Maha Badmaash. Is. Awesome.

Maha Badmaash is a 1977 masala extravaganza that's kind of bad, but also kind of amazing. When a film begins with some rather unfunny, yet simultaneously ludicrous anti-black racism (with the "African" in question being an Indian actor in blackface) I was ready to hate-watch the damn thing, but then the film proceeds to become a Vinod Khanna & Neetu Singh swimwear catalogue photo shoot, tops that up with the most ridiculous villainous plot I've seen in a while, and gives me Neetu Singh's version of Seeta aur Geeta. First I'm conflicted, then I'm completely charmed.

There's so much goodness in such a dumb wrapping, yet I can't pretend I didn't enjoy all of it.

So - big bad Mogambo, a villain who prefers to remain unseen, comes to Hindustan, and blackmails the local crook Ratan (Vinod Khanna) into his nefarious plans, with the help of Pinky (Neetu Singh), who's also being forced into a life of crime because her dad is being held hostage by Mogambo. Unbeknownst to Ratan, however, there is another plot happening - Pinky gets replaced by her twin Seema in contact lenses, all to take down Mogambo once and for all.

Like Gaddaar, this was initially recommended to me by Beth, and based on some other things I read about online I thought this movie would be a pretty dumb masala flick, which it certainly is, but hot damn how it makes up for the lack of wit and complexity with gallons upon gallons of pure fun. Admittedly, you may have to be biased towards the two leads to be able to relish in the fun. Vinod is a blast here, but Neetu particularly, from the flirty and brash Pinky to the (literally) blue-eyed Seema. It's not a very subtle performance, but it's also not as over-the-top as I expected. 

Plus her chemistry with Vinod, as either character, is so precious.

And with gun-wielding hijinks, too? What more could you hope for? Gratuitous swimwear?

Got you covered right there, as well.

Of course, there is that all-important context for everything - a cheeseball plot in which they train for the big mission by having Ratan stay underwater for ridiculous amounts of time, and then for him to stay in ice-cold temperatures for another long stretch of time. Because mission. The ice training in particular was special. The choice to just cut between the trainers' shocked faces as various meters are going up or down or whatever, meters, who cares, made for a truly memorable scene.

Meters! Oh my god!

And then there's Mogambo's lair, which is a truly futuristic piece of set design. Doktor Kaligari called, you know, just to say hi.

There are a number of other awesome things, such as: 

1. Neetu's cuteness.

2. The fight choreographer pulling out all the damn stops in the final fight sequence. Head-scissors take-down!

3. Vinod dealing with it.

4. Seriously, though, the swimwear...

5. Everything about this screenshot.

6. Twin goodness. Better yet, twin goodness with Neetu Singh! 

Also, as sillydumb as this movie is, the female characters are kind of on fire here. Besides Neetu, there is a sort of airheaded, yet kind of perceptive Reena (Bindu), whose dad owns the hotel they're cooped up in throughout most of the movie. She is the only person who figures out the twin confusion before anybody else. Then there's this lady:

..whose actress name or character name I can't find or remember. She works for the good guys and is constantly aiding Seema in their plans to take down Mogambo. It's a delight.

There isn't really all that much to say about Maha Badmaash in terms of plot or characters, because it's all pretty flimsy. Yet there's a certain sort of B-movie style charm to all the proceedings, the funky 70's sets and music and style, the undenial chemistry between the leads, the typical tropes (family lost and found for the twin sisters), the gross baddies and all the rest of it.  Or maybe I'm just really deeply biased towards Vinod & Neetu cuteness.

It could very well be just that.

Gaddaar - if you find it, grab it.

Around two years ago, me and Beth compared our Vinod Khanna notes, and she recommended some films I hadn't yet seen while I recommended some films of his that she hadn't got to yet. In that conversation, Beth recommended the film Gaddaar from 1973 (here is her write-up of it), and has been on my "to see" list ever since. However, in typical Vinod Khanna bad luck, one of his better 70's films seemed to be universally, perpetually unavailable, and underappreciated. I did my regular searches on the online stores and youtubes of the world wide web, and always, always came up empty. In India, I scrutinized every G-section of a DVD shop. Nothing. Ever.

