at least around three hundred horror films from all over India, not just Bollywood films, not just Hindi, but in at least seven of the languages, which I don't understand any of it.

It's all a blur with me.

So I got really, really, really in to it.

And as my past and publishing goes, I've published magazine since nineteen seventy eight.

I started out with photo Fiends and they were always about monsters, and then there was a magazine called Naked Screaming Tear I did with a friend Dave Todarello, and we also did Monster, which is the first volume a Monster from the eighties.

Then I stopped doing it and created Monster International, did that for a while and then bowed out of the magazine scene for quite a while until Brian Harris got hold of me and from I guess it was Wildside Publishing then, but I think we had to change it to WK Books because I kind of integrated my company and with them.

So I've always been interested in monsters, and this was a whole new world opened up to me.

Up watching Japanese horror films and and and you know, English science fiction, Spanish horror films, all that stuff, but Indian horror films.

That was that just blew my mind.

And that she is only making so many movies, I guess ran.

Oh yeah, And then it took a while to dig up the history on this thing, going back quite a ways.

Yeah, I mean, that's that's one of the things we should probably bring up.

Is one of the reasons that you're on here is because you're you're so heavily involved in this box set, not only on the disc themselves, doing intros for the films, but the booklet itself.

I was you know, heaping praise on you before we were even recording.

But this is one of my favorite booklets from the last couple of years because it is so like, it feels exhaustive in nature, like if you want to ingest an entire history of an era of cinema, of a feeling of cinema, of a full you know, I I don't really want to say genre, but like a complete blind spot for most people that are fans of Western cinema.

And it's contextual upon the context that is already there, and that is so enriching for me.

How did you approach this?

Is this something that was all new research or is something that you had been compiling?

Well?

I published for about five years digest sized magazine called Monster, and it was print on demand through Amazon and every single issue and there are thirty four issues.

Maybe in thirty three of those thirty four, I wrote about Indian films and I also wrote a couple long exhaustive articles for the magazine, our magazine, Wang's Chop as well.

I did a big piece on about one hundred possession movies that came out in India.

So yeah, it's exhaust I just I when I write about these things.

I just jump right in and I do history.

I love doing history and writing more of a scholar sort of thing, even though I don't know the language well.

And one of the aspirations that I've heard from you personally is that you you want to go to India eventually and potentially lived there.

What's that dream all about.

Well, I've been to India several times.

I dropped down in twenty eighteen.

It's my first time.

I never really knew that much about the place.

I just dropped jumped on a plane, and where'd you go.

I landed in Delhi, which is a mind blowing to be there, because there's so many people in India.

It's really hard to be anywhere alone.

We'll tell you that, because like a billion people or in one country.

Right, I was in I was in Delhi.

I met with a couple of people in Delhi, and then I just traveled around.

I like going to temples.

I liked going to to Hanuman temples, which is Hanaman's the monkey god, Hindu monkey god.

And then I like Shiva temples.

Shiva was the the dancer of destruction sort of guy guy that people is always scared about.

There's a great had round collider in Europe, and they're what they have there if anybody else, that's a that's a big science, scientific thing where they're where they're splitting atoms and molecules to find various sub sub atomic particles.

But out in front of it there's a huge statue of Shiva and people are there's all this conspiracy theories about it because she was known as the Destroyer, so they're like, oh my god, they're going to destroy the world with this thing.

So I eventually then I ended up in Mumbai.

Before I left, I just went to about eight different countries, eight different cities.

And when I was in mom and Bay, I had a film uh a film director named Vishelfaria contacted me.

He just didn't know really who I was, but he saw that other people wrote about me and stuff on Facebook, and so I got to hang out with him and I decided, well, guess what, I'm going to come back again because it was really fun and I was in one of his TV shows that he directed, How's a Background How's a background Guy?

Because they wanted a little bit of color in it, so to speak.

I was only white guy there and it was it added a little little punch to the scene.

I guess, you.

Know, if you're talking about traveling around India, that might be a good segue into something that you write about a lot.

And I think is interesting that people used Bollywood as sort of a generic term for Indian cinema.

But there's a lot you know, by But because there's so many strong cultures in India, and each one of these cultures has quite a large population, they can support several different film industries.

Right, So there's there's a region, there's Hollywood, and there's they break it up kind of a culture and language.

Right.

Yeah, there's about eight major studios, Marati, which is they don't really produce much anymore, but they were the first that was the first language industry that produced a bunch of movies in India up until in that section around Mumbai, until Hindi films took over.

And of course Hindi's Bollywood, I like, and then you got, oh my god, I can't remember what they call the films in Bengal, some name I can't remember.

It's wacky.

Everything ends in wood like sandal wood.

Mollywood.

Mollywood is the Malaayam Malayam language, which is from the state of Kerala and they produce probably the most forward thinking and beautiful films.

Even their horror films are gorgeous.

And then you have the Tamil You have the Tamil film industry which is producing huge hits in India and Telu and the Telugu film industry as well.

They're just pretty all those really insane action films where everybody's moving in like slow motion to dodge bullets and it takes like five minutes for the bullet to go past them while they're moving, and then they break into song after that.

Yeah, gotta love all those styles.

With this box set, we bring together different horror movies and not all just from the same era.

Well, they're all basically from the Ramsey family, right the first the first older ones are from from the eighties and one from one from the nineties which is Mah God Makau and Uh and then Atomah is directed by the son of Tulse Ramsey, d pak So.

But yeah, they're all different eras.

That's why I love a box set like this because it's sort of all encompassing, a bunch of different styles, a lot of characters, a lot of like big pieces of folklore that have been impactful for generations.

And uh again, if anybody is curious about this, I strongly recommend before you even watch a movie, read the booklet front to back.

The amount of interesting background that you get before you get started is great.

But one of the things that you know, people that have never jumped into this because they're afraid would love to ask what, in your opinion, tim, is the best jump off point if you're uh, you know, if you want to get into Indian horror and then just Indian cinnamon jen.

