Baghdad Ka Jadoo, aka Magic of Baghdad (India, 1956)

Despite the contributions of Indian special effects wizard Babubhai Mistry, Baghdad Ka Jadoo's title is something of a misnomer. For the most part, the only magic that the film alludes to is that of star Fearless Nadia's 1930s heyday, the recapturing of which seems to have been at least a tertiary goal. And, in that, Baghdad Ka Jadoo appears to have been largely successful. For present here are all those fabled elements that second hand knowledge has taught us were the hallmarks of Nadia's -- sadly, now largely unseen and unseeable -- classic stunt films:  our heroine's lusty laughter in the face of danger, the wall-to-wall acts of daredevilry punctuated by the frequent trademark "HEEYY!"; the men hoisted up on shoulders and gleefully tossed, etc. We even see that Nadia can still do the splits!

Of course, alongside this are telltale concessions to Nadia's age, among them the cutaways to stunt doubles that were a rare occurrence in her salad days, as well as a scene where a dance started by Nadia is quickly taken up by another, younger female star. But the tone of Baghdad Ka Jadoo is so jaunty and good natured that it's hard to see much pathos in any of that, as, overall, one gets a sense of a past that is being celebrated every bit as much as it is being relived.

At the time of making Baghdad Ka Jadoo, Nadia had been with longtime lover Homi Wadia's Basant Pictures for fourteen years. Though it was under the Wadia Brothers/Movietone banner that she had first achieved fame, her career continued at full steam following the split that lead to Basant's formation. Still, by 1956, public enthusiasm for the stunt film formula was on the wain, and the regular release of Nadia's trademark actioners would trickle to a stop within just a couple of years. Given that, it's hard not to see something elegiac in a later film like Baghdad Ka Jadoo, whether it was intentional or not. For instance, along with the aforementioned return of many narrative elements warmly familiar to Nadia's fans, we also have a return by Nadia's frequent costar, John Cavas, here not only taking his customary place at  her side, but also directing.

Given its stunt film framework, the plot of Baghdad Ka Jadoo is impressively convoluted (the original program booklet's synopsis, reprinted over at Indian Film Trade,  manages to go on at dizzying length without even touching upon the whole "lost and found" aspect of the story). Suffice it to say that Nadia and Cavas play a pair of merrily thieving gypsies who fall on the wrong side of a corrupt sultan, thus necessitating their repeated breach of the castle walls in order to free members of their band who have been wrongly imprisoned, not to mention cause other varying forms of righteous trouble. This scenario provides the opportunity for all manner of showy leaping up and down parapets and onto the backs of charging horses, much of which is thrillingly impressive regardless of who was actually doing it.

One such episode involves Nadia entering the palace in the guise of a visiting prince -- such gender bending masquerades being another signature aspect of her classic screen adventures -- and meeting with the unintended consequence that the young princess' heart is set aflutter by her dashingly bearded visage. Nadia then goes so far as to woo the young girl, even performing a romantic duet with her in which a concealed Cavas, in the tradition of Cyrano, acts as her personal on-site playback singer. And while these scenes are played for laughs, they nonetheless can't help but carry a racy, transgressive charge; all told a pointed demonstration of how, when it came to Fearless Nadia, Bollywood's normally rigid gender boundaries somehow found themselves helplessly crashing in on themselves.

Baghdad Ka Jadoo ultimately fulfills its titular promise during its final minutes, folding in elements of the Arabian Nights style fantasies that were, at the time, Basant's bread and butter. This episode sees Nadia sidetracked on an abbreviated magical quest that ends with her riding to the rescue on a flying chariot as, meanwhile, Cavas leads a rousing peasant revolt against the palace. In the spirit of Baghdad Ka Jadoo overall, it's gloriously, triumphantly silly. And if throughout Nadia and Cavas aren't having the absolute time of their lives, they're certainly doing an uncannily good job of acting it.

Jalte Badan (India, 1973)

Jalte Badan is a cautionary tale about drugs and the youth of "today" (1973) that combines the tone of the most overwrought and clueless high school scare films of the 60s with everything that's great about 1970s masala cinema. What's more, it may be the only film in which the movie magic of Indian special effects pioneer Baubhai Mistry is put to the task of realizing a full blown psychedelic freak out. If that sounds wildly entertaining, well, it is. But, putting aside kitsch and unintentional comedy, the film also scores in a range of other unexpected areas, making it a surprisingly satisfying viewing experience for those, like myself, with a high tolerance for the more hysterically pitched aspects of Hindi popular cinema.

