Hisss (2010)

Once the movie has ended (if you have managed to actually watch it till it ends) the only thing anybody would say is: “what the hell was that?!”

Perhaps the fact that Hisss has an international female director created high expectations from the movie. Also, we were excited to see Mallika back on Bollywood screens after her surprising success in Hollywood. Finally, if you have a beautiful woman shedding clothes after every few seconds, quite a lot of people are bound to be looking forward to watching the movie out of curiosity.

Therefore it’s no surprise that the movie actually generated 6 crores on its opening weekend at the box office. But one thing has been reinstated by these results: Box office reports are rubbish. Hisss has proven to be a walking talking disaster, and anyone who has been brave enough to watch it till the very end needs to be given a medal of honour.

The plot itself isn’t so silly, therefore we won’t be so hard on the script writer. However, the director and the script writer are both the same. We are still trying to figure out what Jennifer Chambers Lynch was thinking.

The story revolves around a snake, who turns into a woman after her lover is captured in the jungle. She infiltrates the city to find the American, George States, who had kidnapped her mate. This man himself has brain cancer, and believes old myths which say that the nagin (Mallika Sherawat) has powerful venom which can help cure his disease.

In an attempt to lure her into his web, he kidnaps her mate from the jungle itself. What unfolds in the movie is how she follows him into the city, to find her love, and to seek vengeance.

Doesn’t sound so bad right? In fact, it sounds quite interesting; It actually sounds like a tragic love story. But don’t be fooled, the movie instead is an unnecessarily gruesome horror/thriller flick. Don’t watch it while eating food.

Hisss is filled with unnecessary rape scenes and bloodshed. Without exaggeration, there is blood in every scene, whether it has anything to do with the nagin or not. Everybody seems to be bleeding all the time!
Then there is lack of acting skills displayed by the prominent characters in the story. The American, (Jeff Doucette) is a monster in the movie. He is torturing and slaughtering everyone and everything that comes his way. Unfortunately, he can’t act.  We don’t think he has cancer in the movie, he looks like a psychologically handicapped person.

Plus he seems to enter a Star Plus land, where he is thinking to himself in his broken down Urdu (it’s weird that even when is thinking in his mind, he is thinking in Urdu even though he can barely speak the language properly. But during the movie, he is screaming and hurling abusive words in English to his servants.) We understand that maybe it was to capture the Indian audience that doesn’t understand English. But then, why put English sentences at all? It all seemed highly unrealistic
Plus Irfan Khan looked like he kept forgetting his dialogues. The man is a brilliant actor, and has done some amazing performances such as the one in Slumdog Millionaire, and The Namesake. Then why can’t he act as an Indian police officer, which is the most clichéd role in all of Bollywood?

Finally, the star of the show: Ms Mallika herself. She has done nothing in the movie, except not wear clothes and look possessed. We aren’t kidding; the nudity has been turned up a notch. Okay, so she is a snake who doesn’t know anything about human rituals, but then the nudity could have been tastefully done.  Instead, there are scenes where you are taken by surprise and are almost embarrassed to look back at the screen.

The movie has been edited poorly. They have tried to run two, three stories simultaneously to build up the plot, but all they managed to build up was confusion. First 30 minutes, and you aren’t sure which story to follow. Finally everything links up in the end in the most unrealistic and impossible way.

The movie will definitely have people laughing at the blatant absurdity of everything! There is nothing in the script or the acting that was normal. We are surprised that there is so much money in Bollywood to be wasted away like this.

Another thought that crossed our minds was that maybe this is a parody; maybe this isn’t the real thing. How could the directors overlook how silly everything was? Maybe that’s why the director has actually disowned the movie. When in the history of film-making has a director disowned his own movie?

Jennifer claims that the movie looks like a horror movie instead of the epic love story she wanted to make.
Apparently, the producer is to be blamed for this. The ‘original’ movie that was shot by Jennifer herself was much different from what the producer, Govind Menon, made it look like in the end.

