Hotel (1981)

Hotel is a Bollywood Horror Movie that hit theaters in 1981. The movie has a big star cast and has the staples of Bollywood and horror movies in that decade. Hotel stars Navin Nischol, Rakesh Roshan, Bindiya Goswami, Ranjeet, Neelam and has special appearances of Narendranath, Mehmood and others.  The movie is a Ramsay directorial, if not production, so it’s surprising that it never reached the hype level of their other movies that released in the eighties, like Veerana and Tahkhana. Want to know what it’s all about? Read this article.

Hotel Synopsis:

Suraj, a heartbroken man wants to make a hotel at the place where he met the love of his life, Sushma, for the first time. He invites his friend, Vijay to accompany him to the place, and tells his assistant, Lalwani, to procure the land. Lalwani meets an unscrupulous man, the real estate agent, Chhagan Patel. Chhagan and Lalwani cook up a plan and involve others. They hoodwink an old priest and tell him that they want to build an orphanage over the cemetery. The priest agrees and donates the land to them. However, when he finds out that the land will be used for a commercial project, he dies of shock.

The group now understands that they need to hide their bad deed and go hyper. When Vijay’s brother, Sanjay finds out what has happened, he threatens to unveil the truth and the group kills him, burying his body in one of the graves. Soon, Suraj and Vijay open the business. But when untoward incidents happen, the villains start dying one by one. Who’s responsible for the deaths? The priest’s spirit, the younger brother’s spirit, or the spirit of all the dead people in the cemetery? To know this and more, watch the Bollywood Horror movie Hotel.

Watch Bollywood Horror Movie Hotel:

Review:

Hotel is very different from all the Ramsay movies, nearing Saamri territory instead of a Bandh Darwaza territory. This Ramsay Bollywood horror movie is devoid of any witch or a demon or even an ancient power who preys on women. This is a clear cut and straight forward avenging-angel kind of movie. The Ramsays did have fun with this movie. The death sequences are elaborate and well planned. This is one of the few movies where Shyam and Tulsi didn’t just slap a demon on the scene and had the character meet his or her gory end. One of the deaths is particularly imaginative and another death is quite frankly, a masterstroke of screenplay writing.  The finale death is the closest a Bollywood horror movie comes to a surreal experience.

Hotel is more proof that the Ramsays had a special liking to the Catholic cemetery but could never do justice to their love. A Catholic cemetery is at the centre of the movie’s plot. Another of their movie, Purani Haveli, actually had the credits on the Way of the Cross. One of their earlier movies, Andhera, too had the protagonist dying in a cemetery. Another one of their earlier movies, Do Gaz Zameen Ke Neeche, had the villains bury a dead body in a cemetery as well. It’s possible that the Ramsays used the Catholic cemetery because of the ‘dead body rising’ trope (Ghutan, for example), but their love for the Catholic mythology is visible in the Purani Haveli credits sequences.

Hotel has an interesting contemporary situation as well. It is one of the few Ramsay movies that the Goldmines Channel is not streaming. There was news a while ago that someone was trying to remake Hotel, and some pitch meetings had also hapened. Now, post lockdown, the movie has reached the ZEE inventory, so that’s that.