It's not like being a Vinod Khanna fan is easy without the hunt for underappreciated gem films of his being this arduous. The man only had about a decade of solid stardom before he regrettably retrieved from the material world, only to return when Hindi cinema was at its creatively crappiest. If you have nostalgia for the action flicks of the late 80's and early 90's, and dig that particular Vinod Khanna, more power to you, but I personally can't pretend that those performances have even a quarter of the charm his 70's filmography does. It's tired plots and tired performances, and thus my first question when hearing about a Vinod Khanna film isn't "is it good?" but rather, "when was it released?". So hearing about Gaddaar, an early 70's film, and seeing the screen caps and the high recommendations, I had to have it, and it killed me that it was nowhere to be found, despite my best efforts.

Eventually, though, I found Gaddaar (with a little, okay, a lot of help from Carla), or it found me - and I honestly couldn't be happier about the fact.

The film begins with BK (Pran) assembling his team of crooks for a grand heist (including Iftekhar, Ranjeet, Manmohan and Madan Puri). The heist goes well with only the minor hitch of BK being shot, leading him to give the loot of Kanhaya (Madan Puri), and agreeing to meet him later, along with the rest of the gang. As luck would have it, however, Kanhaya betrays the group and is nowhere to be found. Enter a small-time crook Raja (Vinod Khanna), who blackmails his way into the group, and they set off to search for Kanhaya.

The real triumph of the story is that as the search winds down, Gaddaar becomes less of a crime film and more a drama thriller between the the thieves, and the bystanders who are forced to get involved. It gives these character actors more to do than they otherwise get to in your average masala flick, where the focus is so much on the hero, and crooks are usually merely just that. Here, their relations with one another form the backbone of the film, and make for a gripping watch, particularly as the latter half of the film is spent in one particular setting.

It's just good fun, aided by solid writing and fantastic acting. The frustration that builds up between our central antagonists in the isolated Himachal Pradesh cabin flares up every now and then, and it is these moments that allow the drama to escalate further and further. It's cabin fever, further exaggerated by the desperate circumstances.

And then there's Vinod.

Raja is the type of character Vinod Khanna seemed to play a lot of in the 1970's. He's a rogue, sure, but he's charming, and even when he has his particularly cruel moments, he seems to have a beating heart and a humane side, too. Sometimes there's a twist in store, sometimes there isn't. Yet the character works, particularly in this setting, because he's surrounded by other crooks of varying shades - some noble, some horrible, some cruel, some cowardly.

Also: he's got swag up to his shiny, perfect hair-do. Pure swag.

It always bugs me to recommend a film I know you'll probably have at least half the trouble finding as I did, but regardless, that I must do. It's a great film to check out if you're not quite with the over-the-top traits of a typical 1970's masala, but still would like to see the style and some of the actors (because let's face it, 70's Pran, 70's Iftekhar and Ranjeet in general are all joys to witness). It's a nice change of pace in many ways, and without a doubt one of the most underrated Hindi films of the 1970's.

I wonder if Sriram Raghavan was inspired by this film to formulate his Johnny Gaddaar (2007) around a similar (if very differently actualised) plot devise. It's a more available film that is also relatively underrated, in part because Neil Nitin Mukesh's career never took off. There are some good performances in it  - Dharmendra, Zakir Hussain and Vinay Pathak all stood out to me - and while I should probably give it a rewatch before singing its praises so loudly, I would be willing to bet it references this film in one way or another. It's another film where you know who betrayed who, but the dramatic tension in Johnny Gaddaar comes from the rest of the gang slowly putting the pieces of the puzzle together.

12 awesome random filmi pictures.

Nadira!



Any picture with both Vidya and Rani is a winner in my books.


Sonam looking gorgeous as per usual.



This picture of Dharmendra is just ... A++++




Who doesn't love the apples in Maine Pyar Kiya?



..or the lair in Parvarish?


Or this swishy skirt of Rani's from Bunty aur Babli?



Oldie stars eating away!



Siddharth as a baby!


Vinod Khanna living the life!



Production still from Kagaaz Ke Phool.



Aradhana to cap this post off.

Happy 12/12/12, guys!

Moucho Prema; a final picspam.

Young Vikram! I know, it's weird for me, too.

Once again, three favourites unite in a single picture and still Prakash Raj manages to be the coolest, no competition.

Mammootty's pole dance is like nobody else's. Love it.

One more for Prakash Raj, as I couldn't resist (from Anniyan, as you might recognise). Did you know that despite being best known in Tamil and Telugu films, the man is actually a born-and-bred Kannadiga?

Now to Hindi oldies - if ever there was a moustache that screamed "this guy is up to no good"! Here's Pran from the oldie Aasha.