Our story concerns Kishore (Kiran Kumar), a young scion of a wealthy land owning family in a small Indian village.  Kishore,  to the chagrin of his elders, has fallen in love with Ganga (Kum Kum), a tribal girl from a community of snake charmers. Sadly, as the film opens, Kishore is heading off to Bombay to continue his studies, but has sworn to keep Ganga in his heart. Ganga, for her part, worries that life in the big city will change him and drive a wedge between them. On the train, Kishore runs into village bad girl Malti (Padma Khanna), also bound for Bombay, who expresses her own doubts about his being able to maintain his interest in the perpetually shoeless Ganga and her "family" of cobras once he's tasted a bit of Bombay night life.

However, what everyone but Kishore is underestimating is exactly how much of a tight ass Kishore is.  Once in Bombay, he finds himself deeply shocked by the rebellious attitudes of his classmates, in particular their public displays of affection, lack of respect of authority, and the very idea that a woman would expect him to ride on the back of her motor scooter. Because of this, Kishore is singled out by a gang of 30 and 40-something bad  kids lead by the wild eyed  Kuljit (Kuljeet), who make it their project to get him hooked on hard drugs.

Despite all their highfalutin talk about being the "new generation" and their desire to overturn oppressive social institutions like marriage, it turns out that Kuljit and his pals are merely pawns in a racket run by another one of those Bollywood villains who seems to only be referred to as "Boss" (Manmohan). The scam is to turn wealthy kids like Kishore into addicts so that Boss can then blackmail their parents with the threat of exposure. Malti, it turns out, is also part of the gang and, through her job as a dancer at Boss' nightclub, is used to lure the innocent into a life of debauchery and drug whoredom. Boss also has a Boss of his own to answer to, a mysterious, English speaking "European" (Sujit Kumar) whose motivations seem much more, er, philosophical than they are profit driven.

And Bollywood, ever eager to please, hears "youngsters drowning in a sea of drugs and sex" and replies, "Coming right up!" Honestly, I seriously considered making the scene that I am about to describe the entire subject of this review, rather than the movie that contained it, so great is its power to astonish and delight. First we get a view of Boss's nightclub, a cavernous, smoke saturated hell in which, among the usual blissed-out looking white hippie extras, the lost youth of India stagger into one another like loose strung puppets, a rock combo playing behind them on stage. (And BTW, as for the crazy music fueling this wild new generation's rebellion, all we get, aside from the very standard Laxmikant-Pyarelal original tunes penned for the film, are "Pipeline" by The Ventures, a galumphing bar band version of Tony Orlando's "Candida", and, during a particularly boisterous moment, an impromptu singalong by the bad kids of "Underneath the Mango Tree" from the James Bond film Dr. No.)

After we've been allowed a moment to let this whole shameful spectacle sink it, Padma Khanna descends from the ceiling in a cage, wearing a nude body stocking. She then proceeds through a lascivious song and dance number whose high point, arguably, is the moment at which she gets on top of a table and starts tossing bottles of Vat 69 to the crowd. This provides the musical backdrop for Kishore's seduction into vice, which involves pretty much every person in the club shoving a smoking opium pipe into his face. Needless to say, throughout this, the effects of being under the influence of narcotics are presented in an unflinchingly sober and gritty manner.

 

Just to make the message that much clearer -- for those, I suppose, who have never been exposed to any kind of fictional narrative ever -- these scenes are interspersed with scenes of Kum Kum's character Ganga, dressed, to the extent that she's dressed at all, in pure white, standing alone on a high hilltop giving voice in song to her fears for Kishore's well being. Even considering the possibility that Ganga is able to, like the Mothra twins, project her song to its object over a great distance, she is outmatched in the battle for Kishore's soul. As a result, the young man falls like a house of cards, not only smoking the dope, but also guzzling the whisky, and, finally, taking to bed with one of the gang's female members.

From here, Kishore's relationship to drugs follows the expected scare film trajectory, from opium and booze to mysterious "red pills" that cause hallucinations to a dependence on heroin, and from there to madness and rapid physical decline. Surprisingly, the closest thing he has to a savior throughout all of this is Malti, who, moved by Kishore's recounting of his love for Ganga, has started to see the error of her ways (and from which point on might as well be holding an "I am going to die" sign over her head). That is, until Ganga and her elderly father arrive in town, a situation that makes for a lot of amusing "fish out of water" hijinks, including a scene where Ganga's snakes get loose in Boss's nightclub and scare all the drugged out hippies.

