Robert Eggers’s version of the German silent horror masterpiece Nosferatu will be out in India on January 10. The new Nosferatu stars Bill Skarsgard as the vampire Orlok, Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult and Aaron-Taylor Johnson.
The original Nosferatu, directed by FW Murnau in 1922, was an unacknowledged adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula. A prime example of German Expressionistic cinema, Murnau’s Nosferatu was also one of the most influential horror films ever made, inspiring numerous filmmakers – including some in India.
It is often believed that the blood-sucking undead are a Western import. Mithuraaj Dhusiya points out in his book Indian Horror Cinema (En)gendering the Monstrous (2019) that although blood-sucking monsters have always been present in Indian myths and folklore, what we call vetaal and brahmapurusha are different from their Western counterparts.
For starters, the Indian variants don’t have an aristocratic background like Dracula, but are rooted in religious folklore and occult practices. For example, the Vetaal spirit, popular due to the Vetala Panchavimshati stories, finds himself along with the king Vikramaditya in conflict with a godman.
The first proper vampire film made in the subcontinent emerged in Pakistan. Khwaja Sarfaz’s cult film Zinda Laash from 1967 draws heavily from Stoker’s novel as well as the 1958 British production Dracula. Rehan’s performance as the menacing vampire is celebrated by fans of the genre.
While set in Pakistan, Zinda Laash retains the Gothic atmosphere of its inspiration. The scientist Tabani becomes a vampire while attempting to discover the elixir of life. Zinda Laash is noteworthy for representing female sexual desire.
For India, 1979 can be considered a breakthrough year for vampire cinema. Two Hindi movies came out this year.
Nazar Khan’s Shaitan Mujrim uses several tropes associated with vampire films, including Dracula’s brides, while also borrowing from Frankenstein. A doctor (Madan Puri) in search of immortality revives a dead man (Dev Kumar), but the revivified man becomes a bloodthirsty creature.
The revived man’s twin brother John (Dev Kumar again) uses the monster to conduct illegal activities at the doctor’s house. Things look bleak until a Rajesh Khanna lookalike (Rakesh Khanna) saves the day.
SU Syed’s Bhayaanak stars Mithun Chakraborty as the avenging hero alongside Ranjita, Nilu Phule and Sadhu Agashe. A zamindar family gets involved in the vampire business on their guru’s advice. The family is instructed to propitiate a folk goddess with blood for 501 moonless nights in order to obtain treasure. After Vijay’s wife is killed, he seeks revenge.
Shaitan Mujrim and Bhayaanak aren’t pure vampire films. Shaitan Mujrim highlights the misuse of science to create a bloodthirsty creature, while the vampires in Bhayaanak are born out of superstition. Bhayanaak also alludes to the oppressive nature of landlords, who are shown as figurative and literal bloodsuckers.
In Our Vampires, Ourselves (1997), Nina Auerbach writes that vampires go wherever there is power. When the genre was developing, British vampires dominated the scene. Once the United States became a superpower, most of the vampires appear to have moved there.
Vampires can also represent colonisers or oppressors with limitless powers. Numerous films rely on the exploitation of women as a narrative device.
In Vinod Talwar’s Wohi Bhayanak Raat (1989), a copy of Fright Night, a vampire (Kiran Kumar) takes revenge on the princess who got him killed. He waits for 300 years to find a body and, in order to maintain his vigour and appearance, feeds on women.
The Ramsay brothers’ Bandh Darwaza (1990) follows a similar theme. The vampire Nevla preys on young women, alongside mating with his own offspring.
Although these films were commercial successes, they did little to popularise vampires in mainstream Bollywood. Vampires survived in ultratrashy productions, which often inserted sexually explicit scenes into A-rated horror films. The examples include Harinam Singh’s Khooni Dracula (1992) and Shaitani Dracula (2006), Salim Suma’s Son of Dracula (1999) and Bhoosan Lal’s Dracula (1999).
In Khooni Dracula, Amrit Pal plays a contract killer whose mode of payment is the blood of his mostly female targets. In Shaitani Dracula, Harinam Singh himself plays the title character, who must deal with a group of young people who arrive in the remote village where he is hiding.
In Bhoosan Lal’s Dracula, a group of people searching for hidden treasure mistakenly enter Dracula’s lair. A subplot revolves around Dracula’s conflict with a woman who had wronged him years ago. The cast includes prominent actors such as Kiran Kumar, Sadashiv Ampurkar and Mohan Joshi.
The most guilty-pleasure watch among this lot is Son of Dracula, which is a bizarre exercise of perversity and bad filmmaking. A ghoul, after seeing a powerful thakur (Joginder) sexually assault women, sends his witches after him. One of the witches seduces the thakur and gives birth to … Son of Dracula.
This monster looks like a miniature version of the original Nosferatu. His mission is to take revenge on the thakur and his depraved sons.
Indian vampire films include productions beyond Hindi. Parimal Bhattacharya’s Nishi Trishna (1989) – Bengali cinema’s first vampire film – stars Prosenjit Chatterjee and Moonmoon Sen. The vampire here has its roots in rural Bengal, and is a creation of a flubbed occult ceremony.
Malayalam vampire movies include A Vincent’s Vayanadan Thamban (1978), starring Kamaal Haasan, and P Chandrakumar’s Fright Night remake Kalpana House (1989).
Hindi-language horror films have recently seen a revival with the huge success of Stree 2 and Munjya. Ayushmann Khurrana stars in the upcoming vampire-themed Thama – whose box office performance might decide the fate of such movies.
Given the current political climate, it will be interesting to see if Indian movies use the vampire device to express dissent or protest, something that Bhediya (2022) did by alluding to the need for environmental conservation in the garb of a werewolf film. More importantly, as vampires continue to thrive in popular culture worldwide, our vampires too need to go global with their localness.
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A mad scientist, a vampire and willing victims in cross-border hit ‘Zinda Laash’
