Skip to content

Month: March 2021

Published on

Plot: horror-loving girl fights vampires with the help of a celebrity author.

For nearly 40 years the hallowed house of Ramsay - Bollywood’s own seven-headed low-budget horror monstrosity - held a long tradition of aping popular American properties and reimagining them for Hindi sensibilities and catering to the retrograde and regressive tastes of low-end grindhouses in rural villages. The Ramsays never shied away from dousing their productions in blood and they were in the habit of casting beautiful young women. They were the force behind illustrious classics as Darwaza (1978), Saboot (1980), Purana Mandir (1984), Tahkhana (1986), Purani Haveli (1989), Veerana (1988), Bandh Darwaza (1990), and Mahakaal (1994). If Shyam Ramsay’s Neighbours: They Are Vampires (simply Neighbours hereafter) is indication of anything, it’s that little to nothing has changed in the intervening three decades since their 1980s heyday. Shyam Ramsay would direct Gentayangan (2018) some four years later with a no-name cast and to little fanfare. It would also prove to be his swansong. The curtain did not fall over the house of Ramsay in some grandiloquent fashion. Instead the brothers went into the night in quiet resignation and humiliating defeat. The world had moved on. Without them.

Was everything the brothers seven produced a classic? Well, no – but they picked up on trends albeit usually about a decade later. They responded to the gothic horror revival from the early-to-mid seventies with Purana Mandir (1984) and Purani Haveli (1989), they paid tribute to the work of Mario Bava with Veerana (1988). They even went as far as to do an unofficial A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) remake with Mahakaal (1994). Mexico and Indonesia got there earlier with Trampa Infernal (1989) and Srigala (1981), respectively but at least the Ramsays had the good sense to make it half as crazy and about twice as cheap. Neighbours, for those not in the know, is the brothers illicit remake of American horror sub-classic Fright Night (1985). While it follows the Tom Holland original quite faithfully and some details have been altered to better suit Indian cultural sensibilities. The biggest change is that it gender-swaps the leads which leads to some interesting problems and gender dynamics that the original didn’t have. There’s also enough blood, fangs and implied nudity to put it on par with the average Renato Polselli or José Ramón Larraz romp. Allegedly Neighbours was intended as a throwback to the erotic horror of yore but suffice to say it never quite succeeds. However, all things considered Neighbours works well enough as a regional reimagining of Fright Night (1985). The old Ramsay formula is given a contemporary make-over but the old ills are still very present…

In Kulbatta, a suburb of Mumbai, one of the last surviving vampires Kapalika (Roushika Reikhi, as Rushika Reikhi) has settled down. Forest officer Vikrant (Gavie Chahal), a Shiv Bhakt, almost falls for her dance of seduction but is beset by ominous looking monks after spotting a black mark on her back. He’s able to ward off Kapalika by burning an Om symbol on her forehead and not much later reducing her to ashes by unleashing his amulet’s mystic powers. From the foliage watches her Master (Arbaaz Ali Khan) who vows to resurrect Kapalika’s spirit and avenge her slaying. In the city horror-obsessed teen Sanam Chopra (Hritu Dudani, as Hritu) gets an invitation to meet her novelist idol professor Malhotra Indernath (Shakti Kapoor) when modeling for her photographer boyfriend Karan (Sunny Singh) one day. Meanwhile in another part of the city Tanya (Roushika Reikhi, as Rushika Reikhi), who turns out to be Vikrant’s sister, experiences a punctured tire. The Master comes to her rescue and takes her to his studio apartment opposite of Sanam’s building. There he engages in a ritual summoning of Kapalika’s spirit who possesses the body of Tanya. She relays her story to professor Indernath and his assistant Sweety (Kirti Vaidya, as Kirti Vaidhya). The two initially brush off Sanam’s mad ravings about vampires as product of a fertile imagination. Sanam’s jock friend Aryan (Rufy Khan, as Rufe Khan) takes an interest in Sweety and when she’s vampirized Sanam, the professor, and her friends join forces to cast Kapalika and the Master back into the darkness from whence they came…

While this sounds like the trusty old “good girl fights evil” plot ubiquitous in horror cinema the gender-swapping of the leads creates some interesting problems. This being India, and this being a Ramsay production, the possibility of Sanam being a woman with determination and agency was nil. Sanam from the beginning is introduced as the nominal hero of the piece, but she’s as passive and immobile as female love interests were in Ramsay features thirty years ago. Springing to her rescue at every turn is her boyfriend Karan. In Fright Night (1985) the main character’s love interest was pretty much a nonentity and had no weight from a narrative standpoint. Here Karan is the most upwardly mobile and pro-active of the entire group. Sanam, to her everlasting detriment, usually stands around, scared out of her wits, waiting patiently to be rescued. This is a good time as any to talk about the duality of how women are portrayed here. Kapalika, Tanya, and Sweety all are given some, or multiple, things to do and possess a degree of agency that Sanam doesn’t. It makes you wonder why. The Ramsays have a long history of ripping off poster art, and here it's Disturbia (2007) that very blatantly gets the treatment. Which sort of makes sense as Neighbours rips that one off about as much as Fright Night (1985).

