In the opening titles of Junoon someone is credited for “Thrills”.
I don’t know what that means, but it excited me a lot.
JUNOON
India, 1992, Mahesh Bhatt
It probably helps that I have a penchant for cheap unofficial remakes of American films by countries far from the United States, and Bollywood most certainly takes the cake in that category. Junoon‘s illegitimate inspiration comes from a classic of the horror genre, An American Werewolf in London, and it has just right amount of ludicrous originality to place it among the best Bollywood horror films around.
Perhaps the biggest difference between Junoon and its source material is the man behind its central monster. In American Werewolf, David doesn’t want to become a werewolf. He’s not a malicious character. He becomes an animal with no mind of his own. Vikram (Rahul Roy), Junoon‘s monster, is a gigantic piece of shit. A spoilt brat from the beginning, he only becomes worse once he’s inhabited by the ghost of a tiger. Which brings us to Junoon‘s other big difference.
Junoon does not feature a werewolf. Instead, we get a weretiger. And it’s not just a simple matter of a bite transferring a disease. Nope. Vikram is possessed by a tiger’s ghost, which creates serious difficulties for our heroes in dispatching the monster.
The weretiger is pretty inspired and allows for many Cat People-esque moments. Unfortunately, Vikram spends little time in the transitional stage between man and tiger. Instead of becoming a man-animal hybrid as seen in the vast majority of werewolf films, he simply becomes a tiger. Though we do get some pretty spectacular transformation scenes that apes American Werewolf nicely…
Our heroes are Dr. Neeta (Pooja Bhatt) — the doctor who nurses the wounded Vikram back to health — and her hunky beau Ravi (Avinash Wadhawan) — a wayward adult man who desperately wants some kind of career in the music industry (the subtitles were too convoluted to determine what role specifically he was after). The evil Vikram falls in love with Neeta and sets a murderous plan into effect. He strangles Ravi’s sickly father to death, which causes Ravi to leave town. With Ravi gone, Vikram swoops in to marry her. Yep, it’s that easy.
The married couple, much to grief-stricken Ravi’s dismay, head off on their honeymoon. But their romantic getaway is rudely interrupted by a feverish change in Vikram. Ignoring Neeta’s pleas, he tumbles out into the night, dancing and flirting with other girls. It’s not that he’s having second thoughts about his shotgun wedding, it’s a full moon, which means tiger transformation and murder and occasional musical interludes! Ravi and Neeta must team up with Forest Officer Bhaskar Inamdar (Homi Wadia) to uncover the truth and put a stop to Vikram’s rampage.
It was quite a surprise after Junoon‘s end credits rolled to find that the film had run for over two hours. This sort of length to be expected from a Bollywood film, but unlike most, Junoon shoots by at a fairly fast pace. An action packed sequence towards the end is particularly exciting and hilarious as Ravi and Vikram battle to the death. At one point, Ravi throws a rib cage at a sweat-smeared, growling Vikram. This madcap finale takes place in a smoke filled cave filled with pulpy set design and decoration. The sets, props and effects are cheap but they come with their own unique charm.
The songs are not particularly disruptive and sometimes even play a role in telling the story. While musical numbers are a constant source of complaint when it comes to Bollywood films, it’s hard not to appreciate the absurdity of a sleazy song and dance sequence segueing into a stalk and slash sequence. Personally, I love the uneasy mix of genres.
The performances, though not particularly remarkable, are rather good with well cast actors. Avinash Wadhawan’s Ravi is a sleazy but lovable protagonist. Pooja Bhatt’s Neeta, despite her speedy disastrous marriage, is surprisingly independent. Rahul Roy is the highlight as the outrageously villainous Vikram. I love how pumped he is to turn into a tiger.
There’s some fantastic side characters too. Mushtaq Khan plays a blubbering tribesman who is constantly on the verge of a nervous, shouty breakdown. His death scene is fucking hilarious.
The enjoyment you take from Junoon will depend on your tolerance for Bollywood films. If you can’t handle a bloated running time, disjointed editing, insane musical tangents, or nose-rubbing in place of kissing, you won’t last through to its end credits. If, however, you have an appreciation for the mad world of Indian cinema and genre-mashing, Junoon is up there with the best. Sure, it takes much of its narrative and visual cues from other films and its score is essentially the theme from Cape Fear on loop, but the shameless poaching is half the fun. I never found myself bored, not even for a moment. Junoon is entertaining schlock from start to finish.
Availability:
Junoon has a whole lot of DVD and VCD releases. I’m not sure what’s a bootleg and what’s not, but this release from Eagle has subtitles. Unfortunately, it seems pretty hard to come by.
