The day Mars invaded India

I've decided to revisit some of the films I reviewed during the early days of 4DK and write new, more detailed reviews of them that make use of all the increased perspective, wisdom and unfounded self-regard that I've gained during the interceding years. The first film to get this treatment is the 1967 Indian spy-fi epic Wahan Ke Log, which I first reviewed way back on September 23, 2008. Check out the resulting review, which has just been posted over on Teleport City.

Ek Tha Tiger (India, 2012)

As the man who literally wrote the book on 1970s Indian action movies, it was enlightening for me to see a more recent example of the Bollywood spy films that the Hindi film industry is so fond of revisiting. And while 2012’s Ek Tha Tiger testifies to an industry miles ahead in terms of slickness, technical prowess and production value of the one that made films like Golden Eyes: Secret Agent 077 and Gunmaster G9, it also demonstrates that Bollywood is no less, if not more, influenced by Hollywood in its approach to tackling commercial genres.

For instance, within the first ten minutes of Ek Tha Tiger, I pegged it as being an Indian take on a very specific type of Hollywood action film--by which I mean a vehicle for a bankable, preternaturally fit star with an unlikable public persona who does penitence by sacrificing his gym-toned body on the torture wheel of post-millennial action spectacle. In this case, that star is accused domestic abuser and animal murderer Salman Kahn, who, in the film’s opening scene, is involved in a harrowing foot chase along the alleyways and across the rooftops of an Iraqi city (which I imagine was described in the script as “just like the one at the beginning of Casino Royale.”) Of course, Khan’s alleged crimes are more serious than those of Tom Cruise, who was made to hang from the roof of Singapore’s tallest building for sullying Oprah Winfrey’s couch, which kind of makes us Americans look like quite an unforgiving lot.

But that doesn’t really matter, because, almost as soon as that opening scene ends, Ek Tha Tiger shuffles genres like a well curated mixtape and plants us down in the middle of a pretty by-the-numbers Bollywood romcom. This happens when Khan, playing the dutiful Indian secret agent known as Tiger, meets Zoya (newcomer Katrina Kaif), the comely housekeeper of the professor whom he has been charged with protecting from Pakistani assassins. While Tiger is immediately, if reluctantly, smitten, Zoya, haughty and Western educated (this part of the film takes place at Ireland’s Trinity College) is resistant to his charms. So, yes, the type of by-the-numbers Bollywood romcom I’m talking about is that one where (sigh) a red blooded Indian boy is tasked with breaking the spirit of a willful girl via a nagging ritual that seems a lot more like stalking than courtship.

This conflict between love and duty, along with the academic setting, gives Ek Tha Tiger a superficial similarity to Farah Khan’s Main Hoon Naa, though to compare the two doesn’t flatter it. Khan and Kaif simply lack the chemistry and charm of Main Hoon Naa’s stars, Shah Rukh Khan and Sushmita Sen, while Salman Khan is too self-absorbed to attempt the type of self-parody that SRK proves so expert at in Main Hoon Naa Furthermore, Main Hoon Naa, as directed by Farah Khan, both a choreographer and a director, is a film that pulsates joyously with its music, while Ek Tha Tiger’s score is meager (I don’t think I counted more than four songs) and the dancing prosaically staged.

Eventually Zoya is revealed to be a rogue agent of the Pakistani secret service and she and Tiger, now pursued by the intelligence agencies of both of their countries, must go on the run. This leads into an episode marked by a series of the kind of beautifully shot location sequences that beg the question, "How can two such pretty people in such pretty places not fall totally in love?" And the answer is that they totally do.

Zoya is finally captured and taken hostage, at which point Tiger and his colleagues must enact a daring rescue. It is at this point that Ek Tha Tiger awakens from its reverie as if having received a well-intentioned slap to the face and becomes the stunt-filled, explosion laden killfest that we all (well, some of us) have been hoping it would become all along. During this section we get to see Zoya repeatedly demonstrate the She-Hulk like ability to drop from thirty feet and land on her feet without shattering her knees. We also get to see Salman Khan punched in the face in slow motion, which is pretty gratifying.

I don’t mean to be too hard on Ek Tha Tiger, but I think that, given it was an international box office smash, it can stand to take a few well-intentioned knocks to the chin. It is, in all honesty, not a hard film to watch. It’s an expertly made commercial entertainment that gives its audience everything they could ask for, though in a perhaps less manic and well apportioned manner than the Masala films of old. And there lies the greatest difference between it and the Indian spy films of the 60s, 70s, and 80s: rather than stirring its disparate genre elements into a rough stew, it puts them in a kind of narrative Cuisinart, providing its audience with a ride that is less bumpy and dizzying than its predecessors. If you see this as some kind of loss (as I do), I prescribe that you chase this film down with a viewing of James Bond 777.