If that's a different question for.

You, well, I want my favorite genres besides the horror film.

I'm really big into possession movies.

I've written several articles for other magazines about possession movies since the nineteen eighties.

And India has not evil devil sort of possessions, but they have evil, spiritual or just spirits that kind of want to possess people.

And that's one of I mean, there's so many ghost movies in India.

I mean they rival like Korea and for all the ghost movies.

And then I like the Noggin Cinema, which is a Cobra Lady cinema, and I wish we could find some of those films, but there's a big problem about securing movies, securing negatives or even really good copies positives of those of any movie.

We're just really lucky to get these rams films, so good jumping off's point would be you can watch either like Verana or Karana Mandir to be able to kind of get an idea of what's going on.

And unfortunately, most of their films, no matter the language, do not have English subtitles.

So I sat through hundreds of these things without English subtitles, but you get you pick up words here and there, and you and most of the time the plot's pretty much the same for all the horror, right, So jumping off would be any of these Ramsey films.

And then there's a director called Kody Ramakrishna passed away recently.

He directed Amaru, which is a really good I call Angry Goddess cinema films, And that's really good.

That's a good jumping off point because it gives more of the sort of mythological and sort of devotional side of horror films.

And then I said, the ghost movies and Noggin films, and they don't have very many monster movies.

That's just recently there was a mouse movie called Creature three D and it was a it was a bomb.

But that's not that many mouse movies since the since Ramsay has made them, and I really miss that.

But if you want to get there are some more modern movies.

There's one called Bout b h o O T is done by uh Go Krishna, who is really big in He's he's a big filmmaker over there, and his first really good films for horror films or gangster movies sort of.

But if you can find a subtitle copy of Boot and of his an earlier film called a rat ore At, they were actually released in the US on DVD from an Indian DVD company over here, So those copies are floating around.

I know they're available on the gray market, but and you may be able to get one or two copies on Amazon if you order them from Amazon UK.

Not me pulling up Amazon right now as you say.

That, Tim, I'm curious on one thing on that you know, you kind of touched on this mythological piece.

And that's a question I had for you because one of the things that I think has been really interesting going through the set, reading your notes, listening to your intros and some of these.

You know, I think American horror films tend to borrow from literature a lot, right we look at like Frankenstein, Dracula, a lot of the monsters, they're all kind of big, the stories.

We don't really have American folklore in the same way that some Asian countries have folklore that's two thousand years old or something, right where we're pulling from tradition, So we borrow a lot from literature.

But in these movies, in particular in the Ramsey films, I think, and you know, I'd be curious if it extends beyond this.

But it feels like these stories that they're retelling with kind of a modern twist or a modern lens are going to be very known for people that are watching it, because it seems like they're all rooted in like religion and folklore, is it.

A lot of them are.

India is really one of the more odd countries in South Asia, and that they don't have a lot of monsters in their countries.

Basically spirits and gods and demons, but demons not in the form of the Christian demons they're different.

They're like demi gods because like in the Philippines, you have thousands of monsters, I mean, the most gruesome things in the world are there, and you have you have like the I headed with the Entriills hanging out in island in Cambodia and they all have really cool monsters.

In India, they had to make up monsters or borrow some of the things from from basically English movies for for devotional movies.

There is a a feeling of of uh, it's really tough there.

They really don't have a lot of monsters that from folklore that they pull from.

They do pull from one called Chadal, which is wasn't shown in Varana where her feet were backwards and Wednesday and that that's a really popular ghost that happens.

There are some monsters that kind of show up in in Bengali films because that's where a lot of if you want to find out about monsters, a lot of them are from West Bendal or in other places.

And that's what kind of got me disappointed in watching a lot of these movies is that I wanted more movies from from their folklore and because there are there's enough folklore out there for them to make their own films instead of copying US movies or copying Korean films, which Indian Indian cinema does a lot.

Doesn't matter if it's Japanese, Korean, Spanish, whatever.

They just steal plots right out, just boom, steal it and then they they run with it and no credit is ever given.

If a director talks about it, he made this great movie, he didn't say he ripped off, you know, some Korean film to make it.

Well, Corona we're going to talk about today at some point, is one of those, right, That was a director ripoff of a Nashi movie, right?

Oh?

Yeah?

And also the Nashi movie was a sort of borrowed a lot from an American from nineteen fifty eight I think called The Thing that Wouldn't Die, which is about a head that's in a box of an evil wizard that someone digs up, just sort of like in Paran Mandir, and the box tells people to do horrible things the head in the box, so yeah, they do.

And the Nashi movie, yeah, what was that of God?

What was that movie called something of Horror?

Remember?

Yeah, you mentioned the name.

I forgot to write it down.

But it's like I wanted to go, I wanted to go check it out.

I'm going to go try to find it because Nashi films are getting more and more releases in the last few years.

I saw a lot of Nashi films when I was little, on a one out little when I was a teenager.

By the time they got distributed around in the US, you had Revolted the Zombies or one of his other a zombie movie.

But yeah, I wish we'd have more of his films.

But there are some certain parts of originality in that movie.

I mean, they have to be able to tie in their culture into this, but yeah, there is blatant ripping off stuff, and that was one of them.

Same thing kind of happened in Verona as well.

Some scenes in some parts of it ripped off this American horror film from the eighties called Mausoleum.

I don't know if you guys ever seen seen that film or not.

Yeah.

I started at the theater once and it stuck with me, and then I watched Verana.

I'm like, wait a second.

The Nashi film we were trying to think of his horror rises from the two there you.

Go Yeah, that's a good one.

And again it's an evil wizard that gets his head cut off.

So like Samuri in that film.

He you know, it's the same thing.

He's a horrible person and he gets his head cut off, and because he's so evil, his his power is it's so immense that his head stays life for a couple hundred years and someone finds it and you know, well, I can't say that I unless you can swear on what you want?

