Lady James Bond (1980)

Posted on May 24, 2018 by masalaaddict

There is very little written about this film. I can’t say I’m entirely surprised nobody wants this to grace their filmography. You may be delighted with the prospect of another Silk Smitha starring film, or perhaps just glad I watched it so you don’t have to. Check out this song!

That really is amazing. The hideous styling distracts from the lewd choreo which distracts from the hideous styling. It’s ingenious.

(You know, Chiru would have rocked that outfit. Just saying.) And while everyone is distracted, cat stroking villain Supreme’s Henchman 1 launches a kidnapping attempt!

The Professor has a folder of Important Research that is always in The Briefcase. It feels like everyone in the film is after The Briefcase at some stage. Luckily the government assigns Lady James Bond (Silk Smitha) to protect him. His daughter Indu’s boyfriend Kapil (Kapil Dev but not that Kapil Dev) is blackmailed into stealing The Briefcase. Apparently this is very bad for the country. Kapil lives in the equivalent of a lighthouse with a very long spiral staircase up to his lounge room, quite challenging for poor Indu trying to make a dramatic entrance and confront her deceitful fella. He admits to the theft, she pulls a gun, they struggle and she is both shot and falls out of a window. Lady J drops by to suss out the situation but Kapil sends her away.

And then – a blackface song.

Sadly for Lady J the baddies see right through her disguise and sadly for us we have to witness this at all. A rooftop fight shows off her latest horrible outfit complete with neoprene leg warmers AND arm warmers. She is chased, beaten, then maced. And the baddies run off. These people have no idea she still has half a movie to go and they are not yet safe. She is criticised by her commanding officer for being hopeless, either at her job or at disguises, I don’t know which. Either could be valid.

Undeterred by her lousy luck with disguises, 001 Lady James Bond pretends to be a food vendor and ends up drinking with Henchman 2. Finally an explanation for the ubiquitous black socks in skimpily clad dance numbers – it’s where she hides her pills! They spike each other’s drinks and this causes another terrible song. Lady James Bond recovers first, takes a hit of her special smelling salts and ransacks the house, finding The Briefcase. H2 seems to keep a hockey playing gang on retainer, or maybe they were just opportunistic thugs who play hockey in between assaulting women. Anyway, she has another epic fight on her hands as she runs the kilometres and kilometres to get from his house to the end of the driveway.

Lots of things happen but there doesn’t seem to be much to connect them all. There is a skanky item girl waiting for Nagendra in the lighthouse but just as the horror of that starts to settle, policemen are being garrotted and the director is under attack. Lucky for him Lady J doesn’t hold a grudge. I think she might resuscitate her boss by electrocuting herself on a desk lamp and passing the current through her hand to his body. That’s commitment. But the baddies are still after The Briefcase, which now has a new file in it. And Lady J has so much more high kicking and back flipping to do.

She rescues Nagendra from the gang, only to then be captured by “tribals”. Of course they strip off her snazzy purple jumpsuit and kit her out wearing the skin of a teddy bear, just for the sake of another skanky dance number. And then they tie her to a tree and leave her. There’s a theme with not finishing things off. People just leave Lady J and expect her not to come after them.

She wanders through the wilderness, again, and suddenly someone releases the hounds. She is taken to Supreme’s secret hideaway, more like a high school adventure camp or low budget theme park. Lady James Bond blows everything up, Suthivelu turns out to be both smart and useful, almost everybody else dies, and the baddies are taken away. But I still have no idea what they were up to.

So many men in this film “accidentally” kill the woman they say they love. And cry their teeny selfish hearts out about it. I’m not confident anyone in the film knows how to confirm people are actually dead either as they seem very reluctant to consider trying any form of treatment. But what goes around comes around, so…

Silk Smitha is actually pretty good. Despite the near constant gyno-cam and detour into sleaze at any and every opportunity, she is fun as the top secret agent. She is pleasant and professional with her charges, but can switch to a cold eyed rage when she is taking on the evil doers. She wears some hideous clothes, but as a skanky item specialist that wouldn’t have worried her. And the fancy agent gadgets were a triumph of imagination over budget and science. She uses her transmitter detecting boots to find a secret phone in a tree and uses another spy gadget aka a shirt button to disguise her voice. I think Silk carried on the legacy of ladies like Jyotilaxmi very well indeed. And all her snake dance appearances may have held her in good stead with Lady J’s trademark rolling away from trouble move.

My other favourite thing about the film was the prevalence of photo mural walls. Every house had at least one.

The excellent 4DK has written a much more thoughtful analysis of Lady James Bond.

Since this is, at least in English, almost undocumented I haven’t put names to many of the faces in the film. Feel free to leave a comment if you would like someone’s film legacy blighted by including their appearance in this.

It’s a film that goes beyond So Bad It’s Good and dives into Almost Endearingly Awful. I can mostly overlook the sleaze of the times and appreciate Silk doing her thing and Lady James Bond triumphing over the men, despite the men, without the men. Maybe 1 star for effort, 2 ½ stars for WTFery and entertainment. If you’d like to share your thoughts, just speak into the flowers!

