This unheralded little production from the early 80's is quite possibly one of the finest horror films yet to emerge from Bollywood. The film focuses on a small middle class, well educated South Indian family that is having to come to terms with some financial difficulties and is in the process of tightening the financial belt in order to provide the kids with a decent education and the oldies a comfy retirement.

At the head of the family is Dr. Lagoo who is fortunate to have inherited a large tract of land from his father. At the beginning of the film a solemn Lagoo arrives at his ancestral lands to an adoring faithful servant who is overjoyed at welcoming the chhota sahib to his lands. The servant shows him around the lands, proudly displaying the trees and the fields that he has lovingly cultivated over a lifetime of devotion. Then Lagoo stuns the servant by informing him that he has sold the land to a soap manufacturing factory and that in weeks all his beloved trees and fields are to be levelled and replaced by a monstrous concrete and metal giant. The servant, Baswa is incensed and later that night goes into a rabid diatribe against what he considers is the rape of his mother - the land. He is outraged by the very thought that a man could "sell his own mother" for financial gain and he goes into a total frenzy about the impending arrival of the soap factory. He seethes in a rage over the "rape of the land" and promises to devote himself to rectifying the situation and overturning this terrible outrage.

Lagoo leaves the next morning, not realizing what a devastating effect his decision to sell the land has had on Baswa and many of the other inhabitants of the Lagoo's former lands. Time moves on by a handful of years and we see that Lagoo lives happily in his new Bangalore home with his typically traditional goodie-two-shoes wife and his two young children Anant Naag who is just out of college and young school going daughter Uma (Padmini Kolhapure). They appear to be a contented, well-respected family without any serious problems in life. The kids consist of a bright young son who has good prospects as well as a charming steady girlfriend and a chirpy, cute young daughter who tops in her class and has a winning personality. Lagoo runs his business from his city office a little bit like he runs his own house; with an iron fist and little time for democratic discussion. His lovely wife is the typical long-suffering doormat of a traditional eastern woman with her typically superstitious beliefs and customs and her complete reliance on religion for every explanation in life. Her husband conversely has no time for what he considers to be utter mumbo jumbo.

There is a gradual change in the young girl's personality and she begins to lose her sparkle and appear glum, moody and sullen. Her report card from school indicates a serious drop in performance and interest levels and she complains of fatigue and painful eyes and a sore head. The first half hour of the film is a gradual build up of tension where the audience is expecting the worst but nothing actually happens. Then Uma suffers her first fit where she seems to take on an alien personality and starts speaking in a strange masculine voice recounting bizarre tales of injustice. The parents remain baffled despite trips to the medical experts and while the father is insistent on discovering scientific, logical explanations, the child's mother turns to spiritualism and traditional religious "priests" to find the reason for her daughters torment. These differences begin to tear the family apart and then finally a bombshell is dropped by young Uma in one of her fits when she accuses her father of being a murderer and a lecherous womaniser who not only deprived his old servant Baswa his beloved land but had also sullied his wife in an afternoon romp that had left her pregnant and disgraced. Later, Baswa's wife committed suicide in the local well due to her tangle with Lagoo.

The family begins to crack under the strain of the daughter's increasingly alarming condition as well as the burden of these dark secrets that are dragged out into the open. Anant Naag and his mother seek spiritual help for Uma but are duped by two successive quacks, one who uses the child's condition to extract as much cash as possible from them, and the other (played by Amrish Puri) who tries to use the daughter to reincarnate his own evil devi. However its third time lucky as the family servant brings along a saintly priest who finally does appear to make some progress in coming to grips with the situation. When Padmini seems to be cured, a disillusioned son goes off to the ancestral grounds to try to find Baswa only to find that he has been dead for a while. However he does find his answer in a chilling final scene when Basma's tormented, vengeful spirit returns once again and reveals exactly why it was that he chose to wreak havoc on Lagoo's family.

This film is remarkable among Bollywood horror films for its sheer subtlety and lack of typical hackneyed horror techniques that are such the hallmark of the genre. This is perhaps the only tale of possession that doesn't involve spinning heads, levitation scenes, flying vomit and objects and the like. Though it is similar to The Exorcist in that the target of an evil, disgruntled spirit is a young school going pubescent girl, that is really where the similarity ends. Gehrayee eschews cheap horror thrills and relies on its gripping plot and excellent performances to make it work. There are no insufferable comedians (like Jagdeep, Rajendranath, Satish Shah) to endure this time around and nor are there cheesy gore or special effects. Padmini Kolhapure is brilliant as Uma. She may not have been a traditional beauty but what she lacked in bombshell looks, she made up for with heaps of delightful charm and natural spontaneity. After Jaya Bhaduri retired, Padmini stepped in to fill the vacuum with the same good-natured wholesome, infectious free spirit. In Gehrayee, Padmini turns in a remarkable performance especially considering she was barely 12 in reality. She is totally natural as the kid slowly taken over by an evil spirit, never self conscious or overwrought. It's a superb performance by an actress who deserves to be remembered as one of Bollywood's finest performers of the 80's.

Dr. Lagoo is also fairly restrained and doesn't thankfully resort to the horrendous hamming that began to badly affect his roles shortly afterwards. Anant Naag, who made a name for himself in Benegal's Ankur, also performs well as does Indrani Mukherji as the wife/mother. Rita Bhaduri makes a brief but memorable appearance. Full marks to the director for having the courage to refuse the cheap, loud gimmickry that is virtually inherent in the genre. Gehrayee is a stylish, excellently acted, intriguing film that works on various levels; about a young girl experiencing the confusion of puberty, a family struggling under the strain of its dark secrets, the authoritarian father as well as the more obvious story about the disgruntled spirit and the rape of the land as well as tradition methods pitted against modern science and education. Gehrayee is truly an exceptional Bollywood horror film.

www.tropechopf.ch     Kitsch & Kult aus Asien