#502: The Stranglers of Bombay
Anti-colonialism, 1950s values, and the place of problematic media in history
Initial release: December 4, 1959
Director: Terence Fisher
Society, and the stories society tells, have come a long way since D. W. Griffith’s technically innovative but deeply racist 1915 film Birth of A Nation. A film like that simply doesn’t get made for mass audiences anymore. But therein lies the question: how much or how little should we be emphasizing the historical value of films that, at least in terms of content, would never fly today?
I’m not really here to talk about the Griffith film, though it does serve as probably the best example of the conundrum. Terence Fisher’s The Stranglers of Bombay isn’t technically innovative, but it occupies a space in history on its own, as a somewhat forgotten piece of the Hammer Horror canon. It’s also a British film, produced in the late 1950s, set in British-occupied India, about a mysterious cult of murderers that modern historians have begun to argue was a fabrication by the Brits to explain a rise in violence, real or perceived, and to justify their presence in India. So… you can probably guess what to expect.
On to the film. If you’ve seen Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, you can probably guess at some of the plot points; indeed, it’s entirely possible George Lucas had seen it and was thinking of it when writing out the outline for the film’s plot. In short: A series of mysterious disappearances in and around India lead to the white hero investigating and uncovering a mysterious cult of bloodthirsty Kali-worshippers (you can already spot the issue here if you know anything about Hindu.) Murder and mayhem follow, in an exploitative fashion that feels rather distasteful today.
In the case of Stranglers, the hero is Captain Lewis (Guy Rolfe,) a middle-ranking officer in the British East India Company, well-liked by the locals for his compassion compared to the bully-boy tactics of his colleagues. Aware of a series of disappearances, he decides to bring it up with his commander, who passes him over to give the assignment to the disinterested son of a friend, and then only because English merchants have begun to complain about caravan disappearances. With little help from his superiors, he eventually resigns and investigates alone; things come to a head when the cult, revealed to have members at all levels of society including the company itself and a local chieftain manipulating things behind the scenes, stage a mass murder of a large caravan.
What makes Stranglers odd, and more than merely the product of a British empire still nursing a bruised ego from the loss of yet another of their conquests just a decade prior, is its script, at once critical of the British Empire, yet at the same time not completely willing to question the idea that colonialism wasn’t entirely a bad thing. Written by American screenwriter David Zelag Goodman, it attempts to deconstruct the traditional Rudyard Kipling-esque adventure genre, a favorite among certain Brits (and Yanks) with nostalgic dreams of empire, by depicting the cult’s primary aim as not so much murder for its own sake, but for the subversion of British rule. Lewis himself is depicted as the one rational head in a megacorporation full of assholes and villains, going so far as to resign just because he couldn’t get his boss to care about the missing locals.
Opposite him is the cult, its primary figures rather impressively unique compared to similar films in which a racialized villain is little more than a cardboard cutout. Hammer Horror veteran George Pastell serves as the high priest, all the more memorable despite going unnamed — a scene in which he teaches to the new recruits how to beg convincingly gives a glimpse into how colonized peoples must debase themselves to survive under imperial rule. Between him and Patel Shari (Marne Maitland,) who feigns cooperation with the English but directs the cult from the shadows, we can see the building blocks for what would ultimately become the popular image of modern-day terrorism. In one scene, Lewis describes his frustration with the company choosing to write off a mass grave as a cemetary, to which Shari replies, “If the Company maintains that it is a cemetery, then it is a cemetery. Whoever rules decides the truth.”
Perhaps the most memorable figure in the cult, however, is the one that drew the most outrage from conservatives: Karim, a lineless — and quite busty — female cultist member (Marie Devereux) who seems to occupy a rather high position, representing a titillating mix of sex and sadism as she takes a kind of twisted joy in the brutalities the cult commits, and in one infamous scene enjoys a cool glass of water as Lewis is left tied spreadeagled to the floor, sweltering in the jungle heat.
Stranglers never fully interrogates its colonial theme. The Company is staffed by assholes and nepotists, yes; but the film nevertheless pushes the idea, presented in a quote by Major-General William Henry Sleeman at film’s end, that British rule was necessary to put a stop to such barbaric practices. Lewis himself is no perfect hero either, frequently using language that separates Indians as a different “kind” from the English, embodying the white savior trope in which the plucky white hero is the only one who can rescue an impoverished, “less-advanced” racial group.
In spite of its problems — which reflect the values and mores of the era — the film does have its moments. Captain Connaught-Smith, the guy who got his job through nepotism, does not give a single shit about the locals, only serving the Company’s benefit, but in the climactic scene, he emerges from his tent to discover almost the entire caravan has been murdered, with the grim realization slowly dawning on him that things are much worse than he had assumed. It’s an incredible moment, only heightened by an eerie score.
So where do we go from here? On the one hand, The Stranglers of Bombay is an interesting adventure-horror film, with everything from a (failed) tiger hunt to cold-blooded torture, with some unsettling scenes that aren’t made less disturbing for being in black and white (indeed, I think it only heightens the horror, but I’ve long preferred my mid-century cinema to shy away from the washed out colors of the era.) On the other hand, it’s a bit of a mixed bag, in social-political terms; it’s one of the earliest films to (partially) critique British colonial rule over India, but it does this amidst a series of assumptions and stereotypes that undermine its own anti-colonialist message.
Which brings us back to the initial question: what do we do with films like this? Deleting them won’t erase their legacy, and indeed they are only a symptom, an outward expression of the society that created these stereotypes. Disney+ and other streaming services for a while now have been adding disclaimers to more problematic films and shows to explain that the works are from a different era, that the harmful stereotypes they depict were wrong then and wrong now, but that deleting them would be tantamount to pretending these bigotries never existed. (Nevertheless, it hasn’t stopped Disney from throwing their infamous Song of the South into the Vault, perhaps never to be seen again.) Is this the right approach? I don’t know. I do know that what we see as normal now may just as well be seen as horrendously offensive and backwards in a century (then again, considering how long it’s taken to get people to stop saying the R-slur, maybe not.) The problem we face with films like this isn’t a new one, and I doubt anyone in 2123 will have an answer either.
In the end, all I can really say about The Stranglers of Bombay is that it’s a Hammer Horror film through and through: visually arresting, daring in content, but ultimately not cerebral in nature. It’s probably most of interest to Hammer aficionados or those who appreciate the darker side of the adventure genre, but I’m not sure it really occupies the same spot in the Hammer canon as, say, their 1958 adaptation of Dracula.