Aditya 369

Posted on May 20, 2014 by masalaaddict

When I heard Singeetham Srinivasa Rao’s Aditya 369 described as ‘historical science fiction’ I was immediately curious. It is less about science or history and more about the outfits and derring-do, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The film is on Youtube without subtitles and there is a diverting but not very helpful plot summary on Wiki should you wish to swot before taking the journey. But no one in the film prepares, so please do not feel obliged.

The plot goes something like this. Professor Ramdas (Tinnu Anand) is an eccentric inventor, but apparently does well enough for himself that he can support a large house and workshop and keep his daughter Hema (Mohini) in stylish polyester outfits. His life’s work is a time machine called Aditya 369. The professor takes a low key approach to security and intellectual property, allowing just about anyone to come and have a look at the machine.

Raja Verma (Amrish Puri) is a crook with a particular interest in historical regalia and diamonds. He arranges to steal a golfball sized diamond from the local museum and replace it with a fake. Now, if you call one guard with obsessive rule observance a diligent approach to security, then this museum was world class. Young Kishore (Master Tarun) is accidentally locked in, witnesses the theft and has to be rescued when he tries to outrun the thieves.

He confides in his saviour Krishna Kumar (Balakrishna) who decides to investigate. Kishore decides to take his fellow plucky orphans on a spin in the time machine, is rescued by Krishna, and Krishna and Hema are sent back to the past where they rescue Silk Smitha and meet Sri Krishna Deva Rayalu (also Balakrishna) and learn about the Golfball Diamond.

Aditya 369-historically accurate costumes

You know how in lots of time travel fiction the first rule is don’t change anything and don’t use modern stuff and cause ruptures in the fabric of time? When I saw the two emergency suitcases stashed in the time machine I assumed historically appropriate costumes. Well, at least the inhabitants of 1526 got an eyeful of fine 80s fashions. And listened to a boombox.

I disliked Krishna once he had landed back in time. In the presence of poets and scholars he had only ever read about, he couldn’t help but stick his oar in and go for a bit of one-upmanship. It was really tiresome and just made no sense. The dialogue seemed to go along the lines of “As you know Jim, I have an electric shaver” “Wow! Please, unknown man who says he is from another time but based on those clothes may be a nutter, tell us what to do”.

Following that sojourn in the glorious past, the crew is catapulted into the future where they nearly die from radiation before being given their own shiny space suits. To be fair to Krishna and his lax approach to historical contamination, the future people didn’t seem to have any qualms about revealing significant details that characters would not yet have experienced. But while I could understand the future people knowing their history, I expected a bit more curiosity from the people in that past. The final scenes bring hero, villain, professor and know-all child into conflict as things almost literally spin out of control as Krishna has to rescue his friends and save the world.

Balakrishna offers his usual high energy performance. He could never be accused of slacking off, except maybe in the dances where he often relies on a slow disco strut interspersed with vigorous flailing. Krishna doesn’t have any hidden depths so what you see is what you get. The character tried my patience and I found myself looking at the sets and backgrounds rather than caring about what was happening to the people. There were a couple of sickening stunts involving horses so that further tarnished the heroics.

Mohini is adequate as Hema given that for most of the film she is just part of Krishna’s baggage.

Amrish Puri does his usual villain thing with flair. Raja Verma is a bit obsessed with things that are original and authentic which may explain his Faux-gyptian style robe. The diamond was supposed to link all the times together but that part of the plot seemed like an afterthought.

There are comedy uncles but no one else gets much of a look in with Balakrishna in a double role so that is another positive for the film. Suthivelu plays a hapless policeman who gets dragged along on the time travels, and Brahmi makes a small appearance as a scientist.

I really enjoyed Raja Verma’s gang of purple shirted thugs who carried guns in violin cases, and then played violins as background music in an interrogation scene. I think that is the first time I’ve heard the violence/violins pun in an Indian film. Tinnu Anand seems to have his own personal wind machine in all his scenes, maybe to stop him overheating from overacting. Annapurna is Krishna’s mum although she doesn’t get to do much apart from marvel at his awesomeness.

Illayaraja’s background score is lovely. The theme over the opening credits is lush and a little eery. The songs are melodic although mostly a bit random. I did like the dance off between Silk Smitha and Mohini to settle the matter of Krishna’s honour. Well, I did until of course Krishna decided he could play all the instruments AND do the dancing.

The production design has a retro charm that sometimes made me nostalgic for TV series like Lost in Space. Terminator 2 was released in the same year and the difference in technical capability is enormous.

The “ye olden days” segment was what I would expect from any Telugu film, but the futuristic episode was more remarkable for the efforts of the wardrobe department to really feature antennas and silver lame.

Apart from that, as noted earlier, the costumes were mostly 80s mainstream fashion – lots of high-waisted denim, synthetic fabrics and big hair. And the women didn’t fare much better.

There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy and Telugu films are a great place to find them. See this for the curiosity value of the Telugu mass hero formula applied to a different genre and for the low tech effects that have their own appeal. 3 stars!