Shikari (India, 1963)

We now near the end of Jungle Adventure Month, a series that has tried to wring the most entertainment value possible out of the irony of a man who rarely goes out of doors trying to assess the value of films in which people venture deep into the wild. I mean, honestly, who am I to judge the verisimilitude of these movies? I’ve never encountered a gorilla in the wild. Maybe they really do look like this. And perhaps lions and tigers really do go all floppy and limp after they pounce on you. It just might be that those are older cats who are trying to preserve their energy by simply overcoming their opponent with dead weight. And it could be that the jungle really is populated by light-skinned people with bones in their hair who eat a steady diet of explorers, pith helmets, jodhpurs and all. I’m simply in no position to make that call.

But what I will tell you is that, if there is one film that truly represents the reality of jungle adventure, I hope that it’s Shikari. Not that Shikari is free of those clichés mentioned above. It’s not. But, in addition to those, it also features several things sorely absent from all of the jungle films I’ve reviewed in the past weeks -- those being a mad scientist, some giant monsters, zombies, and Bollywood’s premiere item girl Helen. It is also so beguilingly candy colored that even the lava looks like molten bubblegum:

I mean, where else are you going to find a movie that’s a collision between King Kong, Dr. Cyclops and Willy Wonka?

Shikari (which is not to be confused with Shikar, which is another shit awesome Bollywood jungle movie -- or with Shakira, which is some kind of South American werewolf or something) was directed by Mohammed Hussain, who, to me, is a towering figure in the world of Bollywood B movies. When he wasn’t doing other cool things -- like making a musical version of the original Dirty Harry, or one of Bollywood’s earliest rip-offs of Superman, or positioning Feroz Khan as India’s answer to James Bond -- Hussain was one of the Indian action directors who you could most count on to fill the screen with rubber beasties and other unhinged fantasy elements. Shikari shows him in fine form in this regard, while also demonstrating his ability to craft a cracking good -- albeit rough-hewn -- piece of briskly paced pulp entertainment.

The film concerns a jungle expedition on the part of a group of circus folk lead by Madan Puri. Also along for the trip are an eccentric scientist and Rita (Ragini), the lovely young daughter of the circus owner. Along the way, they also hook up with a heroic hunter by the name of Ajit, who is in fact played by Bollywood actor Ajit, still in those days before his Lo Lieh-like descent into ugliness and recurring villain roles. Now, without English subtitles, it is impossible for me to say with certainty what the object of this expedition is, but my guess is that those involved are searching for the legendary giant ape that the natives refer to as Otango.

In any case, whether they’re looking for him or not, Otango is indeed what they find, although not for a good while. In fact, the gang’s initial encounter with the beast is a bit anticlimactic, with Otango, rather than menacing them outright, really just kind of heckling them as he passes by. It’s like one of those brief traffic altercations that ends when the light changes. Anyway, we’ll eventually get a chance to see Otango in all his glory later...

...and, until then, there are plenty of perilous scrapes, upbeat musical numbers, and encounters with hostile natives to keep us interested.

Finally, our explorers come upon the remote underground laboratory of Dr. Cyclops, played by KN Singh. At first, Cyclops makes nice with the group, but it is not long before his -- I think -- daughter Shobha (Helen) is cluing them in to the fact that he is fucking cah-ray-zee. If the fact that Cyclops takes no pause at Helen walking around his cave lair dressed like a gypsy milkmaid all the time isn’t enough to bolster that claim, then the fact that he’s got a miniaturized lady in a jar in his lab and a horrible dinosaur chained up in his basement might be.

The viewer could also be forgiven for thinking that this whole section of Shikari is meant to be some kind of acid flashback on the part of the principles, as for most of it we see them traipsing around through upturned brontosaurus ribcages and caverns filled with giant mushrooms.

Dinosaurs, whimsical alpine attire, and happy drug associations aside, Shikari is not a perfect film. But even its flaws are kind of adorable. For one thing, its most egregious and lengthy instance of padding occurs within the first five minutes of the movie, in the form of a scene in which we see Madan Puri and co. watching some kind of protracted ice capades performance. I’m not even sure if the footage of that performance is original to the movie -- well, I’m pretty sure it isn’t, actually; the whole thing screams of stock footage. But that’s no matter, because, whatever its origin, that footage documents in part the performance of an ice skating chimpanzee, which is more than enough to justify its existence.

I was able to enjoy Shikari immensely without the aid of subtitles. In fact, this was my second time viewing it in that manner. Yet it’s another one of those Bollywood B films, like Wahan Ke Log, that I think would be quite a big cult item were it presented in a manner that would make it accessible to a wider audience. Lord knows I won’t do it, but I’m convinced that there is someone out there for whom forking out the cash to release a restored and subtitled DVD of Shikari is not only their solemn destiny but also a moral obligation. DAMMIT, YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!

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

Dirty Harry: The Musical!

Really, can you think of two cinematic aesthetics more opposed than those of Hollywood and Bollywood during the 70s? While Hollywood had Friedkin and Scorsese, Bollywood had Manmohan Desai and Rajkumar Kohli. Where Hollywood’s films were full of urban grit and cinema verité style, Bollywood’s were full of blinding color and outlandish levels of artifice. This did not, however, deter Indian B movie king Mohammed Hussain from forging ahead with a remake of Don Segal’s Dirty Harry -- one in which he attempted to meld those two very different sensibilities with very interesting results. Read my full review of Khoon Khoon, just posted over at Teleport City.

Faulad (India, 1963)

Faulad falls squarely within a Bollywood genre that I had no idea existed until only very recently; that being the Greco-Roman Mediaeval Pirate movie. So far my favorite film in that genre is Manmohan Desai's Dharam-Veer, with the Dara Singh vehicle Lootera being my second. Faulad, which is also a Dara Singh vehicle, would then be my third favorite, but only by default, because it's not like it's so impressive that a fourth entry, once I discover it, isn't likely to knock it out of place.

