CINEMA

A new short horror film from the maker of Daddy

ashim-ahluwalia A still from the movie

Gentry, a wicked circus agent from the American circus corporation and his conflicted assistant arrive at a strange old palace in the jungles of Sunderbans in 1913 Bengal. They are here to buy "freaks" and "marvels of nature" for The Ringling Brothers, one of the largest American circuses in the 19th and 20th century. But this one time, Gentry's insatiable greed for physically deformed humans to serve as props for live entertainment dangerously misfires. This is the premise of Palace of Horrors where filmmaker Ashim Ahluwalia (director of Miss Lovely, Daddy) goes behind the morbid fascination with freakshows in European and American circuses to sculpt a chillingly evocative horror film which emulates the tone and tenor of black-and-white ethnographic films of colonial times.

Palace of Horrors is part of a feature film anthology The Field Guide to Evil which has brought together eight most exciting filmmakers from Austria, Germany, Greece, Norway, India, Poland, Turkey and the United States to illumine shadowy folk tales rooted in horror and psychological disquiet. In the run-up to the release of the film at the prestigious South by Southwest Festival in Texas on March 16, Ahluwalia talks about the fantasy of the oriental savage, old wives' tales from rural India and why he prefers horror films from filmmakers who don’t generally make horror.

Can you tell us about the folk tales you have referenced in your segment (Palace of Horrors) of The Field Guide to Evil, the folklore-inspired horror anthology feature? Where did you first hear about them?

I was keen to make something gothic, like a forgotten H.P. Lovecraft story set in the jungles of Bengal. So on one hand, Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe were huge influences. But, on the other, I wanted a very strong Indian tone. I spoke to folklorists that had been collecting local occult tales. There were scary bits of old wives tales I found interesting. There is a story about this ghost town of Kuldhara in Rajasthan, and another, where this lunatic king cuts his body parts off one by one, causing his family and courtiers to abandon him. I started combining elements, and decided to make it from the point of view of these two British colonial characters that come looking for things to exploit in India, and things just go horribly wrong.

Ashim-Ahluwalia Ashim Ahluwalia

Last year the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus closed after 146 years. Their last performance was in May. The final act of "The Greatest Show on Earth" had something to do with the making of the film?

I didn’t know that! P.T. Barnum started promoting human novelties he called "freaks" in his travelling circus around 1835 and that continued after his death with the Ringling Brothers who bought his circus. Typical features would be physically strange humans, such as those uncommonly large or small or people with weird diseases and disorders. From the FeeJee Mermaid to Siamese twins Chang and Eng Bunker, Barnum presented individuals who would shock the public. What many people don’t realise is that Barnum's exploitation of his so-called freaks was deeply connected to colonial culture of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many were amassed, against their will, from the colonies. So, in my film, I imagined two circus agents who come to India in pursuit of freaks to take back for their European circus.

The film is made in the format of black and white ethnographic documentaries and travelogues of the pre-Independence era. As a filmmaker, how do you locate the element of terror in these films made with a colonial perspective?

Those films were made at a time when the British were riding around on elephants, being carried by natives, going into the jungle, exoticising their colonies—they created this fantasy of the oriental savage, and that allowed the European to appear “civilised” in comparison, to justify their widespread loot and plunder. So it just felt natural to make a colonial horror film, especially as an Indian filmmaker thinking back on that period.

The main character is a circus agent, HB Gentry, whose job is to locate the most freakish thing he can find and take it back to Europe to monetise it. “We have money, we will pay” — that is the modus operandi. But, of course, you can’t just excavate anything and take it back. In this case, the consequences are truly terrible. The colonial era is just perfect for a horror film!

Why are horror films so focused on evoking a "reaction"? How would like to reinvent the genre for Indian cinema? How can they be made more inventive and idiosyncratic?

Not all horror films do that. Shock tactics get boring after a while. I prefer stranger, dream-like horror films. I’m more interested in filmmakers who don’t generally make horror films but have dabbled in the genre. David Lynch’s The Elephant Man or Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock are both mysterious and disturbing films. I find horror to be a very cinematic genre. The whole idea of tension is built into the structure. Somebody walking with a lantern into darkness, into the unknown, whether there is someone there or not, what we can’t see we start to imagine… I like films that don’t let you sleep, films that are so unresolved that they haunt you for days afterwards.

Which are some of the most terrifying horror films you have seen?

John Carpenter’s The Thing, Dario Argento’s Suspiria, David Cronenberg’s The Brood, Polanski’s Repulsion, Kubrick’s The Shining. Of the contemporary films, probably Lucile Hadžihalilović’s Innocence. It’s one of those that leave you sleepless.

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