Melodrama Love Story, Ghost Story and Film Noir with gripping obsessed love and with a Fantastic soundtrack
from Kemchand Prakash and beautiful lyrics from Jarchavi Nakshab. Just wondrous and with a dreamlike quality.

Yes, the long-shot scenes has got toy miniatures for houses and the backgrounds clearly are backcloths with very
visible seams, and (nearly) everything was made in a studio. There's some stiff acting too, young Madhubala just
reads her lines and Ashok Kumar acts in a wide eyed silent movie vein ... and the defence lawyer in the courtroom
scene overacts wildly (did he win the Filmfare worst actor award?).
Also this DVD edition was an abomination, with a blurred out logo (from an old VHS copy maybe?), pisspoor
picture quality and with an awful hissing soundtrack, it's a shame that a classic like this won't get properly restored
and released in a better release (or, is there a high quality dvd or blu-ray release of this gem somewhere?).

BUT, don't worry, this small things don't deter this film from being a Masterpiece at all. Not at all. Ashok Kumar's
acting suits this hallucinating film perfectly as this film is emotionally Unhinged and has got that strange and hard to
define thing to it - it has got a tremendous PULSE and intensity that just get to you. It nails you to your chair.
In this noirish film, the feeling i get is that if the US 1930-1940's B-studio genius Edgar G. Ulmer would have had
an indian brother, director Kamal Amrohi could've been that man

Screen Legend Madhubala, 16 years old

The Music, the dancing

Actually i have to confess that i haven't seen that many older Bollywood films, but the one's i've seen as Mahal,
Mother India and C.I.D. have been truly great and with a sensational quality to it's soundtrack, lyrics and the
performance of the songs and dance numbers and maybe more exquisite than nowadays music/dance, with more
soul to it ? The Nightingale of India, Lata Mangeshkar had a Super HIT with the song Aayega Aane Wala from
Mahal which Madhubala sings/mimes to and every song in the film are great. There's the very sad song Main woh
hansi hoon ( ... i am the bride who never glowed with love) sung/mimed by Vijaylaxmi's role, the unfortunate Ranjala
(singer: Rajkumari Dubey) and there's the HYPNOTIC song/dance in the Mujra tradition (originating from Tawaif,
the courtesans during the Mughalera era and today performed mostly in Pakistan, Bangla Desh and northern India,
within the moslem culture sphere, wikipedia told me that anyway) -

Yeh Raat Phir Na Aayegi (or Chun Chun Gunguruva Baje Jhumba)

Those hand movements ...

The Haunting Sheela/Sheila Naik

When Ashok Kumar's Hari Shankar is visiting some Tawaif to get his mind of his obsession with supposed ghost
Kamini, they perform this beautiful piece ".... This night will not come again ..." and for me this song and dance number
are one of the highlights of the film. The music's written by Khemchand Prakash, the lyrics by Nakshab, the dancing is
performed by Sheela Naik and her singing by Rajkumari Dubey and the musician's singing by Zohrabai Ambalewali,
but i haven't been able to identify the woman playing the string instrument (Neelam, Kaneez or Zohrabai herself ?)

Who's the woman on the left ?

There's something about this dancing girl, her exquisite hand movements, her apparition that hypnotizes me, and the
beautiful music makes this my all time favourite song/dance number in indian film. Sheila Naik's dancing courtesan
feels more like an otherworldly apparition than Madhubala's Kamini to me. How could Hari resist her magic ?

Rajkumari Dubey and Zohrabai Ambalewali

I much prefer the natural voices of the singers to the artificial strangled cat style of Lata Mangeshkar, Bhosle and others
to come. It's a tragedy that the wonderful natural singing of artists like Rajkumari Dubey and Zohrabai Ambalewali
were obliterated from Bollywood film due to the exploding popularity of Mangeshkars nasal high-pitched singing.
During song/dance numbers when women sing with their strangled cat shrieking voices there are luckily often also
men singing in their natural voices. Sometimes, if one is lucky there's a female singer as Ila Arun in Choli ke peeche
kya hai ... that sings in a nice (if raspy in Ila's case) real female voice.

It's heartbreaking to read on Wikipedia that the popularity of Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bosle's new style of playback
singing ended the careers of Rajkumari and other old classical style playback singers, and that Rajkumari died in poverty

The Film - Welcome to the House of Ectoplasm

Close to Allahbad and the river Jamuna there's a house called Sangam Bhavan by the locals. Hari Shankar (Ashok Kumar)
the new owner through his father arrives and after waking the old servant up, he's told the tragic story connected to the
house. There once were/was (?) a loving couple there and a their great love affair ended in tragic death.
Hari sees an oil painting of the former owner, and it's him, Hari Shankar. He also sees a young beautiful woman that
appears and disappears mysteriously, the Ghost woman Kamini (Madhubala) and he quickly falls under her spell when
she calls him .... Oye, my beloved will come back. He's obsessed and willing to die to become her lover.
She's a wandering soul and to get her she needs to reborn, and for this a sacrifice is needed. A human sacrifice, and
Hari has to kill Asha, the daughter of the servant. Shrinath (Kanu Roy) a friend of the Shankars try to lure Hari away
from the house and the calling ghost woman.

Vijayalaxmi

In the second part of the film Hari has left the house and married to a woman chosen by his father, Ranjana (nicely played
by Vijayalaxmi). Hari know he's to get far away from The House, and they travel to exotic locations and in a strange scene
they visit some primitives in an unknown land (in asia somewhere or in some forgotten part of India?).
But Ranjana is an unhappy woman as Hari won't touch her (having sex) and she sings 2 very Sad Songs. When the clock
chimes 02.00 AM Hari hears the ectoplasmic siren calling him from faraway and he has to go to her. There's a twist ending
and i'm not sure this ESP 02.00 AM calling "Oye, my beloved will come back" got an explanation (?)

Some other editions of this Classic (there exist a lot of them as this film's in the public domain) and probably these below
are in better quality than the Eagle edition i've rewieved here

There's obsessed love, spooky stuff, beautiful songs, a cute flying fox and even a Bollywood court-room scene (a much
beloved feature in Bollywood films, and something appreciated besides cricket that the British left behind).
This film should be experienced in a better edition than this garbage DVD and i hope a restored copy is out there somewhere.
4:3 fullscreen black & white in hindi with english subs and an awful 5.1 track. A blurred out logo down right on the screen