Hits the fan and his fucking there here we go.

Yeah, I gotta be careful because I set off swearing.

I can just go for five whole minutes, just the George.

Carlin intro with just the seventh swear where.

George you can't say on That was a record my parents got me really, Oh I love it.

It was a great George Carlin album.

Yeah, you know, there's some words you can't use, you shouldn't, I shouldn't use because their compound words, you know, motherfucker and stuff like that.

So exactly before we dive into Iran and per specifically, for people that are hearing this and excited about what you've worked on, can they can they still find that anywhere is it readily available Monster.

All the issues of Monster, at least the copy that the run the second volume two that I did with Brian Harris and Tony Strauss, that is all available from issue one to issue thirty four, and I had to cut it off because even though I wanted to do it, my co editor at the time, we're having problems with them, so we just stopped.

But you can get all those from Amazon dot com, not to like you know, you know, I mean, because it's print on demand, which is a blessing because back in the eighties and nineties, if I wanted to print something, you go to a printer.

You had to spend you know, ten thousand dollars to get you know, eight thousand copies, and I still have hundreds in my basement still in boxes from the printers.

Geez.

Yeah.

But print on demand, there's no overhead.

You should throw those up on an eBay store or something so we can link to them.

Get those copies out of your basement.

Well, actually I do.

I have some issues of Monster International that I have left.

I think issue three and four are still available.

One and two sold out, and they go for a decent amount of money on eBay.

If you can find them.

So anyway, So yeah, Wang's Chop, which I also wrote the articles on the Cobra Lady films and the Angry Goddess films and the movies of Conti Shaw, which he's great and he makes He's like he makes junkie movies, but he makes so many of them that it's just overwhelming.

He rips off Indian films, his own his own countries films all the time.

Godfree host style of filmmaking.

Right.

Oh yeah, oh my god, Godfrey Hosh.

Is there a box set of his stuff?

I don't think there's a box set, but there are there are more coming soon.

I happen to know about a few.

Oh okay, good, I love it.

My favorite.

I know this is a huge tangent, so I'll be very quickly my favorite godfree Host stories.

He's a professor right now.

So you can go take a class on film history from godfree Hoe right now.

If you speak I guess Cantonese or you know whatever where I forget where he said it.

Could be.

I think he's an Hong Kong right, it could be.

So yeah, anyways, it's awesome.

I want to learn Cantonese.

Just I can't imagine sitting in his class.

Yeah, I want to know why he came up with robo vampire or whatever.

I'm sure he would tell you.

Uh As this is a Manda Macabro centric podcast.

Everybody's probably dying to know.

How was it working with Monta Miccabro, How was it working with the you know, getting the videos in and getting the booklet in.

I've known Pete Tunbes for quite a while since I produced Monster International.

He reached out and contacted me and we just talked on and off for are communicated on and off for about thirty years.

And then he reached out and he goes, you know, we're doing this box set.

We got some really good prints, some negatives from the Ramsey brothers, and we need can you write a history of the Ramsey films?

I said, sure, if I get to design it, I'll write it.

And he goes, oh, go, go right ahead.

So the whole booklet was it not just Ramsey movies because those actually came like in page forty or something of the booklet.

It's just had to I told him I need to describe the history of Indian horror films to be able to give you the reader and some kind of decent background about what's going to happen.

So yeah, he contacted me on that, and then we are talking and I've done a cable horror TV show for since a nineteen eighty eight, and I still make Halloween specials on them because he knows then he's seen a couple of those.

And I do a lot of ad living when I do all of my intros, because you know, I'm not very good at reading a script, so I just go on off.

So there were and so I did that, you know, I shot that for him and then created the magazine for him, and all was exciting.

It was good fun.

I got to admit, the intros before everyfilm have been genuinely helpful, you know, after you've read the whole booklet and just having that setup is so nice.

I always love when when labels take the time to get something like that, because it's I don't know, you know, to have the table set before you enjoy this potentially sumptuous meal of cinema is always a nice way to approach it.

And I mean some of those intros I try to touch on different things and my hatred of comedy films or of comedy horror movies will put it that way.

I think they're right.

Unfortunately, now in Indian cinema, thanks to Tomil Semina Semina Cinema, comedy horror films are like taking Indian cinema by storm, and they're horrible sound effects all the time.

You know you're watching a live Warner Brothers cartoon on some of some of the things.

Before we move on too much from the booklet, I want to just call out other than just being you know, eighty pages of essay, which would be cool but might be a bit of a chore, this is there at least you know what, twenty pages of just full like you found amazing poster art.

Yeah, those are one sheets.

Those are my those are my form my personal collection.

Oh bought all those things and if someone's interested, I put out a a book called Fantastic Films of India or something like that, and uh, Volume two is all of my horror posters.

So it's about two hundred pages of posters.

That's up.

You know, just google my name and it'll pop up.

And the book previous to that was on VCD covers and v CDs.

Are these really crappy versions of what people, what the Indians like think DVDs were, and they're actually VCDs, very low, highly compressed video that would fit on you get about an hour an hour and a half on one CD, not a DVD, but like a CD.

And they hut a lot of South Asia by storm, I mean a lot countries had VCDs.

So I was living in Indonesia from the years nineteen ninety six to two thousand, and you could do They didn't have a above market, like a legitimate market of selling movies.

The only ones you could get were bootlegs in the whole country most and so you had two options.

You could either get a bootleg VHS because a lot of people still had that, or you could go to a mall with like a huge mall with like golden doors and like millionaires shop there, and they had a video store in the mall and they would just sell these VCDs with custom covers and everything.

It was crazy.

It's beautiful.

VCDs were very popular in India because they were cheap.

You can play them on your computer.

You can get these little players with tiiny little screens on it.

You can play it like that.

I didn't have to have the technology of DVD.

But the things look horrible that it doesn't matter.

They loved it.

