I’m a couple weeks late in commenting on this, but I wanted to acknowledge the recent death of John DeLorean. DeLorean made a number of important contributions to automotive design, including helping to create the high-powered “muscle car” craze of the 1960s. (The Pontiac GTO was DeLorean’s idea, a groundbreaking combination of a huge engine with a fairly lightweight body. The success of the “Goat” subsequently inspired an entire class of speedy gas-guzzlers that still enjoy near-legendary reputations among car enthusiasts.) However, he will forever be remembered for the unique sports car that bears his name, the Delorean DMC-12.
Twenty years after the last one rolled off the assembly line, the Delorean automobile, with its matte-finished stainless steel construction and gull-wing doors, remains an utterly unique exercise in style. There had been nothing quite like it before, and there’s been nothing like it since. It’s not at all surprising that this model was chosen to play a time machine in the Back to the Future films, because that’s what it looked like: a sleek, silvery wedge that seemed out of place in an era populated by dowdy, boxy K-cars and uninspired compacts. I wanted one when I was fifteen. I still want one. They’re just plain cool, even if you can’t open the doors when you’re parked alongside another car.
As long as I’m talking about icons of my youth, I also need to mention Amrish Puri, an Indian actor who I’ve just learned passed away in January. Puri made hundreds of films for “Bollywood,” the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai (Bombay), but here in America he’s known for a single villainous role: Mola Ram, the high priest of the Thuggee death cult in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
The second Indiana Jones film is undoubtedly the weakest entry in the trilogy, with stunts that are far-fetched even by Indy’s standards, inconsistent characterization, gaping plot holes, questionable logic (using malnourished children as mine laborers instead of stronger adults?), a shrill female lead, and a climax stolen from the Cary Grant classic Gunga Din. Even the film’s time setting, a year before the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark, doesn’t quite work. (It’s always bothered me that the biggest joke of the first film, Indy pulling his gun on the huge Cairo swordsman instead of fighting him, gets replayed here with two swordsmen. Obviously we’re supposed to think, “It’s bigger! It’s funnier!” But I’ve always thought it was anachronistic; unless Indy can see a year into his own future, he shouldn’t seem to recognize the situation as he reaches for his gun — which is how Harrison Ford plays the scene — and anyway it really isn’t funny unless you’ve seen the first film. I have similar complaints about the Star Wars prequels, which only really work if you have foreknowledge of what’s coming in the later episodes.)
Problems aside, however, I’ve always had a soft spot for Temple of Doom. In a way, this film was my entry point into the Indiana Jones series, because I honestly have little memory of seeing Raiders in its first release. I know that I did, and I can even remember where I saw it (in the glorious, now sadly defunct, Villa Theatre). But for some reason the film itself failed to make much of an impact on me the first time round, possibly because I was still narrow-mindedly focused on all things Star Wars, or at least all things “space.” Temple of Doom, which debuted a year after the SW trilogy wrapped up, is the one that really grabbed me and made me think, “hey, this 1930s adventure stuff is pretty cool.” And a large part of the impression made on me by TOD was Amrish Puri.
As played by Amrish Puri, Mola Ram is one of the spookiest villains I’ve ever seen on film. The bad guys in the other two Indy films — the Nazis and their collaborators — were dangerous adversarial figures, of course, but they had a sleek, sophisticated veneer of civilization about them. You could have a conversation with them. Mola Ram, on the other hand, was much more primal, a reptillian presence of pure, elemental evil… even when he’s not holding a still-beating heart that’s just been ripped from someone’s chest. He doesn’t want to simply kill you, the way the Nazis do; he wants to take your soul, too.
Some critics have charged that TOD is a racist film, that Mola Ram and his Thuggee minions are actually cartoonish, negative stereotypes of a culture most Americans don’t understand. I’ll concede that the character is extremely shallow (of course it is — the Indy films are cliffhanger serials, not exactly a genre known for incisive characterization) but I prefer to think that our feelings of revulsion towards Mola Ram are generated less by prejudice than by Puri’s hissably fine performance. The dude was scary, and he was scary by design.
Whatever your interpretation of the film or the character, however, I think it’s safe to say that Mola Ram was a memorable part of ’80s-vintage cinema. Certainly he was for me, and I mourn the loss of the man who brought him to life.
[Postscript trivia note: Puri shaved his head for the first time when he played Mola Ram, and he apparently thought the look was so effective that he chose to remain shaved for the rest of his film career, which consisted mostly of villain roles. Not an important fact, perhaps, but I find it interesting.]
