Masala Death Trap! Appu Raja

A word of advice to all you bloggers out there: If you're planning to launch a new recurring feature, make sure not to start off with your best material. I learned this hard lesson with Masala Death Trap!, whose inspiration was the elaborate people-squishing contraption employed in Main Balwaan. As auspicious a beginning as that was, I soon found that Bollywood offered few engines of destruction that could approach the majesty of that one (except for perhaps Azaad's Machine of Hell, which had already been well covered elsewhere). Not even a room full of thrift store clocks constructed with the laudable goal of tormenting Dev Anand could top it.

And so I tucked Masala Death Trap! into the back of the closet, as if it were some kind of mildly embarrassing white elephant that I was loathe to throw out for fear it might prove useful someday. In short, until today. Not that the death trap in Appu Raja is actually better than Main Balwaan's, mind you. But it certainly exhibits a degree of awesomeness that makes it worthy of being spotlighted, and I could think of no more appropriate context than Masala Death Trap! in which to do so.

Appu Raja is the Hindi dubbed version of Tamil superstar Kamal Hassan's massive 1989 hit Apoorva Sahodarargal. In it, Hassan stages a stunt casting coup that makes Amitabh Bachchan's turn in Paa look like an unassuming cameo, in that the normally-proportioned star not only plays a homicidal dwarf, but also that homicidal dwarf's brother and, in flashback, his father.

Now, unlike the impressive singularity of purpose of Main Balwaan's death trap, whose every separate function was designed to kill you just that little bit more, Appu Raja's is more a device of the classic Rube Goldberg variety, employing what appears to be an awful lot of wasted motion toward the end of creating one very simple action. The reasons for this, I think, are three-fold: (1) That Kamal Hassan's character, the dwarf Appu, is fucking crazy, (2) that, being a dwarf, he doesn't have the strength to lift and operate a bow and arrow on his own, and (3) that the nature of the device nicely compliments the off-kilter circus ambiance of Appu Raja as a whole (I think if you imagine demented calliope music playing as you view the following pictures, that will help a lot to give you the general idea).

And so with that preamble out of the way, let's begin:

The sequence begins with little Appu* luring his victim, the corrupt politician Franklin Anberson, into an abandoned building. You see, Anberson is one of the men responsible for making Appu's pregnant mom drink the snake venom that resulted in Appu being born a dwarf, so it's understandable that Appu might be a little tiffed at him.

At first, Anberson scoffs at the notion that a pint-sized half-deck like Appu could actually do him any physical harm, but Appu will show him. Of course, given the many convolutions that this death trap must go through in order to demonstrate its final purpose, this means that Anberson must spend a great deal of time standing in dumb contemplation in order for him to be shown -- a circumstance which may tax the credulity of some of you haters out there. Haters!

With obvious relish, Appu sets the machine in motion...

And then all of this happens.

Still watching.

Oh, snap!

But wait, there's more, says Appu.

Ohhh! Insert pun about getting the point here.

And now the coup de grace...

Aaand you're done.

Though it starts out like a particularly grim and violent little revenge thriller, by the time it's over, Apu Raja has spoiled our fun a bit by letting us know that it really doesn't take any of this all that seriously. Still, if the preceding was too mean spirited for you, it also gives us this:

*Just to clear up any confusion, Appu Raja is not part of Satyajit Ray's Apu trilogy.

Masala death trap! Warrant's terrible room of clocks

I'm a bit skeptical about whether Warrant's terrible room of clocks, if put in practice in the real world, would work as demonstrated. Then again, maybe it only works on Dev Anand because he's so old. All of those clocks could simply be reminding him that Wheel of Fortune is coming on in five minutes and that he's going to miss it because he's locked up in Ajit's basement.

Dev becomes the subject of this particular torment when he falls into the hands of Ajit's character The Master and his rollerskating right hand woman Saloni. What do they want? Information! And obviously the lengths they will go to get it are limited only by their imaginations -- which, admittedly, are fairly limited. First, Dev is fastened to a chair and doused with some cold water, and when that doesn't break him, The Master orders Saloni to "enmesh" him in her "web of love", which turns out to be far less interesting than it sounds.