There was you can find sometimes you can go to stores and they're just basically in trash barrels.

Nowadays, because nobody bouts physical media in India, the favorite way of watching things is on their phone.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, VCDs are awesome.

Well, let's dive into our box set.

Then.

The way they have this labeled, there are six different cases and of course for each of the films you've got a disc one just two connotation on the back.

So we're gonna start with Virana because that is labeled as disc one.

Please Tim set the table for our listeners.

What is Virana about?

Verana?

The movie was made nineteen eighty eight, Actually it was made in about nineteen eighty five, about three years for it to clear the sensors because the Indians are very Indian and the film critics are very sensitive to a slight you know, a little bit of cleavage or something like that.

They go these do they don't like it.

So Verana is like a lot of the horror films of that time and a little bit you know four but it mixes u sex with horror and Vana is a vana means dark forest or something like that.

And in this dark forest is a cavern with weird, weird monsters in it and a wizard and they basically they're trying to bring this witch back to life that was killed.

And the witch is called Nikita.

And even though Verana confused the hell out of me when I first heard about it, because I thought the monster was called Verana, but no, it's just a monster is Nikita, and she possesses a little girl that grows up to be, you know, psychically has some psychic abilities like blowing people's eyeballs out and things like that.

As one does.

Yeah when yeah you bug somebody, you get your eyes blown out.

It.

It's really it's probably their best film.

It's a film I like.

I like that, and then and then Prana Mandir after that.

But well, actually there's other Ramsey movies.

They've made about twenty movies if you want to count all the offshoots and stuff, and the movie of theirs I really like.

It's called Duaza and it came out nineteen seventy eight and it was basically the movie that that kind of opened the floodgates for cheap movies.

Well they all ripped each other off and they go.

You go all the way back to that film, but you got to watch Verona because in it is this actress called Jasmine.

Jasmine is like a fetish isle idol for people.

If you go on any of these Facebook groups or something, and if it's if it's a Ramsey Brothers Facebook group, every five posts is a picture of Jasmine.

And the mistique about is that she was only in two movies.

She was in a comedy and then she was in Verana, and then then she disappeared.

She probably left the country because she was probably being bothered by producers to sleep with her and things like that.

But that is Jasmine does play a character called Jasmine, and she is possessed and she ends up killing several people before her family members uh and her sister and her boyfriend.

I believe they attack the Wizard's enclave where the monster is.

I can't give it too much away, but and it does have some good musical numbers.

Comedy is oh okay.

I saw just by weird coincidence, I saw what was the Ryan helped me out what was the Indonesian movie about this?

The Queen of the South Sea that we covered recently Lady Terminator of course, Lady Terminator, and then this one, and then Death by Temptation, the American horror film from New York from the eighties.

I just happened to see them all together, and it's so interesting to see the different ways that essentially a succubist is portrayed, right, this kind of myth of the succubists, although I think Verona's supposed to be more of like a vampire kind of yeah.

Kind of sort of there soccubist in in Indian culture.

Is is not very common, but but in in European culture there's always you know, h you know, sexy devils running around and learning people.

And it's you're right.

All three of those films have a really interesting, uh, female based monster in it that there are like sexy monsters and and Jasmine is sexy, uh but when she turns into the monster, she isn't.

It's pretty my favorite monsters.

One of my favorite scenes in that.

But I just thought visually it kind of made me laugh, and it was very interesting because every time they go down into the layer or the kind of the headquarters of where this monster is, there's these these stoneheads looking kind of figures.

Yeah, the cone heads exactly, and it didn't look like they're playing poker or something.

They're just kind of hanging out.

It's it's fun, but they're not nothing.

Nobody explains what they are.

Yeah, they just move their heads and go, oh, I don't know if it's some kind of you're using their trying to get energy together.

It just it doesn't make any sense.

And then there's a big statue of a devil with flames coming out of its mouth and stuff.

Sure, just general like horror kind of images together in one set.

Yeah, I mean it's it for me.

It kind of works because it's it's pretty otherworldly when you see stuff like that.

It's there's not very many Western films that approach horror that way, you know, by you know, throwing stuff against the wall and sea what sticks sort of thing.

It almost feels like a Bond Villain's layer or something like that.

Yeah, a specter, yeah, exactly, exactly expected to come out any second.

But the other thing that made me laugh really hard was is one of the best medical diagnoses I've ever heard in a movie.

So they introduced the older brother, but he's a little person.

I wrote this quote down because it made me laugh so hard.

He said, my brother was ten when I was born, or maybe he's the younger brother anyways, and an earthquake shook the hospital.

Yeah, he was so scared he stayed Oh he was talking about the older brother who was a little person.

He was so scared that he stayed that height for the rest of his life.

Yeah, that was I love that part.

But man, that comedy's killer, especially with the character Hitchcock, not Hitchcock, but Hitchcock.

Some weird trying to get around it.

If anybody wants to know, there's another character called Hitchcock who who wants to be a movie director and he's always lugging around books on horror films or horror stories.

In fact, I even have some of the books he lugs around, and he he's always trying to set up scenes and trying to you know, the comedy parts of him setting up scenes, and there's a lot of weird into into windows and things like that.

But I think one of the most interesting things about that is, again in Indian horror films, they steal scenes from other movies.

And if you remember, he talks about a dog monster running around and there's a scene from the seventies Invasion of the Body Snatchers where you have that dog with the human head shows up for like five seconds and it's like, what ever see?

That's That's one thing, especially with this entire box, that so many of the movies have I hesitate to even call them subplots, but they have these completely disconnected plot lines that work for like two scenes and then have no effect on the greater overall story whatsoever.

Normally it's the comedy stuff.

You can actually I was talking to Pete Toombs about this.

You can actually yank out all the comedy scenes and it works great.

It made a better movie, almost makes a much better movie.

Can take at least twenty five minutes out of these things for that.

