Purana Mandir: The Haunted Temple Blu-ray Review

Mondo Macabro

Blu-ray Release: November 11, 2025 (standalone edition; Ramsay House of Horrors collection was released January 31, 2023)

Video: 1.33:1/1080p/Color

Audio: Hindi DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono

Subtitles: English 

Run Time: 144:17

Directors: Shyam & Tulsi Ramsay

Note: Because I didn’t know for certain that I’d be sent any of the other solo discs from Mondo Macabro’s limited edition Ramsay House of Horrors: Bollywood Horror Collection, I kind of put all of my Ramsay Bros. and Bollywood horror research into my review of Veerana: Vengeance of the Vampire (1988). There will be a lot of overlap between that review and this one. Please don’t hold it against me. Thank you.

Two centuries ago, Raja Harimaan Singh’s daughter, Princess Rupali (Vishakha Chotu), was murdered by the evil magician Samri (Anirudh Agarwal). In the aftermath, Samri is captured, decapitated, and his body and head are buried in different locations to prevent his resurrection. With his dying breath, Samri curses the Raja’s family line. In the present day, Suman (Arti Gupta), the teenage daughter of a successful businessman, learns of her family’s curse and gathers up her friends to investigate the temple where Samri was supposedly buried.

The Hindi cinema scene, colloquially known as Bollywood, is typically remembered for light-hearted romantic musicals, historical melodramas (which are also often musicals), and thinly-disguised remakes of Hollywood hits. In truth, the region is among history’s most prolific movie machines and its output encompasses more or less every genre under the sun.

In the 1970s, horror had its Bollywood moment, in large part thanks to brothers Shyam & Tulsi Ramsay. Beginning with Tulsi’s second film, Two Yards Under the Ground (Indian: Do Gaz Zameen Ke Neeche, 1972) and following into their second film as a duo, Andhera (aka: Darkness, 1975), they perfected their template with 1984’s Purana Mandir (released on English language video as The Haunted Temple), which became their first big hit and granted them the financial and cultural caché to go all-in on horror, fostering a monopoly that lasted for two decades. 

The cult value of ‘80s Bollywood horror is found in its combination of familiar tropes and exotic trappings. The Ramsays developed a special brand of smoke-blanketed, color gel emblazoned maximalism that barred hallmarks of Gothic Hollywood and Hammer horror. Oftentimes, this is represented by cobweb-strewn mansions and piles of tacky furniture, but what really stands out here is the traditionally Indian architecture and religious iconography, which cinematographer Gangu Ramsay (another sibling) shoots to look like the medieval castles, tombs, and ossuaries of Roger Corman’s Poe movies.

It can be fun to play ‘spot the reference’ while watching a Ramsay Bros. film. Purana Mandir’s introductory flashback, for instance, really reminds me of similar medieval flashbacks seen in ‘70s Spanish horror films, like Carlos Aured’s Horror Rises from the Tomb (Spanish: El Espanto Surge de la Tumba, 1972) or Amando de Ossorio’s Tombs of the Blind Dead (Spanish: La noche del terror ciego, 1972). In addition, the prologue and plot seem to reference Mario Bava’s Black Sunday (Italian: La maschera del demonio, 1960), just with the antagonist’s gender flipped.

There are also visual references to Bava’s Black Sabbath (Italian: I tre volti della paura, 1963) and Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead (1981), and a comedic subplot borrowed in part from Sergio Leone westerns of all things, but the deepest cut is a bloody shower scene that the Bros. seem to have swiped from either Rod Hardy’s Thirst (1979) or Alvin Rakoff’s Death Ship (1980). Maybe both? And yet, there’s never any question that the Ramsays have made these images and ideas their own. No one would ever mistake one of their movies for anyone else’s.

Bollywood movies were sort of expected to be everything in one package, hence their epic lengths. For the price of a single movie, you could see a comedy, a romance (a surprisingly horny one in this case, given India’s censorship standards), an action movie, and a horror film, all in one, and hear the latest pop hits during a series of musical interludes. Purana Mandir is especially overpacked with tonal shifts and particularly disinterested in maintaining a consistent narrative. Like every Ramsay Bros. movie, it will test the patience of any audience raised on conventional horror, but can also prove enormously rewarding to those with an adventurous palette. And the time, of course.

Bibliography:

• The Beast From Bollywood: A History of the Indian Horror Film by Pete Tombs, published in Fear Without Frontiers: Horror Cinema Across the Globe, edited by Steven Jay Schneider (FAB Press, 2003)

Video

Purana Mandir first hit official North American home video via Mondo Macabro in 2006 as a double-feature DVD with another Ramsay horror film, Bandh Darwaza (1990). Mondo then released the first HD version in 2023 as part of their six-film Ramsay House of Horrors: Bollywood Horror Collection. This is the same disc, minus the other films and boxset booklet. The boxset’s original press release lists all of the new transfers as being 2K restorations of camera negatives. The solo release packaging corrects this (I believe), referring to full 4K restorations of the camera negatives. 

The opening title card warns us that film archives in India aren’t the greatest and that this 1.33:1, 1080p transfer has some condition issues. This is most obvious in the inconsistent color values throughout the darkest scenes (you’ll see some fluctuation into blue-grey territory), snowy grain throughout the smokiest set pieces, scratches, and some pretty substantial yellow stains (usually clearest during lighter sequences). I’ve tried to include screencaps that illustrate these particular artifacts.

Obviously, a glorious UltraHD, Dolby Vision makeover would be preferable, given cinematographer Gangu Ramsay’s use of vivid hues and elaborate textures, but I’d much rather Mondo produce a somewhat messy, thoroughly film-like transfer than a DNR’d mess. The colors are rich where it counts, dynamic range is relatively consistent, and, all things considered, the details are sharp. At the very least, it’s a sizable upgrade on those OOP DVDs. 

Audio

Purana Mandir is presented in its original Hindi mono and DTS-HD Master Audio sound. As I’ve noted before, I’m more or less a novice when it comes to Bollywood, but I assume that, like many of their Asian counterparts, these movies were largely shot without synced on-set sound and dubbed in post, explaining the lack of natural lip sync. This gives the entire mix a familiar artificial quality that is only magnified by how loudly all of the music is mixed. Effects work is limited and dialogue has a condensed quality that peaks at higher volumes, but, in spite of drowning everything else out, the singing, dancing, and non-diegetic tunes have decent separation and a lot of punch. 

I noticed that the subtitles dropped out during the sacrifice song towards the end of the film, but they come back as soon as the sequence is over.

Extras

• Introduction with Tim Paxton (4:07, HD) – The author of The Cinematic Art of Fantastic India (CreateSpace Independent, 2018) briefly gives his thoughts on the film and its status as an influential blockbuster. He claims that is a pseudo-remake of Will Cowan’s The Thing That Couldn’t Die (1958) and Aured’s Horror Rises from the Tomb, which makes me feel pretty smart about noticing similarities to the latter (I watched the intro after the film)

• Trailer

The images on this page are taken from the BDs and sized for the page. Larger versions can be viewed by clicking the images. Note that there will be some JPG compression.