If you thought Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street was a fine concept, but needed an extra hour to pad with the Bollywood dance numbers it sorely lacked … well, so did India. The result is Mahakaal, which lifts entire scenes and musical cues, but also adds a Michael Jackson impersonator in a Puma sweatshirt who has no “off” switch.

The knife-fingered glove is worn by Shakaal — that’s right: Shakaal, not Mahakaal — whose face looks like a topographic map and whose head sports one mean mullet. Instead of a child molester, he’s a black-magic practitioner. My friend Richard also thinks Shakaal looks like Fangoria‘s Tony Timpone.

Anyhoo, Anita (Archana Puran Singh), the girl whose dreams he torments, resembles a Miami Sound Machine-era Gloria
Estefan, yet remains kind of hot; her authority-figure dad is played by the Hindu version of Fred Armisen. She attends a local college where all the T-shirts — Iron Maiden, Siouxsie and the Banshees, cute owls — apparently have been flown in from an American record store with whatever was left over from its closeout sale.

With a late-game possession angle and camera moves swiped from Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead, Mahakaal certainly upsets the tonal apple cart with sudden, happy musical numbers (“Come on now / You know you want to / Come and have a picnic with me”), especially when they follow scenes of near-rape. Mahakkal is always baffling, but never, ever boring. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.