Well, And honestly, that's one of the most common arguments is that these are just simply a little too long, and if you didn't have that in there.

A director of horror films, Vignyon Talwar, who was sort of like a rival of the Ramsays in the eighties, I interviewed them for Weng's Chop, and I asked him that question, why are the comedy scenes in there?

Why are there so many of them, why are they so long?

And his explanation was, in the Indian film culture, you can't have an entire movie all of horror, all of thrillers or action films or anything like that.

You have to break it up because people people, it's going to hurt their I don't know, hurt their act matter, their spirit or something they get.

You can't have people scared all the time for two hours in a movie, so you got to throw in comedy.

And sometimes, like you said, the comedy shows up in the dumbest places.

I mean, right when the monster attacks thembody, you cut to either a music scene or the comedy.

And that was that's intentional in horror films, except lately, any serious Indian horror film now has very little comedy in it.

If it is, it's just some stupid wordplay, and a lot of the music is not.

They don't dance around as much.

But it might be an interesting thing just to quickly talk about the ramses a little bit because Tossi these ro all have listed as two directors, right Eelsi and Sham are both listed as directors, and it was sort of Tulsi's job to put in the horror and the music, right.

Yeah, he he wasn't a director of a lot of the scenes.

Basically his brother did that, and he was sort of like a line producer, where you come up with things that are going to work and you put it in and he does that.

There's some bottle man.

There's so many Ramsey movies that are not available.

It just I keep saying that, but it's it's there's some really good ones out there as well.

I don't know if you would know this.

I was trying to find do you have any concept because the way that they're spoken of is that everything after Piranha Mander were essentially big commercial successes for the Ramseys.

But do you have any concept for the like are we talking about they put in one hundred thousand and got a million?

You know, do you have any Yeah?

Some of them were like the fourth biggest film of the year, But I have no concert for how much money they were making.

Well, Indian, Indian, Indian all audiences are pretty fickle about how a movie is successful.

Anytime they anytime they don't like a movie, it's a bomb.

But or or like with Piranha, Mandir and Verana and a couple of the other ones, they were blockbusters, which means, yeah, it cost one hundred thousand dollars to make, which is a lot back then, and they probably cleared a couple million.

Okay wow, But it was only for about about four of their movies, and they made twenty some movies and they basically gave up after Mahakal, which is like the nightmare of elm Street ripoff to do TV.

Interesting, but they're influential.

Their movies are really influential to a point because a lot of the older fans still revere the Ramsey Brothers.

You know, Verana is the best movie ever.

Then comes Ferana Mander and other ones, and it's they love it, but the younger kids they don't.

They can't, they don't understand it, and so a lot of this is just stuck in one generation.

Interesting.

You had the way that they spoke about As I was reading about them both in your booklet as well, I was just trying to do some research on it.

You know, in Hong Kong you had this concept of a Cat three film where if you got into Cat three, it was difficult to break in to kind of more mainstream filmmaking.

And in the States that was the adult film industry.

There's not a lot of people that transition from pornography to mainstream and they it had that similar vibe in the way people spook about horror in the.

Yeah, I mean, you're right about that.

But also in a way, Indian film industry is like the Italian film in industry, where you can have some people that showed up and say a Franco soft core film and then and then acted with Fellini, you know it.

It goes back and forth like that, and the same with I mean just solely offsop subject like l Morricone.

You know, he's classic classic composer.

He scored anything, sure, soft porn, you do that.

He would do monster films, he would do westerns, blah blah, blah blah.

And Indian actors are like that as well.

Some of them are very big and they show up in some newer some of the non horror films.

But you're right, a lot of the people were sadly stuck in the horror films, but they made some money off of it and they had fun with it.

I guess.

Yeah.

I mean, if you don't have to be a part of Bollywood or Hollywood or Hollywood or Hollywood like, if you're making money, then it's working, right.

Yeah, that's the whole thing.

And it's the Indian film industry is basically run by producers.

Like over here, we think directors have you know, all the power and stuff like that, and actually actually is the producers that do.

Because you know, event Horizon was shredded by the producers and the new version of the thing, which had I guess a bunch of CG that was added later over the practical effects by producers.

Same thing in India.

You if a producer has to really really like an idea, and when you make a movie, if it bombs, you don't get paid.

So a lot of this is that's the thing in India.

You get paid after a movie is released, depending on how good the movie is.

Interesting, But they the Ramses are fascinating to me though, because they kind of they just built They just sort of you know, they didn't use unions, they didn't they didn't go through the typical systems.

They just I think my favorite story you said you mentioned in the in the book that I believe is they just gave a copy of the Five Seeds of Cinematography to one of the sons and Joseph Masseli, and then they just went out and they made they just read the book and then learn how to shoot a movie.

And then one of them learned how to be music and like you know, they just sort of the family just kind of got together, like we're gonna make our own little mini industry here.

Well, yeah, it's almost like the in the sixties and seventies, all the companies that made movies for drive ins.

You had people that had that did everything.

It's not like you said, it's not like unionized like it is today.

And and you know, the end credits have ten thousand people's names on it.

You know, there were people like the Ramsey family that you know, there was only five people in their crew, like early Herzog movies, but there are only five people shooting it.

He only had what three people shooting Nosferatu, and a lot of it was him doing the handheld so amazing.

With Virana.

Is there any like little bits about the censorship that you could shed some light on, because this is one that was cut quite a bit, right.

Yes, it languished in the censor heuro for about three years, and a lot of the cuts they used to used to be able to go online and go to the Indian Censorship Board and used to be able to download what was cut from movies.

You know, two seconds of the woman's thigh, We don't like that.

Cut it, a little too much blood squirting out of the head.

Cut it.

We don't like the scene here because you can see the side of the boob too much.

Cut it.

Ran I had a lot lot of cuts like that because it was probably one of the most sexual of the Ramsey brother films, because you had a female monster, like you said, like a succubus.

