Hear Me Out: ‘The Temple of Doom’ is a horror movie masquerading as a ‘family film’
There’s an underlying terror to even the theme tune of the Indiana Jones sequel movie, The Temple of Doom, conveying an uneasy tension that suggests prickled fear in every whistling chant of the orchestral piccolos. Sure, the original tale of the archaeologist adventurer wasn’t exactly daisies and buttercups, ending with a brutal Nazi face-melting finale, but the sequel was forged with images of sheer menace that, for many, conveyed an evil beyond terror.
Created amidst the height of director Steven Spielberg’s greatness in the mid-1980s, Temple of Doom, the sequel came just three years after the celebrated original, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and sought to continue the success of the globe-trotting action series. With no returning characters from the original, aside from the title character himself, played by Harrison Ford, the second adventure in the trilogy saw the hero recruit a squeamish love interest in Willie (Kate Capshaw) and an inextricable young boy nicknamed Short Round (Ke Huy Quan).
Their mad-cap adventures take the trio from Shanghai to the fictional village of Mayapore in northern India, where locals plead for their aid in retrieving a sacred stone stolen from their possession, along with (more importantly) all of their missing children. Agreeing to help , the trio receive a warm welcome at the Palace and are treated as guests before they deceive their hosts and make their way into the ancient catacombs beneath the grand building.
Whilst familiar fun, frivolous boobie traps initially provide more of the same classic Indiana Jones fun, the trio eventually progress through the subterranean maze where they find something strange, unusual and totally not family-friendly.
An orange glow illuminates the cavernous sacrificial chamber, in which a giant statue of the Hindu goddess Kali burns bright with flames for eyes. The space feels familiar, as if it were the head office for all your childhood nightmares. You want to turn off the film, but the chanting of the faithful Thuggees is so intense it almost sends you into a panic attack. Indeed, the visceral fear of Willie doesn’t help one bit.
Out comes a terrified, unwilling sacrifice, dragged by two goons decorated in skulls, as he is placed in an S&M-inspired spiked cage. It must be said the casting team did too good a job with this character, with the actor being a little too good for his menial role, as swathes of sweat drench his body and sheer fear fills his face. Such fear is understandable when he is faced with the sacrificial priest, Mola Ram (Amrish Puri), a figure of utter devilish terror, sporting a headdress made of a cow’s skull and a shrunken latex head (George Lucas’ idea).
With large chalky eyes, unblinking, he removes the heart of the poor sacrificial lamb David Cronenberg-style, with Spielberg utilising some nifty practical effects to show the bodily organ beat outside of his body.
Indeed, the film was so obviously terrifying that the American Board of movie classification awarded it with a brand new rating, giving birth to the PG-13. Having never made a genuine, nasty horror film himself, Temple of Doom barely even felt like a Spielberg movie, being without a familiar heart and soul that often powered his family-friendly affairs. The child-rescuing sub-plot that is explored at the end of the film attempts to repair this, but by this time, the viewers’ own younguns are already hiding under their duvets upstairs, rocking back and forth in panic.
As the director’s first sequel, it seems that in the filmmaker’s attempts to up the ante, he merely missed the mark, creating an unsuitable family film and an excellent horror flick.
Spielberg even admits that the film wasn’t his most refined piece of cinema, admitting the sequel was too dark in a recent interview with Sun Sentinel. “I wasn’t happy with Temple of Doom at all,” the filmmaker stated, adding, “It was too dark, too subterranean, and much too horrific. I thought it out-poltered Poltergeist. There’s not an ounce of my own personal feeling in Temple of Doom. The danger in making a sequel is that you can never satisfy everyone”.
Parents, be warned, Temple of Doom isn’t a family film and never will be. Exposing your child to such a title may lead to years of nightmares and an adulthood phobia of sacrificial congregations.
