Line #9 Film/Hisss


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/hisss.jpg]]
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3	''Hisss'', aka ''Nagin: The Snake Woman'' is a 2010 adventure-horror UsefulNotes/{{Bollywood}} film directed by Jennifer Chambers Lynch based on the Far Eastern myth of the snake woman who is able to take on human form. It has attracted wildly divergent reviews and critical opinions.
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5	Mallika Sherawat plays the leading role.
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7	George States (Creator/JeffDoucette), is a wealthy American man with only a few months left to live as a result of encroaching brain cancer comes to India with a plan: to capture one of a pair of Naga, magical [[SnakePeople shapeshifting cobras]] so that he can force the spouse left behind to give him the Naagmani, the magical jewel these serpents guard which can be used to grant him {{Immortality}}.
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9	He succeeds in his plans and captures a Naga male, causing its Nagini bride (played by Creator/MallikaSherawat) to come in search of her mate, going on a rampage against all the evil-doers who fall in her path and comes to the rescue of the exploited and abused women she comes across. Chasing her scaly and venom-littered trail is a police inspector Vikram Gupta (Creator/IrrfanKhan) who doesn't know whether to believe in science or mythology.
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12	!!This film includes examples of:
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14	* ArtisticLicenceBiology: Nagini regurgitates her first human victim after she's done digesting him. Although snakes can throw up, the film implies that this expulsion is a pellet (essentially, dung, but thrown up rather than excreted). Snakes don't produce pellets.
15	* BadBoss: George States is extremely cruel to his hired help, even killing a few of them when they refuse or are scared to obey his orders.
16	* BalloonBelly: One of the film's most notorious moments, being one of the earliest shots of it leaked, is Nagini, halfway between forms (scaly belly, a snake's tail for one leg), lying in bed with her hand sprawled after a huge, pregnant-looking gut. This is the result of her devouring at least one, and possibly both, of her attempted rapists early in the film.
17	* BetterToDieThanBeKilled: One of George's {{Mooks}} is so terrified of the Nagini's revenge that he's DrivenToSuicide, preferring shoot himself than to be devoured by her.
18	* BeautyIsNeverTarnished: Despite having no knowledge of contemporary civilization, constantly being on the wild, and indulging in the occasional carnage, the Nagini always manages to have perfect hair and makeup.
19	* BigBad: George States, the American who starts this whole mess by kidnapping the Nag.
20	* BittersweetEnding: Both Vikram's partner and Nagini's mate end up dying in the final confrontation, but Nagini has SomeoneToRememberHimBy and Vikram and his wife finally manage to conceive a child.
21	* BlackComedy:
22	** After Nagini swallows one (or both) of her attempted rapists, we see her lounging contentedly in her would-be assailant's bed as she sleeps off her meal.
23	** The police officer who gets involved in the story does so after having to poke through Nagini's ''dung'' after her initial human repast, complete with her victim's cellphone still ringing in the pile of crap.
24	* BodyHorror: Nagini's various "partially snake" forms are diffuse and often quite nightmarish in their inept blending of reptilian and human trait.
25	* BullyingADragon: George’s plan is to essentially blackmail a man-eating, shapeshifting snake monster into giving him a cure for his cancer. [[spoiler: It ends about as well as you’d expect.]]
26	* DiedInYourArmsTonight: Nagini's mate and Vikram's partner both die in their arms, due to injuries sustained by the fight with George.
27	* {{Eagleland}}: Type two -- George States is a racist, abusive, vicious, ruthless, all-around despicable individual who pretty much plays "Evil White Guy" to a degree even Indian viewers wince at.
28	* ElectricTorture: George States repeatedly does this to his captured Naga, just for fun. [[spoiler:When the Nagini takes vengeance, he's subjected to the same treatment when the Nagini throws him into his own chamber to be electrocuted alive]].
29	* FeministFantasy: The Nagini goes on a rampage against the men who abuse women during her time on the village, such as sexual predators, rapists, and wife-beaters.
30	* FullFrontalAssault: Since ShapeshiftingExcludesClothing, the Nagini is always nude during her fight scenes, but is covered by her scales that appear on her body during the transformations.
31	* GladToBeAliveSex: The first thing the Nagini does upon rescuing her mate is to make love with him... while she's still in human form. It mostly involves the snake suggestively slithering between her legs as she has TheModestOrgasm.
32	* HostageForMacGuffin: George captures and holds the Nagini's mate in a glass cage in the hopes that she will attempt a rescue, and he will then release it in exchange for the Nagamani.