All the other monsters in the Ramsey movies were you know, male monsters and macho monsters.

She was She used her sexuality and really, uh you know, tore people up because of it.

And they edited a lot of those sort of scenes out and because of her, a lot of the film industry in the nineties and early two thousands, especially by directors, really low budget directors, they call them Grade C directors like Conti Shaw and people.

There main monsters were women because that's that brings the sexuality into it.

And it's all because of Urana.

And I really can't tell you a lot of what was actually cut out, unlike I mean sometimes if you slow the movie down frame reaar frame, you can see where they probably cut something out that was sexy.

One of my favorite scenes where I had to slow the movie down was in one of the films called Doc Bungala, which is about a mummy.

The mummy is psychic energy and he blows people's heads up, but you don't really see the heads blowing up.

They must have done it, you know, like a scanner style.

They were impressed by scanner scanners, and they looked like they had a dummy.

This head it just exploded.

You only saw that in two frames if you slowed it down enough, because the editors I read, they said, you cannot have this in there.

Too much blood.

Just interesting.

I wonder the you know, Intremeo and Juliet, they have it to where it's a watermelon.

They show him in the head and then they quickly cut to a watermelon with a smiley face and blow it up.

Maybe you would need something like that to get a best sense.

Oh yeah, yeah.

Uh.

What's interesting though now is their version of Netflix and Amazon Prime and a couple of the other streaming services.

You can now have nudity and blood galore in those things because because there since they're a broadcast broadcasting, they don't go through the film industry.

They have their own little thing to go through.

And although now they're trying to pass laws to get rid of a butt, you know, try to make them a little more tame.

But if you watch some of the Indian TV shows in the past five or six years, there's there's nudity, there's a lot of sex, there's blood, which doesn't bother me at all.

But you know, it's really.

Interesting though, because the president is Modi, right, the guy's name I believe is Modi.

He's a pretty conservative guy.

So it's interesting that in his regime there's that stream, I guess just because they're basically finding a loophole in the laws to go.

And also you got to understand that India what has like twenty four states, and each of them have their own language and culture.

It's like if we are here in the US and you know, Ohio spoke a different language than somebody in Wisconsin, a totally different culture.

If you have somebody who's like the President says, well, I don't like what they're doing in Ohio, but in Wisconsin it's okay.

It's not going to fly because the people in Ohio will be doing their own stuff.

And in India it's kind of like that too.

Mody Modi can be up there and he is maybe would be controversial.

He's a really hateful guy.

He's very anti Muslim.

He also stokes us, yeah nationalists, Hindu nationalists against Christians against It's just, you know, it's sort of like our politics in.

A way, and not to get too deep into that, just to say, it's interesting that that service is coming up with a fairly conservative regime.

And but I guess that's maybe that loophole vi close.

So if you want to go see in the Annunity, go get by the services quickly.

Before now we're going to talk about Indian nudity and films back in the basically eighties and nineties, a little bit in the early two thousands, A lot of the films when they were shown to street theaters like tent theaters and stuff like that for the poor people and stuff like that, a lot of the films actually had pornography edited into him while they're being right before the film gets shown, they take a reel they edit in like the monster having sex with somebody or doing something like that, and then the audiences went crazy.

They love that sort of stuff interesting, but that was the only way you can get sexy stuff in movies, and a lot of the Grade A directors hated them because they're like, oh, that's awful, But I mean, that's there was.

I don't think there was any scenes like that in Parana or Parana Men Deer, or really any of the any of the Ramsey brother films.

I don't think there were any introductions like that.

But when you get to some of the other directors that were Grade B or Grade C directors, that was their bread and butter.

It's putting those sexy scenes and stuff and having people pay a lot of money to see interesting.

Well, I guess that does lead us into nineteen eighty four's Parana Men Dear.

This is just number four in the set, and this one fairly different movie overall from Virana.

Obviously, why don't you tell us about this one too.

Well Deer.

Like what Chris said earlier, it was one of those horror films that that was like the fourth biggest grosser of that year for the film Indian film industry, at least for Bollywood.

Dear, it is it's probably their most competent movie.

I'd say, uh, it has even though it rips off you know, two other movies.

It it is the plot is a little bit easier to follow, ye a less subplots.

The comedy in it is it's okay.

It's not like amazing, but it's okay.

Uh.

And it and it features this care called Samari, which was the evil Wizard and he is a sort of a horror icon.

Now for a lot of people look back in the eighties and they think about horror films, they think about Samary.

It was a it was a major blockbuster.

This uh, this movie is kind of crazy because it has a little bit of everything.

Oh, very much a kitchen sink type movie.

I mean lots of martial arts type scenes.

They call it Masala masalas, whereas you know, spices, you put spices, tons of different spices in something.

So yeah, you're gonna have kung fu in it, and really bad kung fu.

I mean it's I don't know that guy.

That guy is kind of a heart thrub.

He's a he's a you know, I feel like he should have had a sub career.

Well, I mean maybe he does, because he's in over one hundred and fifty movies.

But I mean he was you know, he had a good presence on the screen, even though they choreography probably wasn't you know, it's not up to the Hong Kong level.

But he had a good presence as a hero.

You know, he had that kind of the way they shot him.

He just looked big and he was particular, and you believed he was going to kind of, you know, be a hero.

Yes, Yeah, he had a pretty good career.

And it's I don't know what else to say about Prana man Diero other than that it's good.

It also produced some some music that they like to recycle over and over and over and all their other movies and TV shows.

The opening theme is like a sort of opening theme went back to Verana, so like in Vana, it was it was created, but it got really overused in Parana Mandior and all the other ones after that.

It's a good theme.

They used it for their Z horror show.

Their TV TV show had like a one hundred and fifty episodes or something like that.

Yeah.

The big thing for me watching this one is just how appreciative I am for like the location shooting there are so many beautiful places that they just had the wonderful fortune of let's just stand in front of this gorgeous temple and get some amazing shots.

