Tag Archives: Bappi Lahiri

Kasam Paida Karne Wale Ki

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I was meant to review another film this week, but I misplaced the DVD before I completely finished my post and it all just got too hard. As a result, you’ll have to wait for a sensible review. And it might be a very long wait. Looking for a substitute film, I decided I wanted something I wouldn’t feel obliged to think hard about, something with some sparkle and a lot of dancing. But I watched this instead.

The super groovy psychedelic titles seemed quite promising! Also, Amrish Puri.

The story opens with a child, the orphaned Prince Satish, being bullied by his uncle. The kid is the heir to an estate held in trust until he turns 20, but guess who has other plans? Evil Uncle Amrish Puri in some jaunty neckwear! I have to say the water torture was mild in comparison to any day at the pool for me and my brothers so I didn’t have immediate sympathy for the young fellow. Then the use of snakes as training aids turned the tide.

Satish is reduced to a snivelling wreck under all this duress, and is not improved by turning into Mithun Chakraborty. Years have gone by but still Uday Bhan Singh is terrorising his nephew. I really would have expected more efficient villainy from Amrish, but then the whole film would have been mercifully brief. Still, Satish is widely regarded as a drunken, insane rapist by the time he is in his teens.

I found the Uday Bhan family conferences of evil quite amusing:

Knowing that no good girl is likely to marry her Prince, his faithful maid tees up a wedding with the first likely orphan they meet. Sadly, the orphaned Aarti (Smita Patil) is a thief and intends to steal away before the wedding is consummated and take all the cash and jewels she can carry. This is not such a bad thing considering the helpful advice Satish receives about women:

WTF?

It’s obvious that we are supposed to believe Satish is such a halfwit that he has no idea his wife really might not want him pouncing on her, but it’s just so badly acted and written that I felt a bit queasy. She….well , I suggest you fast forward past the ‘rape or is it romance?’ montage, bypass blossoming True Love,  continue past the revelations and betrayal and rejoin the film when Satish is long dead (Amrish Puri has knife skills), leaving Aarti with a son who looks eerily as though he will soon be played by Mithun.  Although, you would then miss an excellent attempt by Smita to use her own Eyeballs of Hate (TM PPCC) against Amrish Puri – go girl!

Aarti is not a soft mother figure – she is a tigress. She tells Avinash that if he ever loses a fight, he won’t be able to call her Ma. She really is a vengeful woman. Aarti is struggling financially so Avinash takes a job as a drummer (it is never really explained) to start earning. It is a bizarre career move but it is lucky in one way as it means lots of dodgy songs.

It’s at this point my DVD seemed to be possessed. You might remember that it took multiple DVDs and wily tactics when Heather and I watched Surakksha and it really seems that the universe is determined to protect me from Mithun. I eventually got to see the rest but couldn’t screencap, and the picture quality was woeful. However – the disco part of the revenge psychodrama kicks in from here so you can have some lurid songs to keep up the pictorial content.

Naina (Salma Agha) is your part time Disco Diva and full time student. She and Avinash bond after he saves her from a gang of drunken would-be rapists. Perhaps he is repaying the universe for his father’s misdeed? I doubt it’s anything that meaningful.

Mithun’s dancing highlights just how talented Michael Jackson was!

Avinash and Naina fall in love, of course, perhaps because they both have hideous fashion sense and share a love of white pants. Aarti hasn’t raised her son to be a loverboy and opposes the match until such time as Avinash settles the score with evil uncle Amrish, although she hasn’t told him about his family yet. But the past can never remain buried, and the truth comes out and then of course vengeance is sworn.

I’ve mentioned before that I like it when screeds of argy-bargy can be condensed into a song, and apart from the threats this also has scary outfits. I get the impression that there were different people directing sections of the extras who were supposed to be party guests. Some are having a toe tapping good time while others maintain the traditional glaze of boredom. And what better way to alert Uday Bhan Singh of his imminent doom than this?

After a court scene full of shouting, staring and more swearing of vengeance, Uday Bhan and his horrible son, Chandra Bhan get horribly drunk and sing. Then junior rapes a local girl as his father shoots the girl’s brother. It’s perfectly obvious they are vile people, and I don’t think all this was needed. I do feel B Subhash thought he was making a much more worthy film than this turned out to be, but struggled to interpret the story into an original film format and fell back on badly used clichés.

