The scenes of Kali worship in Temple of Doom are a direct tribute to Gunga Din, down to the mesmerised mass of men who bow down before their bug-eyed master.īoth films, despite their flagrant racism and depictions of Indian culture as savage and obscurantist, remain watchable. “Bugle only pleasure for poor bishti,” pleads the dhoti-wearing gent. Chief among them is black-faced American actors playing Indians, including Eduardo Ciannelli as the evil cult leader and Sam Jaffe as Gunga Din, the bishti (or water carrier) whose biggest dream is to enroll in the British Army and play the bugle for his masters. Based on Rudyard Kipling’s poem of the same name (the writer makes a brief appearance in the extended version) and featuring the dashing Cary Grant as a member of a battalion of British soldiers who stumbles upon a thuggee cult, Gunga Din has its share of Oriental moments. The strongest inspiration for Temple of Doom is George Stevens’s Gunga Din (1931). kill kill kill” were inspired by older adventure movies set in exotic lands and featuring top-drawer Hollywood talent as white saviours. The setting of the plot, based on a story by George Lucas, and the sequences of Mola Ram’s sacrificial rituals, bathed in blood red and pitch black and played out to the chant of “Rise and kill, kill for the love of Kali. Since this is a barbaric corner of India, which hasn’t yet been introduced to table manners and the delights of Western cuisine, the menu includes snakes and spiders, which are slurped up with relish by the local gentry, and the piece de resistance, monkey brain soup. The goddess Kali.īefore sneaking into Mola Ram’s lair, Jones, accompanied by the underclad and easily frightened Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw) and a Chinese boy named Short Round (Jonathon Ke Quan), journeys to Pankot, where they are entertained by dancing girls and the Received Pronunciation of the kingdom’s malevolent minister (Roshan Seth) before dinner is served. He worships the goddess Kali, made here to look like a cadaverous demon of unspecified gender. Mola Ram has been stealing magically endowed shivlings from around the region to harvest their powers and become a supreme overlord. Mola Ram is the head of a thuggee cult that has possessed the young prince of Pankot Palace, named Zalim Singh. Play Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984).
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