And a lot of them were basically temples that were on sort of like somebody's property, because a lot of the temples aren't aren't owned by the government or anything.

They actually can be on people's property.

So they got to shoot in those.

They got to shoot in a couple ma halls, which are mansions you just you know, pay a little bit of money, stay there with your crew, pick out the scenes you want to do, you know, do everything within three days or something.

In this hotel, in this mansion, shoot everything on just basically on those on that ground.

And yeah, it's there's a lot of different beautiful scenes in it.

I mean, Gang Ramsey, the guy who's the cinematography, took this, took this film and really outdid himself on a lot of the stuff.

He's sometimes called the Mario Bava of Indian horror films because it's gorgeous, gorgeous to watch.

Last half hour, particularly for me, was a favorite, like that's where all the horror really rams up.

And man, did they love their fire in this movie.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's one good way to get rid of monsters and anything as a fire.

I mean, they took that whole thing with the Frankenstein monster being scared of torches and just went wild with it.

You know.

I feel like in my mind, you know, one of the other movies they made is called Perani Haveli more like anted House Honted Mansion kind of, and for me, like that one leaned a little bit too heavy into the love story.

I felt like they just sort of, I don't know, it kind of took me out of it a little bit.

This one, I feel like the reason it was the most successful, I'd probably also call it my favorite.

I just I feel like they just got the balance of every thing right, Like it was just they It did have a lot of randomness in it, but they were just kind of they kept moving along the story like there was They didn't have any huge detours in Parana Mender.

I felt like it was just you know, when they introduced a character, they very quickly brought them back into the story, and there wasn't there wasn't too many sort of you know what's it called, like where whiplash, where you're just kind of going back and forth.

So that's to me, that's what I would you know, not that you directed the question to me, Ryan, but that to me, like, that's almost where I would tell people to start if they're interested in getting into like the Ramsies, because it just feels like the easiest transition into like this Indian style of movie making where you're not having you know, you're having to pay so much attention just to keep up.

You can kind of just relax into the movie and let it, let it happen at least.

And that's sort of like the eighties style well in it.

Then the nineties changed everything and then it got wilder sometimes after that.

But yeah, Brana man Deir, it's also Yeah, it's the most cohesive, like you said, the cohesive of the films.

It's also just very well done.

Like there's so many pretty visuals.

I mean, even like the monster or villain here is actually one of the more effective from what I've seen from some of the Bollywood stuff.

It's it's actually creepy.

It's done in a way that doesn't feel cheesy or like quickly or under budget or anything like that.

It's really well put together.

They spent time with the cinematography in this one.

A lot of the early ones they really didn't, but this they really pushed, pushed the envelope and it created a very, like I said, a very memorable monster.

In fact, that there was another film called Samary three D, which was their three their three D movie they tried to do a three D movie, didn't work very well, but this character in this movie was called Sammary even though he had nothing what's thewever to do with the other one, And that's how they tried to bring an audiences by just mentioning that this one monster, which was a good monster by the way, he killed all the bad people, which people just didn't you know, they weren't into that.

But it was kind of rip off because people expected to see Samary.

It didn't happen, but they not only the.

Bad guy ran, which is I agree, it was awesome, but they also do this interesting thing in Toronto, man dear, where there's like this community of people that are staying close and kind of you know, because the whole thing takes place in an old mansion or old temple that's been functionally deserted by the family.

And then it kind of goes forward to two hundred years to where they're living in the city and it's you know, bad things start to happen, so they have to go back to that temple or that how and figure out what's going on.

And there's a group of people that are kind of staying in that area and almost like protecting the house, and they are all having some sort of disfigurement and they're kind of these ambiguous characters where you're not sure if they're bad guys or good guys or and I think they that tension carries on pretty well, and it was I don't know, I made the movie interesting, like there was another layer there where you're trying to kind of figure out how they fit in and who they're helping.

And I thought there was again the random thing they threw in.

But it was the tightest script.

Yeah, everything everything, Like you said, there was very little leftover.

Tim, Thank you so much for your time today.

Recently, over the last year, I was able to work on getting you involved in something else.

I really wanted to let people know that this is still happening, because the title was kind of soft announced a little while ago and people are still asking for it.

You did the commentary The Devil's Sword, which is upcoming Blu ray release from Terror Vision.

Thanks for doing that for us.

Oh it was fun and and man, Indonesian names are a nightmare to try to pronounce.

I had a hard time with a lot of this because, I mean I wrote about the Indonesian films before, so but I didn't have to speak out loud.

I mean, I'm like a scholar where you just sit and you write things, and you don't, you know, up in front of people and tell them.

You go, you know, this is Joe Schmo blah blah blah.

But I had a hard time.

I had a really hard time on that on that commentary.

Well, I'm excited for people to see it.

I know, I've had a lot of people asking me if it's still happening, and you're you're gonna round out a really great package and can't wait for people to get their hands on it.

Oh cool, I mean, that's it's a really cool film.

I mean, just watch for the Cyclops.

That's what I'm gonna tell you.

Watch for the Cyclops.

It's it is.

It may look like paper mache, but you know, maybe monster, Maybe there are some monsters that look like paper mache or look like Hello Kitty or something like that.

Those are the monsters out there, sort of like killer clowns, poles, space.

Uh, tim Anything else about Bollywood or Purana Mandir or Viverana you'd like to share with our listeners today.

With Bollywood, do you have to understand that each each estate has their own cinema Like guys mentioned before, and at that time when these movies came out, there were other horror films that came out in the state of Kerala which produced some beautiful movies, beautiful horror films.

They're just weird horror films.

But in Verana, yeah, I think Vana and Prana Mandir would be the best double header that you would have to watch.

I think maybe I think they've been able to do the chapters where you can actually skip skip some of the comedy if you hit the butt forward button.

I think it goes past a little bit past the comedy to get through that most Oh yeah, yeah, that was That was the first time I ever watched an Indian horror film.

