Khooni Dracula is an utterly atrocious excuse of a movie that perfectly illustrates the level to which Bollywood Horror has plunged over the last decade or so. The movie’s production values are virtually nil with bit comedian Birbal being the only “star” name that anyone would have recognized - they couldn’t even afford an Anil Dhawan or a Navin Nischal or even a Deepak Parashar.

CLICK ON THE ABOVE IMAGE TO WATCH A CLIP OF KHOONI DRACULA

To even attempt to explain the “plot” of this disaster of a movie is flattering it considerably, however for the record its basically about an evil fat uncle who rapes and then murders his maid having had a little too much to drink one dark stormy night. The blood that flows from the maids wounds somehow flows into the waiting mouth of Dracula who by coincidence is buried directly below her. This reawakens the ghastly rubber faced Dracula who proceeds to behave rather like a bottled genie in that he is now the slave of his murderous fat master. And so this heinous blimp sends his rubber-faced assassin to murder and rape upon his command. The film is basically a series of cheaply staged set pieces involving some dowdy women disrobing in order to have their beauty baths. Time and again some ugly, squat, plain Jane takes her clothes off – well almost as according to these movies, all desi women bathe with their clothes on – and the audience is treated to numerous shots of underwear and close ups of stretch marked bums and the like. Rubber face Dracula has a penchant for turning up when the nubile young things are disrobed and proceeds to feel them up heartily before plunging his rubber teeth into their leathery skin.

There are various sub plots that are drawn together by the Dracula crisis. There is wastrel of a brother whose family is starving while he idles his time away playing cards with his loutish friends. However one lecture from sis reforms him and he strides purposefully thereafter though still without luck on the job front. There is the heroic young police officer who is determined to stop the Khooni Dracula but relies heavily on his girlfriend’s encyclopaedic knowledge about “Dracula’s” in order to lay his trap. There is the ruthless, evil and fat uncle who harbours a dark secret and is the man who is responsible for a long list of deaths of young bathing beauties all over the land. And then there is the Khooni Dracula himself – a sight for sore eyes, wandering around in his ridiculous rubber mask, flowing black robe and rather distinguished if a little moth eaten black top hat. The shining white slip-on shoes are certainly in keeping with the rather fashionable image he has created for himself.

This film has no redeeming features other than a quite brilliant theme song that has been incorporated into the film at those moments when old rubber face is on the prowl. The lyrics of the song are quite superb and the tune itself is also fairly mesmerizing. It’s good to see that our Khooni Dracula is a man of taste as he is seen wearing rather stylish White slip-ons while chasing around for some frumpy bathing maid in some low income part of town. The acting by the entire cast is an embarrassment and it doesn’t come as much of a surprise that none of the cast has been heard of ever since this movie was released. The songs too are putrid though there is one quite stunningly cheap “kudiye” party number where the “youngsters” are letting off some steam at one of the cheapest looking parties ever before Khooni Dracula gatecrashes and spoils the fun. Bollywood horror doesn’t really get much lower than this though this is certainly no worse than the equally dreadful work of notoriously tawdry directors like Jitendra Chawda for example.

KD is so utterly cheap and tacky that one could almost mistake it a Lollywood Pashto film – only that the girls are minute compared to the healthy girls employed in the Pashto movies. KD is utterly devoid of any merit (other than the theme song) and is so utterly atrocious that the mind boggles as to whom actually watches these films out of choice? Other than sick, twisted, warped individuals like ourselves. The sheer dreadfulness of this movie and others of a similar ilk is quite stunning – and then one discovers that films as this rock bottom stinker actually do rake in the bucks. No wonder horror films get a bad name – this is little more than an excuse to show a bit of rather unattractive naked flesh.

Awful, lamentable and truly wretched – the question is, can Bollywood horror get any worse (answer: Yes….just try watching something by Jitendra Chawda and friends)