By this time, my DVD had only sparse subtitles and Naina’s name changed to Neena. She has been hanging around, adoring Avinash from afar, and goes undercover to get the information he needs (whatever that is) to crush the enemy. I‘m not recommending the sailor suit for potential Bond girls among you – it’s a hard look to carry off. She also has a ridiculously flat clutch purse that somehow contains a gun and a tape recorder and some kind of truth drug.

Chandra Bhan is a stupid as he is horrible, and falls for her tricks. The women then get together to map out the final revenge. All of a sudden Aarti seems to like her prospective daughter in law!

The evil Singhs get their come-uppance starting in a neat replay of the fake rape stunt that ruined Satish’s name. The film is effectively over now despite all attempts to add more drama, but it drags on for another 30 minutes and two more songs and a few explosions.  The final scenes are are most notable for the wardrobe, the Michael Jackson inspiration, the crappy effects and a chance to take one last look at some of the fab sets. Salma Agha is supposed to turn into a kickarse heroine but looks disoriented and more concerned about her lipgloss most of the time. Smita Patil gives this film a lot more than it deserves, and maintains her rage right til the end.

There was lots of significant symbolism, more injustices that had to be avenged, recurring motifs, but I stopped caring as soon as Mithun tried to ‘Thriller’ Chandra Bhan into madness. I can understand why the undead backing dancers were a bit messy, but really the choreography is terrible!

See this film if you really have to see every Mithun film ever made, have a penchant for horrible 70s/80s fashion, can tolerate Bappi Lahiri’s misuse of Billy Jean, or want to see Amrish Puri in a bowtie. Can I even give this a star rating? I don’t want to mislead anyone into seeing this film because it really is dire, and not So Bad It’s Good; it’s just Bad. And not in a Michael Jackson Bad way. There are too many men in tight white pants. Maybe 2 stars –for Smita Patil, Amrish Puri, and their duelling Eyeballs of Hate.

Surakksha

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As a suitable end to silly season, we sat through one of the most ridiculous films we have found in recent times. While we have to conclude that it was immensely silly, it was also quite fab!

Surakksha features the exploits of Agent Gopi aka Gunmaster G9, (Mithun Chakraborty) a Bond inspired character with a memorable theme song.

There is a plot, but it hardly seems relevant as the director/producer Raveekant Nagaich and writer Ramesh Pant seem to take their favourite scenes from a number of Bond movies (as well as a few other classics) and string them together in no particular sequence. These random episodes are glued together with some outlandish effects (more on those later) and usually showcase Mithun in the tightest whitest flares he can squeeze himself into.

While we’re talking about the pants,  they did inspire some lengthy discussion. Not only are they incredibly tight, they also have the largest bell bottoms we have seen. Surely this must make sneaking into buildings, cemeteries, warehouses and various other assorted locations difficult – not to mention the problems caused when dancing on the beach. And we suspect a constant flapping noise from the enormous flares would have undermined his attempts at stealth, even if the yards of fabric remained unseen. However Mithun seems unconcerned by this choice of clothing, while we feel it may explain some of the dance moves. Or then again, maybe not. We concluded that Amitabh is a man who can wear tight white flares and actually carry them off. Mithun can’t.

In fact, generally the outfits were rather wonderful with an abundance of pleather in various shades and some nifty pantsuits. We owe this bounty to Bhanu Athaiya and their team! Mithun also seems to be either waxed to within an inch of his life, or perhaps is just not a particularly hairy man. For whatever reason he really was quite shiny in his (fairly frequent) shirtless scenes. Since we didn’t have to keep track of the plot (the writers hadn’t so why would we?), we had time for this philosophical pondering.

Other highlights of the film are the amazing leaping animals and their sound effects. Who knew that sharks can both sound like dolphins and growl (well OK, other than anyone who has seen Chatrapathi) as they leap from the water in search of their prey. There is also a diminutive snake that manages to make impressively athletic lunges at Mithun as he ably fends it off with a dish lid.  Sadly the snake doesn’t growl, but does manage to leave considerable damage in the plasterboard thanks to its amazing leaping skills and velocity. It was sad to see the snake dispatched by means of a pillow and a toilet – that snake deserved better than being flushed.

