Seeing Things: Spectral Materialities of Bombay Horror by Kartik Nair
In 1980s India, the Ramsay Brothers and other filmmakers produced a wave of horror movies about soul-sucking witches, knife-wielding psychopaths, and dark-caped vampires.Seeing Thingsis about the sudden cuts, botched makeup effects, continuity errors, and celluloid damage found in these movies. Kartik Nair reads such "failures" as clues to the conditions in which the films were made, censored, and seen, offering a view from below of the world's largest film culture. By combining close analysis with extensive archival research and original interviews,Seeing Thingsreveals thespectral materialities informing the genre's haunted houses, grotesque bodies, and graphic violence.