Nevla as Dracula: Figurations of the Tantric as Monster in the Hindi Horror Film

Abstract

Shyam and Tulsi Ramsay’s 1990 film Bandh Darwaza (Closed Door/Crypt) is often described as the Indian version of the Dracula story,1 and indeed the central character and principal monster, Nevla, physically resembles Dracula—with his black cloak, long fingernails, and vampiric fangs. He sucks blood, leaving marks on his victims’ necks; is afraid of the sun; prowls at night; and sleeps all day in a coffin. However, this “Indian Dracula” is also a folk healer, who unlike Bram Stoker’s Count, lives in a cave on the “Black Mountain” amid a coterie of followers. Other than broad allusions to Dracula, Bandh Darwaza does not take any narrative elements from Stoker’s novel, or from the many Western film adaptations thereof. Rather, it situates its vampire protagonist in an entirely different narrative-scape involving black magic, incest, and possession, circulating in the process, multiple descriptions of Nevla—as sorcerer, folk healer, vampire, and tantric. While clad in western clothes, Nevla is figured as a tantric through his practice of the “black arts” and his cohort, which is composed of women and men in black robes, including a “priest” figure with a trident, all of which function as filmic signifiers of a popular perception of Tantrism. The tantric is, in fact, a recurrent figure in Indian horror films, with a customary blurring of the line between mystic and monster, resulting in a depiction of the tantric variously—but always as a figure inspiring dread—as witch doctor, medium, shaman, exorcist, and black magician.

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