We don’t think ‘enjoyed’ is the right word to describe our reaction, but the nightclub dance number featuring Aruna Irani and some fabulous decor is very memorable.

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k42cf5vmztI

Overall the effects are spectacularly bad with any number of toy cars and trucks being employed to demonstrate the amazing properties of Gunmaster G9’s chosen mode of transport, the talents of the design team and the effects of combustion.

Although G9’s car is small, and rather impractical considering the number of women he attempts to fit in at the beginning of the film, it does boast the usual accoutrements essential for any spy about town. There are pop-up guns, a device to pour oil on the road, one to squirt soapy water on a pursuers windscreen, and of course a parachute for those moments when you find yourself driving off the edge of a cliff because you haven’t been looking where you are going. Doctor Who fans will also be delighted by the appearance of what looks like a sonic screwdriver (but sounds like a jackhammer), a particularly useful device if you find yourself interred in a polystyrene grave.

There were also a couple of toy boats that looked Significant, but we never did learn their fate as we had a few technical difficulties. Despite the best efforts of the DVD player and computer to spare us the full film, we managed to soldier on. With two copies of the DVD and Temple’s technical skills we were not going to be beaten by some inanimate electronic equipment!  The copies we had also suffered from being a VCD with no subtitles, but as we mentioned, the plot really didn’t seem to be the point of this film anyway. It did lead us to discover that Mithun mumbles – he was really very hard to make out, while the other actors were much clearer although still never really made any sense.

Iftekhar plays the head of the organisation Mithun works for and checks in periodically to see what his spy is up to; generally warning him to stay away from women, and fretting when he doesn’t call on time. Mithun’s love interest is ably played by Ranjeeta Kaur who does a good job of keeping a straight face throughout the more bizarre of Mithun’s dance moves. At times we did wonder what the choreographer’s direction could possibly have been!

The story involves the hunt for G9’s colleague, Jackson, kidnapped by the nefarious Hiralal (Jeevan obviously enjoying himself as the villain and bearing a resemblance to Dick Dastardly in this screencap) and his glamorous sidekick Neelam (Mala Jaggi). These two are mere lackeys of the real bad guy – the mad scientist Dr Shiva (?) who lives in an underwater lair seemingly surrounded by giant goldfish. The lair is very well appointed, complete with a robot controlled by the buttons on Dr Shiva’s metal hand and amazingly ineffectual female guards armed with red plastic guns (or hairdryers).

To ensure everyone turns up for the final showdown, Jackson’s wife and son have been kidnapped along with Mithun’s trusty sidekick Kabari (Jagdeep as the comedy relief). We have yet more action as air ducts are explored (children do have their uses) and crutches are reassembled into a ‘machine gun’ (hello Day of the Jackal!) – although it looked much more like a shotgun to us but what do we know. We are not the Gunmaster G9. Like any well schooled villain Dr Shiva pontificates about his plans for world domination using his death ray thingy that appears to be able to cause gigantic waves. Or something. It really doesn’t matter because we know that Gunmaster G9 will save the day, get the woman and exasperate his boss.

Everyone spends a really long time explaining their secret plans to anyone who will listen, before a dance off between G9 and Hiralal to settle the question of…well, we don’t know for sure, but we do know Jeevan lost. Mithun then has to fight several champions in several fighting styles (hello Bruce Lee!) although no one seemed particularly committed to the biffo.

The music is by Bappi Lahiri and is really quite terrible although often unforgettable as we tried to work out which song he had copied so badly. This was such a terrible film we have decided we absolutely must have a better copy with subtitles to really be able to get the full effect and to fully appreciate our favourites, the snake and the shark. And we both love a good lair and a death ray thingy contraption:

Many thanks to the people who inspired us to watch this masterpiece: take a bow Shalini Akhil and Memsaab! An absolute classic of the So Bad Its Good variety!