Creature (India, 2014)

Last Monday, I went vinyl record shopping with my nephew in the East Bay, and ended up in an Indian DVD shop on University Avenue, where the voluble sales clerk talked copies of Baahubali and Ek Tha Tiger into my hands. I was grateful for this guidance, because it had been a very long time since I had seen a Bollywood movie of even remotely recent vintage—since before I started writing Funky Bollywood, to be honest—and also because I ended up liking both films.

But there was one more film that I walked out of that store with, one that I had chosen myself by virtue of the cover alone, which advertised a CGI monster movie in which beauty-turned-scream-queen Bipasha Basu faces off against a horrific part dinosaur/part man. The film’s title: Creature (also known as Creature 3D, if you are watching it in 3D—or if you are one of the characters in the movie, who is experiencing the creature as part of their natural field of vision.)

Like its title, Creature is a pretty on-the-nose affair, as are most of Indian cinema’s first stabs at a particular genre, taking the modern day monster movie, as presented by Hollywood, and stripping it down to its basic machinations. All of the expected tropes and plot points arrive right on time, from the jump scares down to the ironically portentous dialogue (“I’m glad we honeymooned here, rather than in London or Paris,” says one newlywed immediately before being torn into pieces.)

All of this is woven into an engagingly slick little package by director Vikram Bhatt (Raaz) who, armed with a budget of Rs. 18 crore (roughly 2.7 million U.S. dollars), even comes up with CGI effects that rise above passable quality. This latter makes Creature a must-see for anyone (like me) who has ever made fun of Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani, a film whose only purpose seems to be to make Mega-shark vs. Giant Octopus look like Jurassic Park by comparison.

The creature in question bears a slight resemblance to Ray Harryhausen’s Ymir from 20 Million Miles to Earth, and benefits considerably from the obviously great care taken in designing its movements. This is a monster whose personal mantra appears to be “Always Be Hunting”. When he is stalking his prey, he moves in a slithering crawl that is almost sickeningly visceral, then breaks into a loping gallop when it’s time to strike. Less care was taken, unfortunately, with the sound design; we’ve all heard about the ingenious combinations of sound and technique that were combined to fashion Godzilla’s iconic roar. In the case of the creature from Creature, what we are obviously hearing is a gruff voiced man yelling “ROAR” into a microphone, perhaps with his hands cupped around his mouth.

The film also seems to be holding its nose a bit in its presentation of gore, but it does give us one shot of a severed leg and, in another scene, a severed arm. And, if it is at all possible to over-react to such a sight, the actors do their earnest best to pull it off.

Of course, in addition to special effects, Creature also has a plot, and that concerns Ahana Dutt (Basu), a fiercely determined young woman who, in the wake of a family tragedy, moves to Northern India’s lush Himachal Pradesh region to realize her dream of building and operating a “boutique hotel”. This, in defiance of everyone else’s characterization of the surrounding area as a “jungle”, she names the Glendale Forest Hotel, and true to that name, it is a very Western-looking, almost chalet-style construction that could just as easily be in Northern California as the Swiss Alps.

We join the Hotel’s grand opening party in progress, where Ahana meets and immediately makes googly eyes at Karan (Pakistani dreamboat Imran Abbas), a man who shows up with an acoustic guitar despite later claiming that he is only posing as a musician, even though he has just made that one acoustic guitar sound like an entire orchestra. This was in one of only four songs in the movie, just two of which are picturized on the actors. On the DVD, each of these songs is accompanied by a super title announcing where you can download them as ringtones (you stay classy, T-Series.)

Sadly, by the time of the party, we have already been privy to the two newlyweds and one hapless maintenance man being slaughtered by the creature. Ahana is soon privy to this, too, and as the killing continues, attendance at the hotel drops, leaving her prey to another monster, the profit-hungry bankers who threaten to repossess the hotel from her.

It has to be said that the best part of Creature is Bipasha Basu’s portrayal of the very well-written character of Ahana, an admirably rugged heroine who insists on taking the lead in every battle, be it against the monster or her creditors, all while fiercely holding on to her dream of entrepreneurship. In this way, Creature sort of comes off like a sci-fi retelling of Once Upon a Time in the West, in which, rather than Henry Fonda, Claudia Cardinale’s Jill must protect her ranch against the predations of Godzilla. Casting Basu against Imran Abbash in all his emo-ish frailty goes even further toward establishing her as a total boss.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, one of the joys of watching Indian takes on genre cinema is in seeing how the chosen genre’s tropes collide with the idiosyncratic traditions of Hindi cinema. Sadly, no such joys are to be had with Creature, as the film tamps down on its Indian-ness as furiously as Ahana tries to put a Western face on her endeavors in the hospitality industry, doing so in open defiance of the wilds that surround her. This is true from the locations, which could be literally anywhere in Europe or the Northern United States, to the dialogue, roughly 40% of which is spoken in English.

