Watch The Stranglers of Bombay For Free

Sadly Over-hyped

Fresh and Exciting

Excellent but underrated film

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Terence Fisher directed this historically based adventure that stars Guy Rolfe as a captain in 1830's India trying to fight a dangerous cult of murderers and thieves known as the thuggee. Their high priest(played by George Pastell) hates foreigners and wants to drive them out. The captain tries to warn the East India company of the danger, but they refuse to listen. Instead, an inexperienced young officer is sent to clear the matter up, but he is in way over his head, and events threaten to escalate out of control, quite murderously... Lurid melodrama turns a potentially intriguing look at a forgotten part of colonial history into a potboiler. Not bad really, but falls short.

The Stranglers of Bombay is out of Hammer Film Productions. It's directed by Terence Fisher and written by David Zelag Goodman. It stars Guy Rolfe, Jan Holden, Andrew Cruickshank, George Pastell, Marne Maitland and Paul Stassino. Music is by James Bernard and cinematography by Arthur Grant.For hundreds of years there existed in India a perverted religious sect, dedicated to the wanton destruction of human life....So secret was this savage cult that even the British East Indian Company, rulers of the country at the time, was unaware of their existence....So it begins, a compact and often violent retelling of the Thuggee Cult in India in the 1820s. It was considered strong stuff back on release and had the head suits at the BBFC shifting uneasily in their office chairs. It's a film that has also fallen unfairly into the realm where political correctness dwells, where some folk are seemingly obsessed with decrying old movies for their outdated political portrayals. This deserves better, for it's a very good script, where although the history is difficult to pin down as being correct, it does at least show a care and attention to detail where the Thugee Cult is concerned.It's also a good old adventure yarn, full of intrigue, peril and detective work. Fisher directs at a clip, never allowing the plot to stagnate, and the low budget afforded the project is barely evident amongst some very effective sets. Cast are mostly good value for money, with lead players Rolfe perfectly restrained as an officer desperately trying to be heard and Pastell owning the film as the High Priest of Kali; in fact he is revelling in the bad guy role. Bernard provides an ear banging effective musical accompaniment.Torture, maiming, heroics and a clever mongoose, something for everyone here! 7/10

It's a Hammer film but maybe not the kind you'd expect. Guy Rolfe is a captain in the British Army in 1820s India. The real ruler of the area is the British East India Company, and the company is worried. They ship their goods in caravans and the caravans and goods have been disappearing at an alarming rate. Something must be done, d'you heah me! Rolfe is a tall, rugged figure with an authoritative stride. He has a pretty blond wife and he's happy in the army, but he has trouble convincing his commanding officer, not to mention the executives at British East India, that something more than simple brigandry is afoot.The captain is a keen observer and he picks up clues that there is a cultish group insinuating their members into traveling caravans, then robbing them and murdering all the members of the caravan with sacred scarves, as part of the worship of Kali, whom the astute viewer will remember from "Gunga Din." The thugs even have a mole in the officer corps and Rolfe plays hell defeating them and their vile movement.It begins interestingly enough. The screenplay by David Goodman is well written. It's unexpectedly historically accurate. British East cares only that its caravans are being disappeared. Rolfe is the only officer who bring up the fact that many thousands of travelers are disappearing with them. Gradually, the emphasis of the story shifts from Rolfe and his conundrum to the cult of Thugees themselves, and it sort of slides a little downhill from there.It's impossible to avoid the depiction of violence entirely in a story about a movement whose chief aim was murder and theft, but the director, Terence Fisher, seems to linger over the gruesome details. What was shocking in Carl Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan of Arc" is here presented with relish. It's the sort of thing -- the long and loving preparation for the burning out of eyeballs and the cutting out of tongues -- that would lead to Michael Madsen's speech about the pleasure he's going to get from torturing his helpless prisoner in "Reservoir Dogs". And, after that, to what appears to be gelling into a genre of its own, the pornography of torture. The dialog seems to invite the viewer to join in the excitement of an alluring execution. Rolfe mutters to an enlisted man, "This is a public hanging and look at those men laughing." The sergeant replies, "Well, we all enjoy it a bit, sir." It's the most provocative line in the movie.Rolfe aside, Allen Cuthbertson is splendid as the spoiled, snobbish, over-confident, scoffing new officer who is the CO's pet. It was a part he'd played before ("The Guns of Navarron")and would play in the future. The leader of the Thugees is George Pastell and he's miscast. A shaven head simply doesn't get the job done. You want a great Capo for the Thugees? Check out Eduardo Ciannelli in "Gunga Din." There's a man who's pure evil for you. Rolfe's wife is dispensable. Much of the supporting cast seem to have been picked out of a street crowd for their looks rather than their talent.There are a couple of outdoor shots that don't look much like India, and in fact the production suffers from a smallish budget. The uniforms are convincing enough but the jungle is obviously in a studio. And the kookaburra is thousands of miles from home.Not a failure, but lacks polish and poetry.

THE STRANGLERS OF BOMBAY is included on a DVD of another Hammer film, THE TERROR OF THE TONGS. Both films are very similar, though STRANGLERS is definitely the better of the two despite the absence of big name actors. This is because the film did a great job of making the sets look like India and using actors that might be Indian--whereas in TERROR, English actors almost exclusively played Chinese parts (making the film look really cheesy).Amazingly, THE STRANGLERS OF BOMBAY is based on a true story, though I am pretty sure the names and a few details were fictionalized. In the nineteenth century, a bizarre cult dedicated to Kali (the goddess of death and destruction) was ultimately destroyed by the British in India. This cult not only adored Kali, but was dedicated to murder and robbery--and it was apparently a pretty serious threat.The film gets very high marks for its script and direction. The film is exciting, well-paced and engaging. Despite having little of the cache of many other Hammer films (no Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing) and being in black and white, it's as solid and exciting a drama as you can find from this studio.