Temple says: I can’t think how I have gone so long without seeing this. Really – it has everything and more, and yet sort of adds up to so much less. I love the film makers determination to make a Bond film with no Bond, no budget and no idea how to replicate the style, and it really is very entertaining. I am a fan of Bond, and could happily pick out scenes lifted from Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice and Live and Let Die to name a few.  Heather had to put up with me cheerfully predicting what was to happen and I have to give this to Ramesh Pant – he knows his Bond too. Iftekhar was excellent as the equivalent of M and Jeevan excelled as the evil flunky.  There is something delightfully optimistic about a death ray thingy made mostly from tin foil and tupperware and that just makes me happy. Unfortunately the VCD we had didn’t allow for good screencaps so we can’t show you the real magnificence of the set design and the ‘special’ effects. I think you’ll just have to watch this for yourself! 3 stars from me, maybe 3 and 1/2 if I’d had a glass or several of wine.

Heather says: This was a fabulous fun film for all the best reasons. There were super sets and seventies decor, amazing outfits, dreadful choreography and the worst special effects I have seen for a very long time. I really loved some of the lights and lamps, and at one point there were exactly the same tiles as my parents had in their bathroom back in the seventies – just fab! I’m not such a big Bond fan as Temple – I do like the movies but the last time I watched most of them was years ago –  but to me, apart from the lack of cocktails, this film had every bit of 007 squeezed in. A bit like Mithun and those pants – no more could possibly fit! There were time bombs, listening devices, a machine that spat out strips of paper for no apparent reason and of course the end-of-the-world-death-ray-wave-maker machine. This film really deserves no stars whatsoever – it actually is that bad, but I give it 4 stars for the whole experience. One to watch with friends who can appreciate the finer details!

Geraftaar

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Geraftaar is not just a simple tale of two brothers separated at birth as this film manages to incorporate almost every Hindi film cliché.  There is the long suffering mother, a significant song, brothers and sisters, fathers and sons, a significant necklace and to top it all off death by bulldozer. As if that wasn’t enough we have not one, not two, but three heroes.  Kamal Hassan, Amitabh Bachchan and Rajnikanth appear together although unfortunately not all on screen at the same time.

Karan Kumar Khanna is a brat of a child, but still doesn’t deserve to be framed for his father’s murder. Adding to his misery, the real killers convince him that he may have been responsible. Nirupa Roy, in true filmi Ma style, instantly believes that he did indeed kill his father.  Karan runs away and tries to kill himself.

This allows his brother Kishan to grow up free from his teasing at least.  Kishan grows up into Kamal Hassan. Working as a stuntman in the film industry he has big dreams of making it as a hero but struggles to get paid the basic rate for his work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y1wXZ2KMRc

His personal life is no more successful. After a rather unpromising start, he finally marries the unbelievably spoilt and self-centred Anuradha.  Anu is played by Poonam Dhillon, who does a very good job of making her character initially unappealing.

Back to those clichés!  Anu’s brother is a gangster and is involved with a number of shady businessmen, who were also responsible for the death of our heroes’ father.  They devise a plot to frame Kishan for the murder of his dancer friend Lucy, (but unfortunately not before she does a really bad version of flashdance), and he ends up in jail.  Coincidence rules and thanks to that significant song he manages to find Karan, although he doesn’t know who Karan is.

Karan (now the much taller and much more serious Amitabh Bachchan) explains why he is in prison though a series of flashbacks that pick up from his failed suicide attempt.  We learn that he was found by a Muslim boy, and taken in by him and his mother.  Both boys grew up to be police inspectors, but Hussein (Rajnikanth) was killed by Vijay, the police commissioner’s son.  Karan is in love with Vijay’s sister Geeta, played by Madhavi in a role that involves quite a bit of fisticuffs!   So we have a symmetrical arrangement of two good(ish) girls who both have evil brothers plotting against our heroes who are long-lost-brothers. There are various jail breaks, song breaks, court dramas, deaths by bulldozer (yes, more than one) and the inevitable family reunion, so that all ends well.

There are some great things about this film.  Inspector Geeta gets to join in for a lot of the fight scenes and does a really good job.  Rajnikanth is excellent as the cigarette tossing Inspector Hussein and manages a suitably dramatic and filmi ending – defiantly smoking his cigarette to the bitter end.

The gang are the comedy relief and manage some funny moments in their convoluted plans.  Kader Khan has a really insane moustache, and is clearly the head villain as he has a talking skull that gives him advice!