It is suggested that Ahana’s actions have unleashed the monster, and that it is somehow the personification of some past sin of hers. Is Creature, then, a cautionary tale about post-diaspora Bollywood’s ever-increasing Westernization? If so, what is the monster that has been, or will be, unleashed? Until we know the answer, Creature merely comes across as a slickly engaging, though pretty generic creature feature.

WIth new eyes

My review of V. Shantaram's Do Ankhen Barah Haath ("Two Eyes Twelve Hands"), which first appeared on the Lucha Diaries site, was one of the first long form film reviews I ever wrote. Now, apropos of the holiday, it has been resurrected over at Mezzanotte. Fortunately it has aged little, because the film it considers is timeless. Have a gander, won't you?

Fantastic Fest goes Funky Bollywood!

As you may know, Fantastic Fest, which is just about a week away, is adopting a Bollywood theme this year. I am thrilled to announce that, in keeping with that theme, they will be holding a contest to give away five copies of my book Funky Bollywood. The lucky winners who are at the festival will also get to have their books signed, most likely by me. Yes, I'll be there, so come and say hi! I look like this:

See the contest details here.

Nagina (India, 1986)

It's a sad fact that Western horror cinema has produced no female creature as enduring as India's Nagin. The closest it has come are Jacques Fournier’s The Cat People, which only merited one sequel, and Hammer's The Reptile, which was one of the studio’s rare “one and done” monster films. The Bride of Frankenstein’s debut was also her swan song, although she did get an Aurora model kit out of the deal. By contrast, the Nagin, a poisonous snake given the form of a beautiful human woman, has been a part of Hindi cinema almost since its inception.

As with most iconic beasties, the fixity of the Nagin’s image in the minds of her audience has allowed filmmakers to be fluid with both her meanings and representation. Take for example two of the most well-known versions of the Nagin’s tale in modern Hindi film, Rajkumar Kohli’s star-studded Nagin from 1976 and Harmesh Malhotra’s 1986 Nagina.

Kohli’s Nagin, following the trends of the time, is one part “body count” horror film and one part funky action thriller. His Nagin, played by the bodacious Reena Roy, is an unstoppable killer, driven by vengeance to mow down everyone in her path, be they man, woman or child (Kohli would take this concept several steps further in his blighted 2002 remake of the film, Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani, by giving his Nagin unexplained Robocop powers.) Malhotra’s Nagina, on the other hand, makes of the tale a gothic romance, complete with haunted atmosphere worthy of comparison to Hammer’s classic horrors of the 60s. In this context, the Nagin becomes a sympathetic and ultimately heroic figure.

The story begins with young Rajiv (Rishi Kapoor) returning, after a long absence, to the palatial estate of his birth, where he is enthusiastically welcomed by his mother (Shushma Seth.) There is some talk of Rajiv having been sent to Europe as a child due to some kind of vague mental issue (chances are he was put under the charge of one of those wacky German psychoanalysts). Now he has returned to take control of the sugar plantation to which he is heir.

On a tour of the grounds, Rajiv is shown the ruins of a mansion that was once the family home. There he hears a ghostly female voice singing a haunting melody. He returns later and meets Rajni (Sridevi), a beautiful woman of mysterious origins who claims to have known Rajiv since they were both children. Rajiv is entranced by her and, because this is a Bollywood movie, falls in love with her before the day is through. He later announces to his mother his intention to marry Rajni, which scuttles her plan to marry him off to Vijaya (Roobini), who, if I followed this movie correctly, is Rajiv’s cousin.

You see, Rajiv has an uncle named Ajay Singh, who has acted as overseer of the plantation in his absence. Ajay Singh is also father to the now-heartbroken Vijaya. Unfortunately for Rajiv, Ajay Singh is played by Prem Chopra, which means that, in the unforgiving calculus of Hindi cinema casting, he is a rat bastard. Enraged at Rajiv for rejecting his daughter, Ajay Singh vows to obstruct Rajiv’s happiness in any way he can. When it comes time for him to sign control of the plantation over to Rajiv, he refuses to do so and rips up the agreement.(Ajay Singh’s plan was to swindle the family anyway, so this is really just a case of one plan dovetailing nicely into another.) Later, he learns that Rajiv has a file containing all the documentation he needs to prove his title. He sends wave after wave of grubby henchmen to steal the file, only to have each thwarted by the mysterious intervention of a cobra.

