Bajrangbali (1976)

I'm all for watching Indian fantasy films, and I find it a pity that they're so hard to get hold of in the west; I've only seen or had access to a couple in all my decades of movie watching. Sadly, while LORD HANUMAN has plenty of cheesy potential in its 1970s-era story of the monkey god and his trials and tribulations among the celestial entities, at three hours this film is nothing more than interminable.

I'm always interested in the parallels between this kind of Hindu mythology and that seen in China, particularly the inimitable Monkey seen in the classic JOURNEY TO THE WEST; surely the two characters of Monkey and Hanuman are one and the same? In any case, LORD HANUMAN is a cheesy, low budget fantasy piece padded out with endless musical numbers and endless shouted dialogue.

The whole story feels episodic and repetitive, with the main character going from one situation to the next. The silly action scenes seem to have been filmed with kids in mind and the adventures feature Hanuman having people pull on his tail and set it on fire - it's that kind of production and I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to be laughing along with it or not. The acting is exaggerated and the whole film has a surreal feel to it. Unfortunately the pacing is very slow and my energy flagged about an hour in, making it a real slog to get to the end. I also found the main character's prosthetics oddly creepy.