Even though the movie has already received some extremely harsh criticism from critics, Hisss is being considered a hit. Mallika Sherawat claims that the ‘younger generation’ has appreciated her, and it doesn’t matter what the critics say. Sorry Mallika, but that isn’t true. Some of the critics and media people are from the younger generation too, and even they think the movie was rubbish.

We wouldn’t recommend anyone to watch this. The only thing you’ll get is a bunch of nightmares – Manal Faheem Khan

Rating:- 1 out of 5

Cast and Production Credits

Year – 2010, Genre – Horror / Thriller, Country – India, Language – Hindi, Producer – Vikram Singh, Govind Menon, William Sees Keenan Director – Jennifer Lynch, Music Director – Anu Malik, David Kushner, Panjabi MC, Alexander Von Bubenheim, Craig Nobles, Julian Lennon, Cast - Irrfan Khan, Mallika Sherawat, Divya Dutta, Jeff Douchette

The complicated tale takes many twists and turns, with innumerable sub-plots. The pre-credit sequence, set in the distant past and filmed with a delicate blue filter, shows a royal entourage passing through wild countryside. They stop to repair a broken carriage wheel. In a sequence reminis­cent of Mario Bava’s classic Black Sunday, the raja’s wife wan­ders off to a nearby deserted mansion, wreathed in mists. There she is attacked by an evil tantric magician, who kills people by sucking out their eyes. The raja’s men capture and behead him, but not before he has had time to lay a curse on them. The magician’s head is then put in a box and walled up in the mansion.

Years pass. One of the raja’s descendants is a rich busi­nessman with an attractive young daughter. He seems insanely protective of her, refusing to allow her to see boys. Finally, he tells her about the ancient curse. In a flashback we see its results. After giving birth to the girl, her mother turned into a hideous monster. This is the fate for all female members of the raja’s line.

Naturally upset, the girl runs away with her current beau, determined to find the source of the curse and put an end to it. Their search leads to the old house. Behind a por­trait of the raja, who is the double of her father, they find the chamber with the monster’s head. It’s not long before the head is reunited with the body and the evil tantric goes on the rampage. The boyfriend eventually saves the day, destroying the monster with a holy trident, symbol of Shiva, the destroyer in the Hindu trinity.

Purana Mandir was released on 19 October 1984, and set an all-time record for first week grosses at several Bombay cinemas. To date it has been the biggest earner of all the Ramsays’ films. There are several reasons for its success. For a start, it consolidated all the elements of their previous movies: the theme of the ancient curse carried on into the present day; the journey back to the countryside to confront the evil; the use of
atmospheric locations; and the youthful hero and heroine. The fact that here they are a boy and girl forbidden to have sex was a powerful point of identification for the film’s young, largely rural, audience. The comedy sequences were also better integrated than in some of the Ramsays’ previous films. For the first time an indigenous style of horror film had been forged — influenced by the West, but with an internal logic that made sense only in India.

Distributors clamored for more of the same and the team swung into overdrive. The demand for product led to more of the Ramsay brothers venturing into directing. Keshu, whose behind-the-scenes work had added so much to Purana Mondir’s success, debuted the following year with Haveli (The Mansion). Kiran, formerly in charge of the sound department, followed with Shaitani Ilaaka (Devil’s Domain).

Purana Mandir made horror much more of a commer­cial proposition than ever before. Other directors and pro­ducers began to look with envy at the film’s grosses as report­ed in the weekly Trade Guide Information. The industry was going through one of its worst crises and, suddenly horror films, cheaply made and with a sure-fire audience, looked like a safe bet.

Cast and Production Credits

Year - 1984, Genre – Horror, Country -India, Language – Hindi, Producer(s) - Kanta Ramsay, Director -Tulsi Ramsay, Music Director – Ajit Singh, Cast - Aarti Gupta, Puneet Isaar, Mohnish Behl, Binny Rai, Sadashiv Amrapurkar, Pradeep Kumar, Dheeraj Kumar, Leena Das, Jagdeep