Finally it's determined that only the room of clocks can crack a tough customer like Dev. After fitting his victim with a pair of earphones, The Master holds forth about his "latest scientific invention", telling Dev that, once started, the ticking of the room's many clocks will become gradually louder, within just sixty seconds reaching the point where his "eardrums will burst" and his "brain nerves will break". All of this suggested to me that The Master doesn't really have a firm grasp of the nature of scientific invention. What exactly is he claiming to have invented? Clocks? The idea of sound amplification?

Once things have been set in motion, The Master and Saloni, in true Bollywood villain fashion, retire to a more comfortable part of their underground lair to drink highballs.

Meanwhile, Dev tries desperately to drag his chair over to the control panel so that he can shut the device off. But it's too late! The torture has begun!

...and it's not very long at all before we see Dev succumbing to its effects.

My favorite thing about the terrible room of clocks is how it doesn't have just one kind of clock in it. In fact, it looks like someone raided Goodwill and took every clock they had.

You'll also notice that each of the clocks is set to a randomly different time. They don't even perform the normal clock function of telling you what time it is, which just makes the room of clocks that much more evil.

Ultimately Dev is able to free himself from the room of clocks with the help of a special wristwatch loaded with secret gimmicks that we didn't previously know he had. Why he had this watch is unclear, given that his character is just a jailer and not a secret agent or an international master criminal, but it's certainly a stroke of luck that he did. He then makes his escape from The Master's lair by stealing Saloni's roller skates and performing lots of obviously stunt-doubled backflips.

The terrible room of clocks exists on the opposite end of the death trap spectrum from the one in Main Balwaan in that, while obviously a lot of thought went into Main Balwaan's death trap, Warrant's was just as obviously made up on the spot -- influenced, no doubt, by the large number of clocks that could be found in the prop department. Still, this does not take away the fact that it is every bit as weird as the Main Balwaan death trap, and every bit as deserving of its place here. Terrible room of clocks, Masala Death Trap! salutes you!

Masala death trap! Main Balwaan

A few days back, during a discussion with Beth and Memsaab (and House, I think you were there, too -- or was it all just a wonderful dream?) of a mysterious film that turned out to be Azaad, I mentioned my hazy, booze-addled memories of seeing a film starring Dharmendra and Mithun that featured an elaborate, Mouse Trap game-style death trap. It turns out that film was 1986's Main Balwaan. And so, ladies and gentlemen, I give you the first installment of Masala Death Trap!

This installment's death trap is demonstrated to fine effect during Main Balwaan's opening credit sequence, during which a hapless trio of policemen are caught trying to infiltrate the hideout of bad guys Dhapat and Jacky Jackal.

First, the stairway gives out underneath our victims' feet, depositing them in the proper starting position.

At which point a giant spiked ball rolls down a ramp toward them, squishing all who are unfortunate enough not to be able to scurry out of the way.

Just to be thorough, the ball then ascends to the top of an opposite ramp, ready to make a return trip in the event that any stragglers are left behind.

For those who were able to evade the ball, there are two giant gears that descend from the ceiling to squish them. Everyone must be squished!

After which they are deposited onto a bed of spikes.

As if this torture wasn't in itself sufficiently brutal, what we next see is this:

Nahiiin!

To tidy things up, we then have a bunch of wall-mounted, flame-throwing sculpted panther heads to reduce the victim's body to ash.

Now, for those lucky enough to escape all of the foregoing, what awaits them is a devilish hall of mirrors.

Which the villain has stocked with mannequin versions of himself...

...all equipped with knives sticking out of the back to stab any overly affectionate soul who might try to hug them.

Of course, at Main Balwaan's conclusion, the combined power of Mithun and Dharmendra is enough to punch the death trap into submission...

...though not before it has taken many innocent lives, not to mention caused us at home to laugh more than we thought we ever could at the spectacle of bodies being ground to a pulp by giant busy box gears.

And thus concludes this installment. Please note that Masala Death Trap! is not a copyrighted feature of 4DK, which means that any of you bloggers out there who want to contribute your own entries should feel free, and are encouraged, to do so. Just please don't forget to include the exclamation point. That shit is essential.