Gumnaam (1965)
Article 5695 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 7-7-2019
Directed by Raja Nawathe
Featuring Nanda, Manoj Kumar, Pran
Country: India
What it is: Musical mystery

A group of people find themselves stranded in an isolated mansion. They are stalked by a killer who wishes to punish them for the roles they played in a murder conspiracy.

This one is rather marginal in terms of fantastic content, but it’s been awhile since I did a new review and I’ve covered other variations of “Ten Little Indians”, so I’ll cover it. And it does have a couple of scenes that have fantastic overtones; one in which a character sees phantoms of the dead, and another where a dead body seems to come to life. This one also has a nice sinister atmosphere – at least, when it’s not engaged in the usual Bollywood song and dance escapades. It has a twist or two that differentiates it from its source story, and it builds up to a decent enough ending. And, at two and a half hours, it may actually be a bit short for a Bollywood movie. Still, I can’t help but notice that if you cut out all the song and dance numbers, it would run probably a little more than an hour and a half, the accustomed length for non-Bollywood movies.