As you might have gathered, Jalte Badan is a film that is indeed pretty conservative in its values. It's been said that the 70s were for India much like the 60s were throughout the West, with a marked increase in the type of student unrest that had been comparatively absent during the previous decade. As such, it's not surprising that some among the establishment might have viewed that unrest as being essentially "un-Indian" in character. Jalte Badan, following the classic "patriotic" Bollywood formula, goes so far as to imply that it is a willful and malignant import, and has the film's virtuous "straight" kids denounce the "bad" ones as being enemies of the country. Given that, I found those aspects of the film that were comparably progressive that much more startling.

For instance, I like that those aforementioned "good" kids are shown participating, along with the "bad" ones, in the student strike that's called early in the film. The only difference is in how each group spends their new found free time. While the bad kids' rebellion against authority is depicted as being essentially nihilistic and absent of any real political character ("long live youth, down with love", they chant at one point), the goodies dedicate their free time to activism in earnest, and launch a campaign to feed, clothe and house the poor of Bombay. Granted, it's an appropriately wholesome, socially approved form of activism, but the depiction shows that at least an effort was made on the part of the filmmakers to not present youth's passion for social change as a necessarily destructive force.

Even more surprising was a scene during the film's final act involving the character Girija, one of the straight kids, who is played by the actress Alka. Boss tries to entrap the unemployed Girija into a life of prostitution by luring her to his lair with the promise of a legitimate job, then having one of his thugs rape her. Girija, however, manages to fight the goon off and get the drop on both him and Boss. Boss then reveals to her that he's taken suggestive looking photographs of her grappling on the bed with his man, and threatens to release them publicly if she doesn't submit to his demands. At this point, I was fully expecting Girija to follow the old Bollywood route of offing herself in order to preserve her honor -- an expectation born of watching many Bollywood films in which just that happened, a majority of them being of more recent vintage than Jalte Badan. However, what we got instead was this:

Girija goes on to say: "Times have changed. You can go and print those photos everywhere. You can make posters of it. But remember, a decent girl's honor cannot be removed with her clothes." Pretty bad ass. (Of course, it helps a lot that she's holding a gun while saying all of this.)

Though Kiran Kumar does an impressive job of looking completely off his head on a variety of controlled substances, Jalte Badan is a film that truly belongs to its women. Alka's above described scene was, for me, the film's dramatic high point, even though the character of Girija disappears completely from the narrative from that point on. And Padma Khanna, by virtue of that one musical number alone, deserves to walk away with it all. As for Kum Kum, this film -- along with Lalkar -- proves that, in the early 70s, some ten plus years after we saw her starring opposite Dara Singh in King Kong, she was at her absolute peak of hotness. There's just something about Kum Kum's earthy sexuality that makes it seem like even the sight of her standing there fully clothed wouldn't have made it past India's strident censors, much less that of her doing a skimpily attired native fire dance, as she does here. Alongside that, she once again exhibits the flair for easy comedy that always makes her such an agreeable screen presence.

Overall, Jalte Badan is an effective, if florid, melodrama, the kind that, when there's no one else in the room, we can happily let ourselves be swept away by. And if its image of the threat posed by drugs is comically misjudged (which it is), we can perhaps, at least, luxuriate in the extravagant scorn it heaps upon those too quick to hand over control to lesser powers. ("You will lick the feet of the one who will kick you", spits one character at a strung-out Kishore.) Yet, for those of us who have lost people we care about to drugs, all of that tearing of hair and rending of garments might seem, in hindsight, like a more appropriate response -- in many cases preferable to the measured words and solicitous silences that, in the real world, so often enable the damage in the first place.

Jungle Ka Jawahar (India, 1952)

Let’s face it: Jungle Adventure Month hasn’t been easy on any of us. That’s why, after suffering through the stubborn just-there-ness of Jungle King, I thought I’d turn myself over to the professionals. And that brings us to Jungle Ka Jawahar. It was produced and directed by the king of Indian stunt films himself, Homi Wadia, and stars his queen -- and wife -- the Australian-born Mary Evans, more legendarily known as Fearless Nadia. But, wait, that’s not all! The film also benefits from the set design and special effects work of the great Babhubai Mistry, who was not only a pioneer of Indian special effects, but also the director of a number of captivating Bollywood fantasy and mythological films in his own right.