And I sat there and I was going, oh, this is pretty good.

And then they cut to like somebody a pie fighting scene or something and and it's like you sit there going like, wait a second, what's happening.

I mean, I didn't mind the musical numbers, but like you said, at least in Verana and Pana Mendar, it is not as bad as in Mahakal.

That one's really bad.

I have a hard time getting through that movie.

It took me two times.

Two times of watching it.

They actually go all the way to the end, which I found was pretty anti climatic.

But you know, Chris, anything else you'd like to share with the listeners today, No, I.

Think you said something Ryan early on that I wanted to make sure we highlighted, which is the amount of research and thought that went into that booklet.

I just want to really call out and I want to draw people to kind of whatever you want to have them look at in your work, because I like the way you write, I like the way you speak.

It's academic without being boring.

Like I think you have a nice voice in the way that you approach this work, and you tend to really celebrate it, which is nice that there are some pure academics that it feels like they hate it even when they're kind of getting into the history of it.

But you're I don't know, you have a nice way in the way that you speak, in the way that you write.

It makes it fun to read.

And it's like that's like I said, I've been writing since the seventies on horror films and it's always been that sort of thing.

I mean, why, you know, if I'm going to tell somebody there's a really shitty scene in a movie, I'm going to tell them it's a really shitty scene, even if the movie's classic.

Yeah, and writing about Indian film is a really fun thing.

Was that I knew very little about them, unlike writing about Japanese films, just Spanish films I grew up watching.

I knew all that crap.

It took a lot of research to do that, and especially in this booklet when I had to try to piece together history right of it and where it led sort of led up to the Ramsey brothers, and you had the Ramsey Brothers basically dominating the horror scene for almost a decade before before the new the New crew came in, Likealvarma.

I guess last thoughts, any thoughts on the like the modern movement of Indian cinema, Like suddenly you know, obviously r R was a huge hit, but it seems like we're getting more and more theatrical showings in the US.

We're getting more attention to these.

Netflix is actually carrying quite a lot of the titles.

There was actually a couple of really good Uh there was a really cheesy rip off of Evil Dead that was on to be to B shows.

Occasionally they show Indian horror films.

The reason why I think a lot of these movies are opening up over here more and more in the past ten years is that the population of South Asian population has grown, especially around here, but there's thirty miles from here, there's a really big population of Indian Indian families, and of course there's a theater there.

It's something that's just becoming more universal too.

I think people aren't scared of watching them as much as if they saw it in the nineteen eighties.

And I think a lot of that has to do with the Internet and that people can or can be exposed to different cultures without being terrified of what the hell they're watching.

Yeah, yeah, I'm really excited for that.

I'm excited for more of these subtitles.

That's a big thing for a lot of people.

It's something to be great.

There's a I would love to put together a box set of the South Asian director called Baby A Baby that's his name, but he was the Ramsey Brothers sort of Kerala of Southern cinema, and he put together some really cool films those I would love to see.

In fact, I was when I was in Kerala recently.

I was supposed going to talk to Baby Died a couple of years ago, but his brother owns the rights to it, so I was going to go and probably talk to his brother, but that didn't happen because it's really hard to talk to Indian producers about films because they went so much money upfront.

And that's why there weren't that many Indian horror films on streaming on channels like Netflix and stuff until the past couple of years when interesting, Yeah, and just they just decided to bring the prices down, I guess.

And now there's just there's just so many good ones out there.

There's a good one called Tombod from twenty eighteen.

It's actually really good.

It's a really folklore based horror film, doesn't have comedy in it doesn't have musical numbers in it to speak of.

It's just straight ahead, really good, almost like Italian in a way.

But it's a good film and it's based off of folklore like Chris was interested in.

It's that's a that's good.

There's a bunch of films out there nowadays.

You could watch don't tell anybody, I got a bootleg of that about three feet from me right now.

Okay, that's okay.

I got a director, I got a director screener from somebody from a from a streaming service.

We will not mention that it's very popular.

Well again, the whole basis for this whole coveration today was the Ramsey House of Horror's Bollywood Horror box set from Monto Micabre.

And the hard part here is we are a couple of years after the original release now, so this is sold out at a lot of the common retailers like Grindhouse Video and Diabolic and Orbit.

Amazon still has some.

They are inflating the price a little bit.

It's up to like one hundred and sixty dollars at the moment.

But if you remember the last episode with Jared, he did say he had a small amount that he was gonna be able to list on the website in the near future, so keep an eye on that.

It should be back for around one twenty.

Ish, I think.

And also, there aren't any Ramsey Brothers that I know of Ramsey films on Netflix.

There aren't any on Amazon Prime or two B there are all the other Indian horror films.

So to be able to watch these movies, you're going to probably buy the box set, which is cheaper in the run, because if you try to buy the CDs or DVDs that Monda macappro released back in the nineties, they cast up to two hundred dollars apiece.

Now, so plus you got really nice, cleaned up films.

Yeah, and you got my inane introductions to these movies.

And there's so many extra bonus features.

A friend of mine, Sanda Shanoy, who runs Bollywood Crypt, he was able to get a hold of about five or six actors that were in Verona and Parana Mandir and interviewed him and also the comedian a couple of comedians the interviewed.

I mean, his interviews really spice up this box set as well.

I gonna say, well, appreciate that again.

Thanks for your time today, Tim.

This has been awesome to be able to have your your words speak on these.

Okay, hopefully I wasn't too you know, some one place are talking.

I can ramble.

You did absolutely great.

I'm sure people are gonna love this.

Thank you all for listening.

We will get another episode out in about a month where'll be covering two more mon Macabro titles.

We'll do what we can to get those announced in the description of this episode, and we will look forward to seeing you for that one.

In the meantime, have a good month and we'll see you then.

Okay, see you like guys later.

Thank you, Thank you, Tim Yeah o May.

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