Papi Gudia (1996)

Sometime rip-off can be a blessing, a cool twist on an old story. Sometime it can be a bore. With Papi Guida it’s a little bit of both, because I watched the whole movie without any problems or dividing the viewing-experience over a couple days. Directed by Lawrence D'Souza, Papi Guida is part the typical Indian trashy horror story and part just very uninspired. Let’s take a look at the story…

Shakti Kapoor is Charandas, a psychopatic criminal who escapes the police into a toy story. He gets shot down, but before he dies he moves his soul to a doll, Chucky… eh, Channi! The doll is later sold by a street salesman to a boy and his mother and everyone is happy, except Chucky… Channi, because he wants to find himself a new fresh body to live in! After killing the boys babysitter by throwing her from the fifth floor he… wtf, this is a god damn exact copy of Tom Holland’s immortal 1988 horror classic Child’s Play! Just with more singing and dancing!

Papi Guida is very silly movie and it becomes even sillier with Channi, the killer doll. A cheap doll with no movements or special effects added to it. Just someone holding the doll outside the frame, wiggling it back and forth. In two scenes they put clothes and a wig on a child who’s suppose to be the doll, but that’s about it. The doll looks extremely stupid, like an eighties girl-doll with a cap on the head. A transgender-doll with a knife! Anyway… whats more fun is the black magic conducted in the beginning and end of the movie, very colorful and fun. The fights are also quite brutal and filled with slow-motion stunts of people flying through the air and landing into furniture. Not much blood and the stiffness of the doll make the attack scenes very boring.

But the best part of Papi Gudia is the many instances of unintentional comedy, like the absurd montage of the talent show early in the film. It’s to describe, but I was almost on the floor laughing that the “talents” of the kids performing. It’s also such short clips of their acts to the whole thing feels even more absurd. In the middle of the movie is a musical number which starts in black & white and with zombies crawling up from a graveyard, but soon transforms into a hilarous dance number with a bloke that reminds me of Indian comedian Johnny Lever, but still not, and he’s wearing the ugliest clothes every seen on the screen.

No, Papi Gudia isn’t a good movie at all, but I suspect it would be a blast to watch together with friends and a bucket or two with home-made booze! Your brain will never be the same after the Bollywood version of Child’s Play…