Mahakaal - Bollywood's Mullet Haired Freddy Krueger!

The above image was taken from a movie that I just discovered (thanks to Rue Morgue Magazine #91) and am in fact currently watching/loving. It's a Bollywood ripoff of A Nightmare On Elm Street titled Mahakaal : The Monster, and it's probably the most fascinating and entertaining thing i've watched all year. How did it take me until 2009 to discover this gem from all the way back in 1993?!

My knowledge of Bollywood begins and ends with the notion that Bollywood is essentially the poor man's Hollywood. I'm sure it's not true, but the idea of Bollywood I have is that pretty much every movie that comes out of India is a total ripoff of a successful American film. And when I say ripoff, you can take that to the bank. Here is the plot of Mahakaal, straight from the back cover of the DVD :

A monster wearing a razor-fingered glove haunts the nightmares of poor Anita, but the imaginary terror becomes very real when one of Anita's friends falls victim to the ruthless and deadly creature.

As you can tell by the above image, this "deadly creature" also happens to have a burnt face and it also so happens that the burnt face is a result of one of the town parents killing the man years earlier when he found out he was fucking with small children. The flick even features the classic Elm Street theme, tweaked ever so slightly so that it sounds something like an Elm Street ringtone would sound on your phone. At least ya gotta give credit to Bollywood for not altering the material and pretending they came up with this shit on their own, eh?

I figured rather than bore you with a review of the film, which suffice to say every Elm Street fan MUST check out, i'd show you a couple clips so you can see just how similar the movie is to Craven's, with two specific clips that showcase it the best. Mahakaal is essentially the first few Elm Street's thrown together ; the falsely accused boyfriend being killed in his jail cell and the Freddy face peeling off scenes from Elm Street 1 are in there, the invisible Freddy glove fight from Part 4 is there, and even smaller details like the pole being shoved in Freddy's stomach (and then taken out by him) from part 3 are in the mix, among many others. But the two clips that stick out the most can be found below, side by side with the clips from the actual Elm Street flicks. Enjoy!

The bloody girl in a plastic sheet in the school hallway dream sequence from Elm Street 1 and the same scene from Mahakaal :



Both scenes go on to end the exact same way ; with the girls touching their arms to hot boiler room pipes and waking up screaming in the classroom.

And one of my favorite scenes from the franchise, the "wet dream" water bed kill from Dream Master side by side with the same scene from Mahakaal :



There's even a nice little Freddy Krueger meets Day of the Dead scene thrown into the pot!

Day of the Dead :



Mahakaal :



As with most things that are too good to be true, there is a bit of a catch that comes along with Mahakaal that I must warn you of. That catch being that this Bollywood song and dance version of Nightmare on Elm Street starring the Uncle Jesse haired Freddy Krueger (who doesn't speak, he only cackles like a retard) runs a whopping 2 hours and 12 minutes! But even if you're gonna be fast forwarding through the boring parts to the parts where Indian Freddy is in action, which I did, it's still completely worth you checking out if only so you can say you've seen it. This Bollywood remake of sorts is so fascinating that it simply must be seen. You can pick it up on Amazon (courtesy of a just released back in May double disc from Mondo Macabro), or you can give it a rent on Netflix. You can also check out the first five minutes of the flick on YouTube.