Granted, the forty-something Nadia looks a bit matronly here, but she’s still game enough that I think we can extrapolate from Jungle Ka Jawahar what those stunt films from her 1930s heyday might have been like. (Which, sadly, is all that we can do for the moment, as none of those films are currently available for our viewing.) While some of her feats of daredevilry are filmed from a safe enough distance that they could conceivably have been performed by a double -- or are aided in part by rear-projection trickery -- in the film’s many acrobatic fights scenes we can clearly see, for the most part, that it’s Nadia getting down and dirty in the thick of things. She even pulls off one of those Dara Singh moves where she twirls a guy over her head before tossing him back at her opponents. (Which, now that I think about it, could just as easily have been an original Fearless Nadia move that Dara Singh later borrowed.) Hers is definitely a commitment to hands-on, sweaty, rough-and-tumble action that is very far indeed from what we’d expect to see from the typical Indian film heroine of this, or any previous, era -- which is another way of saying that Nadia indeed delivers in full on her reputation here.

The film’s story concerns a perpetually pissed-off jungle queen called Sheena -- played with fiery-eyed petulance by Leela Kumari -- who is scheming to return to her tribe a sacred scepter that has somehow fallen into the hands of a kindly jungle doctor played by Aga Shapoor. Aiding her in her scheming is one of those awful big city fortune hunters who so often arrive in the jungle to stir things up, in this case played by Dalpat.

What these two hadn’t counted on, however, is the facility that the doctor’s daughter, Mala (Nadia), has with swinging from vines, high diving, leaping from her perch high atop the backs of elephants, and generally kicking ass in the name of keeping things in the jungle status quo. And, by the way, I love the switch-up that Jungle Ka Jawahar pulls by having a fur-clad character named Sheena who, despite being -- like the famous comic book character from whom she takes her name -- the Queen of the Jungle, spends the whole of the movie stomping ineffectually around her cave lair in a big snit, while it is the dowdy Nadia, in her sensible safari wear, who takes part in all of the traditional jungle heroics.

Aside from that, however, Jungle Ka Jawahar doesn’t throw much at us that’s not covered in Jungle Adventure 101. Present are all those elements that have seemed to become part of the very air we breath here at 4DK over the past month: Pith-helmeted explorers tied to elaborately carved posts as natives dance in supplication to a creepy giant idol, one of their number eagerly stirring a giant stew pot in anticipation of the meal to come; someone wrestling with an uproariously fake looking stuffed lion; the outrageously phony gorilla costume; and, of course, the climactic elephant charge. What Jungle Ka Jawahar brings to this stew of familiar elements is an enthusiasm that works somewhat toward belying their not-so-freshness, as if this oft told tale was instead being told for -- well, maybe not the first, but perhaps only the hundredth time, rather than the thousandth.

The film also benefits from a sort of antique charm, even by the standards of Bollywood circa 1952. Take away the abundance of novelty musical numbers and comic relief sequences, and what you have is almost indistinguishable from a Hollywood movie serial from the 30s, complete with all of the last minute escapes, diabolical traps and rowdy physical stunts that entails. Even the film’s music, with all of its big band dynamics and whimsical clarinet leads, seems anachronistic, often coming across as a sort of Cab Calloway take on jungle exotica. All of this works together to instill the movie with an appropriately “gee whiz” kind of breathlessness, granting it just enough of an air of innocence and sincerity to keep the reeling out of its tropes from becoming tiresome.

Babhubai Mistry’s work here also goes a long way toward weaving a little bit of old fashioned magic around Jungle Ka Jawahar’s otherwise modest presentation. While clearly some location shooting was involved, the film is largely a backlot affair, and Mistry’s fancifully stylized sets -- from the jungle environs to Sheena’s expressionistic, idol-adorned cave lair -- conjure happy associations with set-bound Hollywood jungle adventures from the 30s and 40s like The Most Dangerous Game and King Kong. (I also couldn’t help thinking of the recent Filipino film Independencia, whose self-consciously artificial jungle sets were designed as an homage to such films.) It also has to be said that Mistry’s miniature work here is top-notch, and definitely on par with what was being done elsewhere in the world, Hollywood included -- which leads me to wonder again what the hell happened to Bollywood special effects, and why in later years they fell so dramatically (and hilariously!) behind pace with what was being done in the field elsewhere.