I may have posted this before; in fact, I'm almost certain I have. Who cares? It's Vinod Khanna in Mera Gaon Mera Desh.

Sanjeev Kumar as Thakur-saab from ..oh, have a guess. 

Khoon ki pukaar: kicking off MouchoPrema!

MouchoPrema (#mouchoprema on Twitter) is a themed week of blogging, started by Totally Filmi in conjunction with Beth and a bunch of others, in celebration of Movember and all things moustache. I picked a couple of films from my to-be-watched pile that seemed appropriately moustache-filled and set to watch them!

..and then I watched three of them and completely forgot about the whole thing until yesterday. But hey, better late than never, I guess?

My first film was Khoon Ki Pukaar, a rather standard dacoit/family drama from the delightful 70's, starring Vinod Khanna, Shabana Azmi, Pran, Aruna Irani, Amjad Khan and Iftekhar. Before we get to the convoluted (but not any more or less convoluted than your usual 70's masala film) plot, let us meet the 'staches.

First we have Amjad Khan as Zalim Singh, our resident bad guy, the dacoit who conveniently kicks off our plot by kidnapping the son of ...

...Pran, a doctor! You might not guess where this is going, though you probably do. The child Zalim Singh kidnaps grows up to be ...

...Vinod Khanna, here reluctantly in the embrace of Aruna Irani, who plays the only girl in their dacoit gang (and if you couldn't figure it out from the screencap, she really, really, really likes Sheru Singh, Vinod's character, here). Sheru Singh, unaware of his true parentage, grows up to be a bad guy, as Vinod Khanna characters are so often wont to do. Is there moral growth in store for us?

Wait, there's a couple of more moustaches to go through.

Shabana's character's father. Because of plot, he doesn't stick around for long.

Iftekhar, unsurprisingly as the police commissioner. 

And whoever this guy is, playing the sleazeball dacoit who wants to be with Aruna and therefore hates Vinod, and ...oh who the hell cares, check out this wildly fantastic stuffed tiger!

So, plot: Sher(u) Singh, Zalim Singh and their gang rob the wedding party, that Shanno (Shabana) attends as the bride is her friend. Her father plays hero and gets subsequently shot dead by Sher Singh, but he in return gets shot by the police as the dacoit gang flees the scene.

He escapes to the temple, where his wounds are mended by the priest (Pran), who gave up practising medicine after his son got kidnapped by Zalim Singh. What are the odds, eh? The priest tells the villagers that the man he is housing is named Amrit, even though he knows that the man is a dacoit. 

To protect his true identity, Sheru adopts the identity of Amrit. This results in him teaching Shanno how to shoot, unaware that the reason she's learning is to kill whoever killed her father .. Sher Singh, that is.

Now that is awkward. 

Meanwhile, he's also trying to think of ways to rob the priest of all the jewels hidden somewhere in the temple. Vinod does a lot of shifty eyes in these scenes, because he's such a good actor that the character he is playing, is not a good actor, and thus comes off as the most suspicious person ever. It's brilliant, really. 

Surprising absolutely no one, Shanno and Amrit fall in love, and somewhere in here, the movie tucks a cutesy romantic film inside a pretty grim revenge drama.  

Only Vinod and Shabana can achieve a pretty easy-going chemistry when you consider the fact that he's a killer and she's hell-bent on revenge, and refusing to marry until she's killed the man who killed her father. I'm a total sucker for this kind of stuff, so of course I lapped it up, weirdness and all.

And then there's Pran, who is wonderful as the priest who believes in Amrit's inner morality, even when the man himself doesn't. Only he has the natural gravitas for the type of dialogues he gives in this film, and he's great as ever.

Once again something has to be said for the way that Vinod can make me believe in the melodramatic reality of this character who has the sudden discovery that maybe going through life killing and robbing others isn't the way to go, and making good deeds like saving somebody actually also feels good. These are not subtle or grand discoveries, but the way he acts through them is simply so satisfying to watch.

It's "bad boys gone good" (much like Chor Sipahee or Parvarish, or Kucche Dhaage to some extent), and as far as unifying themes for a person's career go, it's a pretty good one.

If I had a couple of problems with the film, it's mostly to do with Aruna Irani's character, or rather, how the story portrayed her and where she ends up. But to get into details would be getting into spoilers, so I'd rather not. 

Suffice to say, Khoon Ki Pukaar is far from being a perfect masala film - but as it stands, it certainly delivers a good package: there's romance, action, a tale of lost-and-found and a bit of nice naach-gaana to boot.