Around this time, an imposing shaman called Bhairon Nath (Amrish Puri) shows up at the family mansion with a retinue of orange-clad disciples. Bhairon Nath and Rajiv’s mother are apparently acquainted, and soon reveal themselves to have some kind of secret history together. Bhairon senses the presence of the Nagin and, upon seeing Rajni, demands that Rajiv and his mom banish her from the house. Rajiv responds by instead showing Bhairon and his entourage the door. Later when Rajiv is shot by Ajay Singh and hospitalized, Bhairon seeks revenge by dispatching a cobra to his bedside.

You have to feel sorry for Rajiv, seeing as he is on the receiving end of both Amrish Puri’s and Prem Chopra’s bad tidings. It is hard to imagine any filmi hero surviving such a villainous one-two punch. Sadly, I am unable to judge Rishi Kapoor’s performance as Rajiv due to my almost pathological inability to be moved by anything he does. All that I can say for him is that he serves as a good model for a number of cozy looking sweaters. I think this is partly due to Kapoor’s misfortune of having his career coincide with those of such exponentially more exciting actors as Amitabh Bachchan, Feroz Khan, and Vinod Khanna. In fact, my saying that makes me ponder just how great Nagina¸ an already good film, would be if Vinod Khanna were its male lead.

It also has to be said that an actor like Rishi Kapoor stands little chance of standing out when cast alongside a formidable pair of scene stealers like Amrish Puri and Sridevi. Puri is at the top of his game here, bringing all of his natural authority and presence to a portrayal as iconic as the one he would give as Mr. India’s Mogambo a couple of years later (and speaking of authority and presence, it only just occurred to me that Amrish Puri is India’s answer to Christopher Lee, and vice versa.) Sridevi, for her part, was a newly minted superstar at the time and earns the title, delivering a performance of fierce intensity. Her Nagin has both a soul and a conscience and, despite whatever plans she might have started out with, comes to dedicate herself to being the loyal protector of Rajiv and his family. It’s something of a reversal of the Kipling story “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi” with the cobra acting as the protector of the family rather than the threat against it.

In Puri and Sridevi’s hands, one gets the sense that the rivalry between Rajni and Bhairon goes back several lifetimes, with all of the accumulated enmity that would entail. As such, every meeting between them sees them matching each other blazing eye for blazing eye, flaring nostril for flaring nostril, and curled lip for curled lip. Bone shuddering oaths are exchanged while thunder roars and lighting flashes, eventually leading us to “Main Teri Dushman” (“I am Your Enemy”) a song and dance number that is, to me, the film’s inarguable highlight.

“Main Teri Dushman” provides a direct counterpoint to an earlier musical number in the film, “Balma Tum Balma Ho Mere Kali”, in which Rajni tries to woo Rajiv away from a dangerous engagement by distracting him with an erotic dance. But where “Balma Tum Balma Ho Mere Kali” is a song of seduction, “Main Teri Dushman” is a song of defiance. In it, Rajni delivers a fiery-eyed challenge to Bhairon’s attempts to control her with every thrust of her hip and insolent jut of her chin. Bhairon, meanwhile, circles her like a beast of prey, trilling away on his flute in a vain attempt to rein her in. Between them, they generate more of an air of combined sex and menace than in all of the love scenes between Sridevi and Rishi Kapoor combined.

I’m not going to spoil any more of the plot developments in Nagina, because I am going to enthusiastically recommend it to you. It has a couple of unforgettable performances, I story that is rewardingly complex without being convoluted, a tight script that is light on trivial digressions (well, there is a bit where Jagdeep tells some sub-Borscht Belt fat jokes about his wife, but we can’t ask for miracles), an appropriately hip-swiveling score by Laxmikant-Pyarelal in full tribal mode, and a lot of moody atmosphere. Bollywood rarely delivers genre cinema as pure as this. Watch it and be enchanted.

4DK's five most read posts of 2015

My plans to revive the 4DK Annual Search Term Tweet-athon this year were scuttled by the fact that both Google Analytics and Blogger no longer provide a comprehensive accounting of search terms (boo!) However, while I am thus unable to let you in on some of the misbegotten notions that have lead the confused, booze-addled and horny to wash up on the shores of 4DK, I can tell you what those people who came to 4Dk intentionally were most often seeking out—and in most cases by using search terms that matched exactly the titles of the five films listed below.

