Seeing Things: Spectral Materialities of Bombay Horror

In 1980s India, the Ramsay Brothers and other filmmakers produced a wave of horror movies about soul-sucking witches, knife-wielding psychopaths, and dark-caped vampires. Seeing Things is about the sudden cuts, botched makeup effects, continuity errors, and celluloid damage found in these movies. Kartik Nair reads such "failures" as clues to the conditions in which the films were made, censored, and seen, offering a view from below of the world's largest film culture. By combining close analysis with extensive archival research and original interviews, Seeing Things reveals the spectral materialities informing the genre's haunted houses, grotesque bodies, and graphic violence.

ISBN-13: 9780520392281

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: University of California Press

Publication Date: 02-13-2024

Pages: 304

Series: South Asia Across the Disciplines

Kartik Nair is Assistant Professor of Film Studies in the Department of Film and Media Arts at Temple University.

Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgments 

Introduction: Accidental Exposures 

1. Paper Cuts: Inside the Bureaucratic Encounter with Darwaza 
2. Celluloid Splatter: The Graphic Violence of Jaani Dushman 
3. Unsettling Design: Built Atmosphere in Purana Mandir 
4. Making Monsters: Veerana and the Craft of Excess 
5. Hidden Circuits: Kabrastan from Film to Videotape 

Epilogue: An Archive of Failures 

Notes 
Bibliography 
Index 
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