The film begins two centuries in the past. Raja Harriman Singh is stranded near the Black Mountain when the wheel of one his carriages is broken,. While they wait for the wheel to be repaired, Hariman Singh’s daughter Rupali wanders off to explore the nearby deserted temple. There she is captured by the evil magician Samri. He sucks out her lifeforce, turning her eyes white as she dies. The Raja catches Samri and orders his death. The monster is decapitated, his body buried in one location and his head kept in another. That way, so it’s believed, he can never be brought back to life. Before he dies, Samri curses Harriman Singh, saying that every female member of his line will die in childbirth.

In the present day – the mid 1980s – a descendent of Harriman Singh is a successful businessman with a teenage daughter, Suman. She has a boyfriend, Sanjay of whom her father disapproves. She thinks it is because Sanjay is not of royal blood. Finally, he tells Suman of the family curse. He forbids Suman to see Sanjay again.

Suman persuades Sanjay and his friends to come with her to the ancient temple in the countryside where the head of Samri was buried. There, she believes, they will be able to lay the curse to rest and she and Sanjay will be free to have a relationship.

The most successful of the Ramsay’s many films, Purana Mandir is something of a legend in Indian film circles. It’s the movie that singlehandedly kicked off the brief mini boom in horror that swept through the Indian film business in the late 1980s. Then film benefits enormously from the performance of Anirudh Agarwal as Samri. He is an evil force of nature as he rampages through the film, determined to eliminate every last member of Harriman Singh’s family.

The film has some of the very best horror sequences in the entire Ramsay catalog and is a genuine tour-de force for all involved. An essential classic of Indian horror cinema.

- Brand new 4k transfer from film negative
- Digitally restored
- Introduction to the film by writer Tim Paxton

REVIEWS

“one of the best and most important examples of Hindi horror”
Films from the Far Reaches

“this is fabulously creepy cinema”
Dr. Ethan Lyon, Letterboxd

“a solid example of Bollywood horror cinema...
one of this genre’s best films” 10k Bullets