All Christian iconography has been replaced by their Indian counterparts, and the sacred Om (ॐ) symbol features prominently in several scenes. The vampires here will be familiar to European - and American audiences and for a change they bear no meaningful resemblance to the bhoot or bhut of popular Indian folklore. The bhoot is far closer to the Chinese ghost than to the Hungarian-Romanian nosferatu that Roushika Reikhi portrays here. The most interesting thing about Reikhi’s character is that they decided to name her Kapalika. The Kāpālikas (“skull bearers”) were a small sect of Shaivite (devotees of Shiva) ascetics prominent in India from the 8th through the 13th century. They differed from the more respectable Brahmin household of the Saiva Siddhanta in that they engaged in esoteric rituals including meat-eating, intoxication, and sometimes cannibalism. It’s exactly the kind of thing you’d expect of a Hindi horror production, even in the modern age, to be rife with religious superstition.

Since no A-list Bollywood superstar would be caught redhanded appearing in a Ramsay production (pretty much like it was in the olden days), Neighbours has to content itself with lesser stars as Hritu Dudani, Roushika Reikhi, and Kirti Vaidya. The Ramsays taste in women was always impeccable and they gave the world hourglass-figured wonders as Jasmin, Sahila Chaddha, Archana Puran Singh, and Aarti Gupta. Even sometime Shah Rukh Khan muse Juhi Chawla cut her teeth with the Ramsays. Never in a thousand years would Rani Mukherjee, Kajol, Vidya Balan, Deepika Padukone, or Preity Zinta ponder the thought of lowering themselves to cheap exploitative dross like this. Neighbours is at least custodian to one funny running gag where everybody keeps mistaking Hritu for Priyanka Chopra (not-yet Jonas) and, admittedly, the resemblance is striking. Just like Chopra Dudani has those wide eyes that women of this part of the world are known and loved for. Hritu has survived her foray into the strange world of the Ramsay pretty much unscathed while Roushika Reikhi and Kirti Vaidya remain to prosper in their own ways. Reikhi has done commercials with Shah Rukh Khan and Hritik Roshan. In a just world Reikhi and Vaidya would be cast in a Krrish (2006) sequel or a Shah Rukh Khan production. Dudani found work in television afterwards but, as of this writing, has not acted in anything since 2019. Roushika Reikhi has since moved bases to Australia where she found steady employment in television as a beloved host of live events. We’re unsure what became of Kirti Vaidya but she too seems to have survived her brush with Ramsay mostly intact.

Back in the day the only real competition the house of Ramsay had were Mohan Bhakri and Vinod Talwar while these days they have an entire new generation of horror filmmakers to compete with. While it doesn’t lack in blood and sensuality Neighbours never quite manages to get as beguilingly strange as some of the greatest Spanish or Italian horror from the wicked and wild 1970s. Obviously there’s far better Bollywood horror to be had elsewhere. To make an imitation of an American property thirty years after the original is a difficult enough proposition under the best of circumstances, let alone to make one under India's repressive and restrictive cultural sensibilities and one of a different folkloric origin. In that respect you’ll have to respect Shyam Ramsay for at least attempting to do something like this. There were plenty of easier, local things to remake – yet he bravely chose to go for this instead. Does it live up to the brothers’ 80s output? Yeah, if very narrowly. The classic Ramsay output was slightly more unhinged than this. Neighbours is actually a cool little fright flick if you’re prepared to meet it halfway. That’s better than most.

Published on

Plot: mad scientist is making zombies out of natives on Caribbean island.

What is I Eat Your Skin if not gloriously lunkheaded and outrageously hilarious Florida drive-in hokum from the Sunshine State’s foremost specialist of such things, Del Tenney? Arriving too late to be of any importance in shaping the zombie mythology and harkening back to the halcyon days of Coleman Francis, Harold P. Warren, Herschell Gordon Lewis, and Ed Wood I Eat Your Skin was a relic of a bygone era even back in 1964. Surpassed only in sheer incompetence by William Girdler and J.G. Patterson Jr., Del Tenney had made a name for himself with The Curse of the Living Corpse (1964) and The Horror of Party Beach (1964). I Eat Your Skin was his first feature before his acting as an associate producer on the epic Terence Young ensemble disasterpiece Poppies Are Also Flowers (1966), only for it to be released some five years later. I Eat Your Skin is a relic remembered for all the wrong reasons and loved for all the right ones. Even Mortician seems to acknowledge as much. Not that that is a good barometer for anything, but even a broken clock is right twice a day.