Most importantly, perhaps, Jungle Ka Jawahar manages to let us know that it doesn’t take itself all that seriously without lapsing into complete parody. Intermittent winks toward the audience cumulatively serve as a good natured invitation for us to check our incredulity at the door and simply thrill along as god and Homi Wadia intended. A parting shot, in which even the ridiculous looking man-in-suit gorilla waves goodbye to the triumphant Nadia as she speeds off in her plane, lets the viewer know in no uncertain terms that, if he or she spent the previous two hours worrying over Jungle Ka Jawahar’s general silliness or crudeness of construction, he or she just missed out on a whole lot of fun.

This review is part of "Stranded in the Jungle", a month of jungle adventure themed posts at 4DK.

Hip-MO-tized!

Not long ago it would have been hard for me to imagine myself finding one of Babubhai Mistry's Bollywood fantasy films to be sort of rote and uninvolving -- that I'd be all like, "Yeah, Helen on a flying carpet. YAWN." But I have to admit to feeling that way a little bit about Sunehri Nagin (probably because no dinosaurs. Grrrr.) Still, I did enjoy this one very special special effects sequence in which villain Anwar Hussain puts the whammy on Helen:

More hocus pocus from the Mistry man

1964’s Magic Carpet is another “Arabian Nights” style fantasy from director and Bollywood special effects pioneer Babhubai Mistry. I was really looking forward to this one, but unfortunately the quality of the Golden Plaza VCD that contained it was so awful that it actually defeated my attempts to watch it in its entirety. And if you only knew the amount of visual muck I’m willing to wade through in order to watch an obscure old Indian B movie, you would marvel at what a profound degree of awfulness that would have to be.

Ah well, sometimes we review, and at others we merely catalog. So in this case, having only watched half of Magic Carpet’s first disc and intermittent bits of its second, I can only report to you on its objective contents and provide a few impressions. In other words, I won’t be employing my critical faculties to much of an extent beyond simply confirming that Magic Carpet exists. Which it does. Of this I am certain.

And it has people in it. Actor-like people, in fact. And not only that, but ones that you will easily recognize if you are a fan of the Zimbo movies like I am. (And if you aren’t… pssst… come closer… yes, that’s it, right up to the monitor… WHY NOT!?!?!?!!!!!) As our handsome hero we have Zimbo himself, Azaad, continuing his trend toward pudginess from when we last saw him in Zimbo Comes to Town, and as his lovely leading lady, yes, it’s Chitra! Rounding out the Zimbosity of the proceedings is the presence of Master Bhagwan as Azaad’s roly poly comic relief sidekick, as with Chitra, inhabiting pretty much the same role he played in the Zimbo movies. At this point, one might think that he or she wasn’t being too optimistic in hoping for an appearance by Pedro, the Ape Bomb in Magic Carpet, but, alas, it is not to be. Pedro!

Also on hand is the phenomenal Bela Bose, whose appearance is probably the one factor that made me most regret my inability to watch the whole of Magic Carpet, and which is entirely to blame if I later express my frustrations by airmailing some poo to the offices of Golden Plaza. Bela fronts at least one musical number, as far as I could see, and also has a substantial supporting role. And as the villain of the piece we have B.M. Vyas, playing an identical role to the one he played in Char Dervesh, though without once changing into a giant spider. Vyas essentially plays a power hungry baddie who, with the assistance of an evil wizard, hopes to both seize control of Baghdad and seize the heart of the beauty Banafsha, played by Chitra. The only thing standing between him and his misguided dreams of regime change is our marginally doughy hero, Naseer (Azaad).

One thing that is obvious from even the most cursory examination of Magic Carpet is how direly cheap it is. The tight camera compositions do nothing to hide just how tiny and makeshift the sets are, and when we do get out into the open for some location shooting, it’s always in that little palm-tree lined clearing that seems to show up in all of these 1960s Bollywood stunt movies – and which it is only now dawning on me is the same place from film to film. Perhaps this is Babhubai Mistry’s backyard? What few special effects there are in the film are unambitious, leaving it to depend for its thrills on what seems to be an awful lot of swordfights, all of which appear to be limited in their choreography by the clearly cramped quarters in which they take place. This is definitely a film that fairs poorly when held up against a film of similar theme and vintage like Char Dervesh (on which Mistry served as art director), which I’m beginning to think of as the gold standard for this particular type of Indian fantasy film.

So, though I obviously can’t say for certain, I suspect that Magic Carpet is fairly minor, and likely only worth watching for those who are Babhubai Mistry, Bela Bose, or movies-that-star-more -than-half-the-cast-of- Zimbo completists. But I still wish that I had seen it all so that I could slag it off more authoritatively.

You will believe a carpet can... oh, forget it.