Chudail No.1, released in 1999 is a perfect example of the type of product that hammered the last few nails in the coffin of Bollywood horror movies. It is an unrelentingly awful piece of filmmaking and has not even a shred of a redeeming feature worth mentioning.

The film starts off on the obligatory dark, stormy night when we see a Bimbo wearing a microscopic mini skirt sitting at home all dressed up and nowhere to go. The Bimbette seems irritated by the crank calls that she starts to receive but what seems like the typical pervert actually turns out to be a criminal desperate to get his hands on an incriminating file that is in Bimbette’s daddy’s possession as he is the local police boss. Bimbette refuses to relent but when she is shown her podgy dad about to be beheaded by his captors she decides to try to seek the file. Sadly she doesn’t succeed in locating it and as in the famous opening scene from Scream from which this dreadful opening scene is pilfered, she watches in horror as her Dad (in Scream it was the boyfriend) has his throat brutally slashed.

The terror mounts as Bimbette tries to flee but her attempts are in vain as she is surrounded by a posse of podgy, greasy goons who proceed to “satisfy their animal lust” before proceeding to slaughter her as well. It’s a dismal start to what promises to be a truly horrendous experience - and things only get from dreadful to worse in the two interminable hours that follow.

The acting is in keeping with the production values – rock bottom, sub kitchen sink trash. The veteran villains Ishrat Ali and co try to play it with a deadpan seriousness, no doubt duped by the producers into believing they had Oscar winning/career reviving roles. Everything about the film is a total embarrassment, from the script, the acting, the music, the production values, the dialogues…everything about it simply stinks.

It's films such as these that were the death of the horror boom that the Ramsay’s Mohan Bhakri and Vinod Talwar had helped to create (and destroy with overkill?). It’s hardly surprising that none of the main cast was ever seen on film ever again – a dismal, woeful lot of not so young wannabe’s adding to the embarrassment that this abomination of a film is – another slur “Dhabba” on the honour “izzat” of South Asian horror.

This one doesn’t even come close to making the grade as one of those movies that is so bad that it’s good. This one is plainly hideous and the one character who displays some serious camp potential amidst the dross is sadly wasted. Had the highly camp, almost transsexual grease ball cum villain Iqbal had a larger role, or even the lead role perhaps the film would have been an altogether different story. However the charming Iqbal appears in only a handful of short scenes and one is left wondering what might have been. His character was the one remotely memorable aspect of an otherwise dreadful waste of time. Good also to see veteran Raj Kiran in good form playing a commissioner. Avoid Chudail No.1 like the plague and stick with plain Chudail instead.