Purani Haveli (English translation: “Old Castle”) is a 1989 Hindi Indian horror film produced and directed by the Ramsay brothers. It stars Deepak Parashar and Amita Nangia. The soundtrack was composed by Ajit Singh.
A young couple, Raja (Anil Dhawan) and Rita (Priti Sapru), are driving through a dense forest at night. Tired and sleepy, they decide to stop for the night, and find a haveli(mansion) nearby. They fall asleep in the outskirts of the mansion. Around midnight, the husband awakes all of a sudden and gets up to investigate. Then a horrible monster (Manik Irani) attacks him. His wife wakes up hearing him scream and they are both killed by the monster. An old man Narendra (Narendra Nath) suddenly appears, a bit too late but eventually traps the monster in an underground cage and attaches a cross to the latch to keep him from escaping…
“When the horror element in the film finally kicks in it does so reasonably effectively. An unusual feature is the extensive use of Christian symbols to combat the monster. The horror works because the Ramsays use the method they use with every other element in their films – total excess. They throw in every horror movie cliche. You get shadows and fog, you get thunder and lightning, you get mysteriously slamming doors, statues coming to life. And you not only get all these things, you get them all in vast quantities.” Cult Movie Reviews
” … equal parts horror and comedy film. The film loses its momentum every time it shifts from horror to comedy. Also the bulk of the comedy scenes are a secondary plot that feels more like padding than actually adding any substance to the film’s main plot about a young woman with a sizable inheritance and the cursed mansion in which the bulk of the story takes place. The film’s pacing doesn’t help things out as the film just meanders along until its bizarre ending.” 10k Bullets
“The man-monster is truly horrific and an excellent example of a well-realized traditional effects job. Keep in mind that American horror cinema was beginning its reliance on computer trickery at this point, so Purani Haveli’s old school scares are even more impressive. The film’s ending is extremely well executed and could hold its own against any of its horror contemporaries from other nations. The ending chase sequence is evocative of the climaxes seen in the slasher genre…” Shocking Images
Buy Veerana + Purani Haveli on Mondo Macabro DVD from Amazon.com
