The Book, Some Thieves, a Cop Undercover
Chori Mera Kaam (Theft Is My Job, dir. Brij, 1975) is one of those movies that nobody talks about when hailing the masala golden age, but everybody should.
Dharam Veer
Dharam Veer is a Hindi cinema TARDIS, holding way more bedazzled boots, pirate shirts, Elizabethan doublets, Roman sandals, feisty gypsies, hand guillotines, romantic princes, creepy statues, sworn promises, lost relatives, baby-switching schemes, court politics, sword fights, naval battles, and eye-for-an-eye justice than you imagine could possibly fit inside […]
Bombay Blofeld: Shaan
What if James Bond went to Bombay in the late 1970s and wasn’t so much a secret agent as a stylist and interior designer for a particularly aesthetics-oriented villain? The plot of Shaan has very little to do with any of the Bond films that I can remember. […]
Ankhen (1968)
If you’re thinking “Hey, didn’t Cultural Gutter already do a piece on a wackadoodle Indian film about eyes starring the handsome and heroic Dharmendra?” you’re perfectly correct. But thanks to a career of over 300 films, producers apparently ran out of different words to use in the title […]
Bollywood B-Movie Espionage Delight: Elaan
Elaan may be the most fantastic and under-appreciated movie of 1971. It’s exactly the kind of film I live in fear of running out of someday: loony, exuberant, stylish, exciting, and fun. It might not exactly count as an example of standard Hindi cinema mix of action, comedy, […]
The Gleeful, Giddy Masala Romp of Teesri Aankh
A woman tearfully leaves her newborn in the lap of a giant statue of Shiva during a thunderstorm and keels over dead. Hindu brothers are separated when one one falls into a raging river, presumed dead, but actually rescued and raised by a thief. Boys from good homes […]
The Cultural Gutter 