Cast: Dharmendra, Zeenat Aman, Rishi Kapoor, Tina Munim, Shakti Kapoor, Nirupa Roy and Amjad Khan Directed by: Arjun Hingorani Music by: Kal...
Cast: Dharmendra, Zeenat Aman, Rishi Kapoor, Tina Munim, Shakti Kapoor, Nirupa Roy and Amjad Khan
Directed by: Arjun Hingorani
Music by: Kalyanji Anandji
There are films that age gracefully. There are films that become classics. And then there are films like Katilon Ke Katil, which, 45 years after their release, continue to look at you with a completely straight face and ask: “What exactly is the problem? A villain named Black Cobra? A man-bear? A Bruce Lee clone? A monkey with a diamond necklace? We put them all in the same film. Enjoy.”
And enjoy you do.
Released in 1981 on September 11, Katilon Ke Katil is the kind of film that could only have emerged from the glorious, anything-goes ecosystem of early-1980s Hindi popular cinema. Directed by Arjun Hingorani, a man with a fondness for triple-K titles—Kab? Kyoon? Aur Kahan?, Kahani Kismat Ki and many others. Well, perhaps not every title quite fit the formula, but Katilon Ke Katil certainly did—the film is less a narrative than a particularly enthusiastic masala buffet.
And what a buffet.
There is Dharmendra. There is Rishi Kapoor. There is Zeenat Aman. There is Tina Munim. There is Nirupa Roy. There is Shakti Kapoor. There is Amjad Khan.
And then, because apparently this wasn’t enough star power, there is Reecha, a gigantic human-bear hybrid advertised with the wonderfully matter-of-fact explanation that he is the “product of the love between a woman and a wild bear.”
One can only imagine the family conversation.
“Mummy, where did Reecha come from?”
“It’s complicated, beta.”
Then there is the villain, Black Cobra, who has presumably spent his entire life waiting for the opportunity to introduce himself with maximum seriousness. In the Hindi cinema villain dictionary, “Black Cobra” sits comfortably somewhere between “Mogambo” and “Professor Pyarelal.”
And Black Cobra doesn’t merely kill people. He turns them into wax statues.Because apparently ordinary murder had become insufficiently theatrical. Our villain lives in an island, surrounds himself with wax versions of his victims and generally behaves as though he has wandered in from three different adventure serials and refused to choose one.
And then there is Bruce Li.
Not Bruce Lee. But Bruce Li.
The distinction is important.
He is essentially Hindi cinema’s answer to the Bruce Lee phenomenon, presumably because if Bruce Lee couldn’t be obtained, changing one letter was considered a perfectly reasonable Plan B.
But that is precisely what makes Katilon Ke Katil so much fun. It is a film made by people who weren’t particularly interested in asking whether something was too much.
Too much? There is no such thing.
If one hero is good, have Dharmendra and Rishi Kapoor.
If one heroine is good, have Zeenat Aman and Tina Munim.
If an action sequence needs a little something extra, introduce a giant man-bear.
If the plot needs a complication, send in a monkey.
And if the monkey can steal a diamond necklace, even better.
This is cinema as escalation.
The remarkable thing is that beneath all this madness lies a very carefully assembled piece of commercial Hindi filmmaking. Hingorani understood the fundamental grammar of the masala entertainer: action, romance, comedy, sentiment, revenge, family, mystery, villains, disguises, improbable coincidences and music—preferably all within the same half-hour.
His association with Dharmendra went back to their debut film, Dil Bhi Tera Hum Bhi Tere, and the actor-director relationship clearly had an instinctive understanding of what audiences wanted from a Dharmendra film.
Dharmendra doesn’t merely enter the film. He occupies it.
There is a particular kind of effortless masculinity that Dharmendra brought to the Hindi screen. Even when the surrounding plot has wandered completely into the jungle, the man himself remains firmly grounded. He can look at a ridiculous situation with the solemnity of someone carrying the emotional burden of the nation.
Rishi Kapoor, meanwhile, brings a completely different energy. He is the youthful, romantic, charming counterpoint to Dharmendra’s rugged presence. Together, they provide the film with two very different flavours of heroism.
And then come the women.
Zeenat Aman, with her unmistakable screen presence, could make even the most outrageous material appear vaguely sophisticated simply by being in the frame.Tina Munim, meanwhile, brings the freshness and romantic appeal that became such an integral part of early-80s Hindi cinema.
And somewhere in between the romance, action and melodrama, the film remembers that it is also supposed to make you laugh.
Sometimes intentionally. Sometimes spectacularly unintentionally.
The comedy of Katilon Ke Katil is one of its greatest pleasures today because the film never appears to realise how funny some of its ideas are.
That is not a criticism. It is a compliment.
There is something wonderfully innocent about a film in which a character can solemnly explain the biological origins of a giant man-bear, while the audience is expected to nod and move on.
Today’s cinema would probably spend millions creating a digital creature and another few million explaining its mythology.
Katilon Ke Katil simply says:
“Reecha.”
Done.
Then there is the monkey and the diamond necklace. In a modern thriller, such a sequence would probably require foreshadowing, character motivation and perhaps a thematic exploration of man’s relationship with nature.
Here, the monkey sees jewellery.
The monkey takes jewellery.
The audience laughs.
Plot progresses.
This was an era when the laws of probability were considered more like friendly suggestions.
And nowhere is this spirit better captured than in the film’s music by Kalyanji-Anandji. The soundtrack gives us songs such as “Sare Bazaar Karenge Pyar,” “O Meri Chorni” and the wonderfully curious “Yak-ba-yak.”
Even the title Yak-ba-yak feels like something that could only happen in Hindi cinema. It sounds mysterious, sophisticated and faintly dangerous, while essentially announcing itself as a song title nobody is likely to forget.
The music performs exactly the function it is supposed to perform in a masala film: it stops the narrative, gives everyone a chance to change clothes, fall in love, dance in improbable locations and return to the plot as though nothing happened.
And that, ultimately, is the charm of Katilon Ke Katil.
It doesn’t ask to be taken seriously.
It asks to be enjoyed.
There is a tendency, when looking back at 1980s Hindi cinema, to judge such films by the standards of realism that came later. But that misses the point entirely. The masala entertainer was never designed as a realistic representation of life.
It was designed as an escape from it. You went into the theatre with your worries.The film gave you Dharmendra, Rishi Kapoor, Zeenat Aman, Tina Munim, Black Cobra, Reecha, Bruce Li, a monkey, a diamond necklace, a wax museum, an island, songs, fights, romance, revenge and enough plot twists to leave your common sense somewhere outside the cinema hall.
And for three hours, that was perfectly acceptable.
Forty-five years later, Katilon Ke Katil may not pass the test of logic. It doesn’t even appear to have registered for the examination.
But entertainment?
That is another matter.
Because this is the sort of wonderfully excessive Hindi film that reminds us of a time when filmmakers weren’t afraid to throw everything they had into the pot and turn up the flame.
The result was a glorious cinematic khichdi of romance, action, comedy, melodrama, fantasy and outright lunacy.
And somehow, incredibly, it works. Or perhaps “works” is the wrong word.
It has a blast.
And 45 years later, so do we.
By Pratik Majumdar (author: Love Coffee Murder and 1975 The Year That Transformed Bollywood)
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