5. Tarzan & King Kong (India, 1965)
It’s easy to imagine the excited pitter-pat in the heart of the expectant genre film fan upon first contemplating the title Tarzan & King Kong and all that it promises. It is also easy to imagine the crashing disappointment experienced by that same genre film fan upon discovering that the King Kong referred to in that title is nothing more than an obese Hungarian wrestler. Fans of Indian stunt film king Dara Singh will be further crestfallen to learn that, despite Dara’s prominence on the VCD cover, it is his little brother, Randhawa, who plays the titular hero.

Still, while Tarzan & King Kong might seem like it was carefully calibrated to smash movie nerd expectations, it is actually a very entertaining picture, thanks in large part to game performance from a cast of Indian B movie stalwarts like the great Bela Bose and a pre-stardom Mumtaz (who teaches Tarzan how to do the Twist) and an enthusiastic rolling out of a wide assortment of cheesy jungle movie perils. Nonetheless, I suspect that it is the promise, and not the reality, of that title that has led so many to come to my review of the film. And, true, while many of those readers may have come away disappointed, chances are that they were not as disappointed as those who came to it using the search term “Dara Singh and Mumtaz hot sex”.

4. Haseena Atom Bomb (Pakistan, 1990)
Given that a considerable portion of 4DK’s readers come from Pakistan, it should perhaps come as no surprise that three of the five films on this list are from that country. What is surprising to me is that, while I have also covered films from Pakistan’s Punjabi and Urdu speaking regions, it is only films from the country’s Pashto region that have placed in the top five. By way of explanation, let me say that Haseena Atom Bomb is something of a standard bearer for Pashto cinema. Are all Pashto films as jaw droppingly trashy as Haseena Atom Bomb is? No, they are not. But an awful lot of them are. My 2009 review of Haseena spent a number of years as 4DK’s most read post, and it is admittedly a little sad to see her knocked off her pedestal. Still, I think you will agree that her successor is a worthy one.

3. Teri Meherbaniyan (India, 1985)
My review of Teri Meherbaniyan started as a series of drunken tweets that were mostly for the benefit of my wife, who was laid up in the hospital at the time. I think these tweets succinctly communicated the WTF flavor of the Teri Meherbaniyan viewing experience, although the film ultimately demanded much more of me, with this review being the result. The onus of Teri Meherbaniyan’s utter uniqueness rests entirely on the narrow shoulders of one Brownie, The Wonder Dog, from whose perspective much of the story is told. And be forewarned that this is no Disney-esque tale of a loyal pup making his adorable way across the countryside to be reunited with his loving family. On the contrary, it is a bloody revenge tale rife with slasher movie beats and instances of hallucinatory canine PTSD. It is wholly deserving of its place in the top five, as it is a film that will truly change the way you look at movies and, as such, exactly the type of movie that gives 4DK its reason for being.

2. Adam Khor (Pakistan, 1991)
Another Pashto film, Adam Khor features a rampaging, sasquatch-like creature, a monkey riding a horse, and a dirt-encrusted Badar Munir rising up out of the ground like a hypertrophic dust bunny. As I noted in my 2011 review, it also contains everything that you’d expect from a Pashto film of its era, including “lots of throaty yelling, fat ladies in wet clothing dancing, and an abundance of loud gunfire and punching sound effects in places where none were manifestly called for.” It also holds a place of pride(?) in the history of Pakistani cult cinema for being the first in a wave of horror-themed Pashto action films that ultimately lead to…

1. Da Khwar Lasme Spogmay (Pakistan, 1997)
Given it appeals less to academic types than it does to couch barnacles like myself who can’t be troubled to bring even a rudimentary understanding of a film’s native language to its appreciation, Da Khwar Lasme Spogmay is mostly known on these shores as Cat Beast. I think that its wide cult appeal is due to the fact that, while it is to a large extent an almost frighteningly idiosyncratic foreign horror film, it is also something of a superhero fantasy. Director/star Shehnaz Begum’s Hulk-like transformation into a squalling cat monster is even more gratifying for the fact that she is doing so in order to maul to death a cartoonish assortment of glowering rapists and sex perverts—making for a film that is less I Spit on Your Grave than it is I Bury My Poop on Your Grave. Such is the demand for this insane oddity that I have not only covered it on 4DK, but also on the most recent episode of the Infernal Brains, the podcast that I co-host with Tars Tarkas. Of course, I am not the only person to have written about it; it has been widely covered elsewhere on the internet, and often with as much or more insight than I brought to the task--which makes me that much more grateful that my take on it has become such a reader favorite.