Much like in Lootera, Dara starts out the movie as a gladiator/wrestler type and then, after leading a rebellion on a slave ship, becomes the leader of a frilly-shirted band of pirates. Mumtaz is also on hand as a haughty princess who falls for Dara after he rescues her from a runaway chariot. Mumtaz, by the way, seriously looks like she's about eleven in this movie, so thank God there's no actual kissing between her and Dara, because it's creepy enough already as it is.

Faulad is directed by everybody's (well, mine and Memsaab's) new favorite director Mohammed Hussain, which is a guaranty that it will contain at least one giant rubber monster, and it does. Dara and his men make a pit stop at an island where they wander into a cave to be menaced by some kind of giant bug which Dara quickly runs through with his sword. Unfortunately, the bug isn't all that big -- about the size of a large dog -- and can't be seen very clearly. If things were otherwise, Faulad would surely have shot up to the top of my list of favorite GRMP movies, only to be displaced in the event that another movie came along with all of the same elements plus a Taoist priest shooting cartoon laser beams out of his hands.

Most of Faulad is in black and white, but a couple of its musical numbers, as well as its final fifteen minutes, are in color, a gimmick that might have had some dazzle for audiences ten years previous, when few Bollywood films were being made in color, but couldn't have had much of a wow factor in 1963. Mainly it just has the effect of making those black and white segments that follow the colored ones -- which are indeed very colorful -- seem more disappointing than they might otherwise have been, as if Faulad is telling you, "Okay, that was the movie you could have had, but now we're back to the one that couldn't afford to be in color."

And indeed Faulad is a shoe-string, cash-strapped affair, which is, of course, far from a complaint. I loved the preponderance of school play style painted cardboard sets, as well as the "whatever's left in the wardrobe department" approach to costuming. My favorite instance of the latter is during a wrestling match staged at the palace of Mumtaz's father, during which she and her court wear that kind of combination Mediaeval/Ancient Roman/Arabian Nights garb that they do, except for one guy who's dressed in a waistcoat and pantaloons like a foppish aristocrat out of an eighteenth century novel, and, of course, the wrestling referee, who is wearing a wife-beater and sweatpants.

Faulad winds up with quite a rousing climax, with all kinds of parallel action -- a swordfight here, some fisticuffs there -- taking place throughout the besieged palace. The pendulously man-maried King Kong even makes an appearance (as if that's a rarity in a Dara Singh movie) so that he and Dara can wrestle while he makes those distressing, loud grunting sounds that he does. All in all, it was... well, just okay. If I were forced to sum up Faulad with some kind of lazy, overtly sexist analogy -- which wouldn't be the strangest thing that I've been forced to do, which is another story -- I'd say that, if it were a woman, I probably wouldn't take a bullet for it, but I wouldn't throw it out of bed for eating crackers, either. If that had been a real giant bug, though....

Bolly-Lucha

As far as I can tell, Dara Singh is the closest thing to Santo that Bollywood has to offer. True, he never wore a mask, but there are plenty of other striking similarities. Much like his Mexican counterpart, Dara Singh achieved stardom as a professional wrestler during the 40s and 50s and, as his middle years approached, moved into film, starring in a prolific series of low budget, B action movies throughout the 60s. These movies typically contained a sprinkling of oddball fantasy elements and featured a host of other pro wrestlers in their casts in order to give Dara ample opportunities to show off his moves.

Of course, being that they were Bollywood movies, they were also musicals -- but, as fans know, Santo's producers weren't averse to including the occasional song and dance number in his movies, either. Like Santo in Santo contra la Invasion de los Marcianos, Dara Singh even brought his formidable arsenal of scissor holds and headlocks to bear upon hostile invaders from Mars -- in his case in the loopy 1967 entry A Trip to the Moon, a very rare instance of Bollywood making a pass at the space opera genre.

Dara would eventually move up to starring in the occasional big budget mythological feature (including the 1965 classic Mahabharat) and, in 1985, would be cast by Manmohan Desai as Amitabh's father in Mard. But, of his early B movies, one of the few available on English subtitled DVD is 1964's Aaya Toofan. The film borrows its plot from the 1962 American feature Jack the Giant Killer -- which itself was an attempt by director Nathan Juran to recapture the magic of his earlier, Ray Harryhausen-fueled special effects extravaganza The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.

Like its model, Aaya Toofan tells the story of a humble village boy (Dara) who saves a princess (Helen) from a giant ogre sent by an evil wizard to abduct her. However, to pad the yarn out to acceptable Bollywood length, the makers provide a considerably greater amount of obstacles to the budding romance between Dara and Helen's characters and even include a love triangle involving the King's mistress.

Fans of Santo movies might find themselves a bit dismayed by the amount of actual story contained within Aaya Toofan, but will no doubt be right at home with the abundance of charming, old school special effects and sweaty two-fisted action featured in the film's first and final acts. As for Bollywood fans, the inclusion of Helen in the cast -- and doing what she does best in a generous assortment of energetic musical numbers -- is alone enough to warrant giving this one a look.

The aforementioned A Trip to the Moon also offers a lot to love, with Dara portraying a sort of Bollywood version of Flash Gordon and Helen playing a high-hoofing Martian princess. Unfortunately, the only way that I know to see that one currently is as an unsubtitled stream from the Bollywood.tv site. Hopefully, more of these trashy treasures from Dara Singh's filmography will be made available in a format friendly to English speaking Bollywood fans in the future. Because, from what I've seen, they definitely merit further investigation.