33	* HumanityEnsues: The Nagini is able to transform into a HeadTurningBeauty human, with only her reptile eyes hinting at her true nature.
34	* ImmortalitySeeker: George States is after the Nagmani to cure his cancer and to grant him {{Immortality}}.
35	* InvisibilityCloak: During his confrontation with Nagini, George wears a suit that hides his heat signature, rendering him invisible to her.
36	* InterruptedIntimacy: George and his thugs capture the Nagini's lover while they were in the middle of mating.
37	* JerkassVictim: Pretty much everyone that Nagini kills has it coming. Rapists, abusers, and the men who kidnapped and tortured her husband.
38	* KarmicDeath: [[spoiler: George States is electrocuted to death in the cage he kept Nag imprisoned inside and tortured him with.]]
39	* KryptoniteFactor: Loud music weakens the Nagini considerably, George even specifically calls it "her kryptonite".
40	* LawOfInverseFertility: Vikram and his wife Maya have a strained relationship due to her infertility.
41	* MacGuffin: The Nagmani, known as "The stone of Immortality" that is carried by the Nagini and sought by the villain.
42	* MaleGaze: Nagini is frequently subject to this, with the came often zooming in on her human body, especially [[LegFocus her legs]].
43	* NakedOnArrival: The Nagini's human form sheds out of her snakeskin without any clothes on, obviously meant to represent a "birth" metaphor, but it's also heavily played for {{Fanservice}}.
44	* ObnoxiousInLaws: Virkram's mother-in-law constantly and unfairly pesters him, blaming him for Maya being infertile.
45	* OneWordTitle: ''Hisss''
46	* MsFanservice: Nagini's human form is a HeadTurningBeauty that frequently ends up nude and those scenes are often played as gratuitous {{Fanservice}}. Although the nudity is never explicit, being censored by [[SceneryCensor strategic camera placement]], GodivaHair or CensorShadow, with the most flesh shown being ShouldersUpNudity or ToplessnessFromTheBack shots.
47	** Nagini is NakedOnArrival when she sheds her skin and turns into a human, with only the mud covering her body preserving her modesty. She then goes SkinnyDipping until she happens upon some other girls bathing and [[GoneSwimmingClothesStolen steals their clothing]].
48	** One scene at night, Nagini takes off all her clothing and climbs up a lamp post to [[SleepsInTheNude sleep in the nude]], with the way she's climbing being reminiscent of a stripper's pole dancing.
49	** During the scene where she visits an underground cave, she once again goes SkinnyDipping, and emerges from the water in a SexySurfacingShot when surfacing in the cave, clad only in GodivaHair.
50	* ModestyBedsheet: Vikram covers Nagini in one after freeing her George's net, being much more concerned about her modesty [[ShamelessFanserviceGirl than she is]].
51	* RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil: Nagini's first kills are two men who thought she was an ordinary woman and tried to rape her. She also takes time off of her search for her husband and his kidnappers to kill rapists and domestic abusers, with her only female victim being a woman who runs a shelter for women and secretly takes bribes from men to turn a blind eye to their raping the women there.
52	* ReptilesAreAbhorrent: {{Zigzagged\|Trope}}. Yes, Nagini kills a lot of people, and in rather hideous ways involving painfully biting them to death or eating them, but the people she's doing to it pretty much all deserve it, and she takes pains not to hurt anyone who isn't guilty of abusing women or attacking her and her mate. Furthermore, the Naga are sought after by the film's BigBad because they hold a magical jewel that grants healing, and he wants to force them to surrender it to him.
53	* RoaringRampageOfRevenge: The whole plot of the story: a [[SnakePeople magical shapeshifting giant she-cobra]] hunts down the men who kidnapped her mate, pausing only to take revenge on various abusive men on behalf of women as she does so.
54	* SnakesAreSexy: A lot of the Nagini's scenes are played for {{Fanservice}}, even when she's half-transformed into her snake-form.
55	* ShowerScene: Vikram is shown showering while thinking about the strange murders happening around town.
56	* SnakePeople: The Naga, who can shift between the forms of regular and giant cobras, humans, or any combination in between.
57	* SwallowedWhole: Nagini eats a number of her victims this way. If they're lucky, she crushes or bites them to death ''first''.
58	* TheVoiceless: Despite being able to take a human form, the Nagini is unable to speak.
59	* YourDaysAreNumbered: George is suffering from the last stages of brain cancer and has only six months to live, and his motive for seeking the Nagmani to cure him and grant him {{Immortality}}.
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Context Film / Hisss