BANDH DARWAZA
(Closed Door)
dir. Shyam and Tulsi Ramsay, 1990.
India. 145 mins.
In Hindi with English Subs.

SUNDAY, MARCH 2 – 5 PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 7 – MIDNIGHT
TUESDAY, MARCH 11 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, MARCH 18 – 10 PM

In 1984’s breakthrough hit PURANA MANDIR, the Ramsays found their monster in Anirudh Agarwal, a six-foot-five civil engineer with a pituitary tumor and a face seemingly carved out of granite. “They didn’t even need to put make-up on me,” he would later reflect to the BBC. Agarwal returns here for his other great Ramsay monster role, as a caped and fanged bat demon fed a steady diet of maidens by a coven of familiars. Like all Dracula stories a meditation on taboo desire and repression, much of BANDH DARWAZA is given over to a love triangle, between a temptress — who had been promised to the demon before her conception by her infertile mother — and the couple she tries to come between, even intruding on their love duets.