The scenes of Karan and Kishan singing and wandering around what appears to be a very nice open-plan prison are well done and the drama of their meeting is well handled.

The character of Anu is initially unlikeable and shows no empathy for anyone.  She tricks Kishan into believing she loves him (and his Ma) and then humiliates him in front of her friends — all because she couldn’t stand the idea that he wasn’t interested in her.  In revenge, he insists on marrying her before sending Anu back to her brother’s house so she can be trained to be a worthy bride. This deception on both sides leaves Kishan’s Ma in hospital as she crumbles under the weight of so much bizarre behaviour. Anu has an epiphany and  magically morphs into the perfect wife, praying to die before Kishan and wait for him in the afterlife.

Neither of the female leads show any regret about their brothers – either for the life they lead or when they both suffer the consequences for their wrong-doing.  Geeta initially tries to reason with her brother Vijay, but doesn’t seem at all happy to find that reports of his death were premature.  Anu is shown vowing to cast aside her other relationships and accept Kishan as her husband but that was part of her deception so it wasn’t clear if she decided a vow was a vow, or if some other change of heart took place. The rest of the film is dedicated to family so this lack of feeling from the sisters towards their respective brothers did seem odd.

Kamal Hassan turns in a very good performance as Kishan but is upstaged by Amitabh in the second half. The two heroines do what they do, but don’t really have much to work with although they both get to participate in the action in the final scenes. Nirupa Roy with her trademark knuckle bite is once again the dramatic filmi mother.  The music by Bappi Lahiri leans heavily towards disco – this was filmed in 1985 – but the significant song Aana Jaana Laga Rahega is lovely and sung beautifully by Shabbir Kumar and Bappi Lahiri himself. Kader Khan, Ranjeet and Shakti Kapoor play their usual stock characters and once again reap the benefit of a well funded wardrobe department. The fight scenes are very amusing.  Although sped up to a ridiculous degree they still look quite leisurely. Perhaps the fights composer, credited as Judo Rathnam, was really a tai chi expert.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idMj1IeqAeU

Heather says: I started this film a few times before I finally managed to watch it to the end.  I find the first half drags, and the character of Anu was so annoying that I ended up shouting at the screen.  But the whole tempo of the film changed at the appearance of Amitabh and Rajnikanth, so it was well worth making it to the second half – thank-you Temple for insisting I finish it!  Rajni steals every scene he is in. Despite the fact that this is a special appearance with only a small role, he made the most of every second and I loved every single one of them!  Amitabh was overly dramatic which made him somewhat more comic  than I think was intended, but seemed to fit the general feel of the film.  I couldn’t really take death by bulldozer seriously and spent most of the film laughing at the melodrama of it all.  When I wasn’t getting annoyed by Anu at any rate.  I enjoyed the songs and thought that the comedy track was well written in, and had some very funny moments.  I have the feeling they couldn’t decide if this was meant to be a drama, a comedy or an action film, but instead of adding everything to make it full masala it just ended up switching from one style to the other and was just that little bit less satisfying.  That little bit of Rajni helped make it more palatable. This film gets 3 stars from me.

Temple says: I agree with Heather that the director couldn’t quite decide how to spread out the masala ingredients in Geraftaar—so I think they decided Kamal Hassan got the comedy (mostly), Amitabh took drama and Rajnikanth was the action man. Which made for an uneven, albeit wildly entertaining, film. Bulldozers are not a weapon for the spontaneous killer, so the build up to get to the death by moving equipment was overly complicated and really made the film drag. And how some of the victims didn’t see it coming is just beyond me. The three heroes did an excellent job, especially Amitabh and Rajni as their roles had more substance and, I can’t believe I am going to use this word in relation to this film, logic. The heroines were OK for their under-written and sketchy roles and Madhavi looked like she was right into the biffo in the final scenes. I do have to give an extra cheer for Kamal Hassan’s dancing duel in his featured song. Its worth seeing Geraftaar just for the star cast. It’s a bit of a chore to hang in there til the action kicks in, but it is worth it. I give this 3 and 1/2 stars. It gets extra for the skull with glowing eyes and for Kamal Hassan’s dancing.