I Eat Your Skin was filmed in and around Florida (South Beach, Miami and Key Biscayne, to name the most prominent) over a three-week period in 1964 on an estimated budget of $120,000 under the working title of Caribbean Adventure to hide from investors that it was a horror feature. Tenney had brokered a distribution deal with Twentieth Century Fox who stipulated that he use a union production crew or otherwise the deal would not be honoured. Tenney was none too happy with the elongated production schedule (a week longer than his usual two) and he would end up describing the union crew as, "slow and uncooperative." Second unit direction was handled by that other veteran of Florida exploitation bilge, William Grefé. That Tenney insisted on black-and-white all but ensured that the deal with Fox would not go through. Endearing in its naivité but brazen enough to be exploitative I Eat Your Skin never lives up to the promise of its premise. By 1964 filmmakers across genres were boldly charging forward and pushing the envelope on any number of fronts. I Eat Your Skin does or has none of that. As for more recently, a drive-in theater sign for it can be briefly seen in the long-delayed Orson Welles film The Other Side of the Wind (which began production in 1970 but wouldn’t see release until 2018) advertizing it alongside I Drink Your Blood (1970). As is age-old tradition, it’s our solemn duty to report that there is no, and will not be any, skin-eating whatsoever in I Eat Your Skin.

At the Fontainebleau resort in South Beach, Miami pulp novelist Tom Harris (William Joyce) is about to engage in his umpteenth poolside affair with a willing bikinied socialite (George-Ann Williamson). Just before Harris can put the moves on her and her irate husband can put hands on him Tom’s escorted away by his publicist Duncan Fairchild (Dan Stapleton) and his golddigger wife Coral (Betty Hyatt Linton). He's to embark on what’s to be an expedition to Voodoo Island in the Caribbean. There Harris is to research the native customs for his next best seller on the estate of European nobleman Lord Carrington. Having landed on the island Tom is attacked by a bug-eyed zombie but manages to escape intact thanks to an intervention by Charles Bentley (Walter Coy), the man in charge of overseeing the estate of the absent heir, and his armed posse. That evening Harris makes his acquaintance with Jeannie Biladeau (Heather Hewitt), the virginal daughter of scientist Dr. Auguste Biladeau (Robert Stanton). Biladeau informs him that the locals partake in rituals involving a plant-based narcotic that puts them in a zombie-like state. Plus, they descend from an earlier tribe who engaged in human sacrifice to appease their god, Papa Neybo. Apropos of nothing, Biladeau has been working in the jungle on a possible cure for cancer based upon snake venom. When Jeannie is kidnapped by the natives for a blood sacrifice to their god the question arises of who’s the graver threat: the superstitious savages and their tribal customs or the god-fearing man of science?

Make no mistake, this is the umpteenth 50s safari adventure enlivened slightly by golem-like zombies and mod-fabulous curvaceous bikini babes. Sporting a breezy soundtrack that is equal parts calypso as it is jazz I Eat Your Skin is about as schizophrenic as its score. Alternately obnoxious and exploitative it never quite manages to settle on a tone. While the suave playboy shtick was timely with the ascension of James Bond in popular culture the Fontainebleau opening feels like one of those bikini comedies with John Agar from a decade earlier. Not that it gets any better once the action moves to the Caribbean. Once there it becomes evident just how much of a relic of a bygone time I Eat Your Skin truly is. The Voodoo Island second half oozes Liane, Jungle Goddess (1956) from its every colonialist imperialist pore. Square-jawed males, mad science, racial stereotypes, and damsels-in-distress abound in cheapo fifties horror tradition. The zombie make-up is schintzy at best but not any worse than, say, Hammer’s The Plague of the Zombies (1966). I Eat Your Skin is not well remembered, and to the extent that it’s remembered at all is that it probably went on to inspire the much crazier Filipino, Spanish, and Italian variations of the form. For one, it’s a shlocky drive-in precursor to The Mad Doctor Of Blood Island (1968). The voodoo aspect would be further explored in Lucio Fulci’s Zombie (1979), and most of the plot would be kindly recycled in Zombie Holocaust (1980) and Jess Franco’s Devil Hunter (1980).

By the time it was finally released theatrically in 1971 I Eat Your Skin had been outdone in every respect by George A. Romero’s gritty Night of the Living Dead (1968) on the horror side of things. On the other hand by the time the Sexual Revolution of 1968 and the Summer Of Love rolled around it was a completely different time. A year later Top Sensation (1969) and Zeta One (1969) both capitalized on said newfound freedoms. The dawning of the seventies heralded the decade of free love and German, French, and Italian sex comedies were racier than I Eat Your Skin could ever hope to be. It was hopelessly chaste and charmingly old-fashioned by the de facto standard of the day - or even by the standards of 1964. That it was filmed in economic black-and-white probably didn’t help its case either. That it was paired with I Drink Your Blood (1970) (one of the most violent drive-in hits prior to the marquee year of 1972) by Jerry Gross (who paid Tenney $40,000 for the rights) for his Cinemation Industries’ infamous “Two Great Blood-Horrors to Rip-Out Your Guts!” drive-in double feature must have led to some interesting reactions. In the end I Eat Your Skin is barely remembered for anything other than its larger-than-life publicity campaign. Or that it was sampled by Mortician. You decide what’s more important…