In 1830s India, a dedicated - but disillusioned - British East India Company officer, Captain Harry Lewis (Guy Rolfe) petitions his commander, Colonel Henderson (Andrew Cruickshank), for permission to investigate the disappearance of thousands of natives as well as numerous goods caravans.
Only the job gets handed off to new arrival Captain Christopher Connaught-Smith (Allan Cuthbertson), an old family friend of Henderson.
Lewis comes to believe that there's a secret cult operating in the countryside, committing all these murders, kidnappings, and robberies, but even when he presents evidence to the other officers he is dismissed out of hand.
The cult of Kali-worshipping stranglers - The Thugs - has infiltrated the upper echelons of both native society and the BEIC, and are doing everything they can to discredit and thwart Lewis, even attacking him and his home.
But he won't be deterred.
The Stranglers of Bombay, an 80-minute black and white, but still quite gruesome, Hammer thriller from 1959 is available on Blu-Ray from Powerhouse's high-quality Indicator range of releases, and is a wonderful slice of semi-historical pulp adventure.
While The Thugs - including Doctor Who's original Master Roger Delgado in an uncredited but key supporting role - are clearly the "bad guys", all the BEIC officers, bar the repeatedly ignored Lewis, are painted as boorish, incompetent, arrogant, or corrupt.
Lewis is a classic pulp hero, slightly eccentric, but dogged and excellent at his job (even if his so-called superiors don't acknowledge that), but he's also a middle-aged, married man in a role that one might normally associate with a younger fellow.
The violence, for its time, is shocking, but certainly not glorified (there is a fight between a mongoose and a snake, which is important to the plot, but obviously wasn't filmed with CGI or puppets).
Helmed by legendary Hammer director Terence Fisher, from the first produced script of David Zelag Goodman, who would go on to pen such classics as Straw Dogs and Logan's Run, the plot of The Stranglers of Bombay also served as the basis for 1961's Terror of The Tongs (which featured Christopher Lee in his first headlining Hammer role).
Look out for my review of Terror of The Tongs in due course.
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