As stated previously, there isn’t much that I like about the Holiday season. The one thing I do appreciate however, are the movies. Hollywood studios, greedy for Oscar gold, always release their best movies in December. I still haven’t found a date to go see Syriana with despite the fact that it has been out for two weeks already in L.A. This weekend marks the opening of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I can hardly wait. Next weekend however is when the biggest film of the year will open up. Peter Jackson’s re-make of the 1933 classic King Kong. But…did you all know that Bollywood re-made King Kong in 1962? Would I lie to you? I give you Kong:
Unfortunately this one blurry picture is the only visual evidence I could find that the movie really exists (Update: Manish who unlike me can read Hindi, points out that this poster may be of a film called Shikari which also seems to have a giant ape??). It was a cached copy on a defunct webpage. I do know a bit more about the ’62 version however (even if the above picture is not the King Kong movie poster). It was directed by Babubhai Mistri and starred Dara Singh:Prolific Indian director Babubhai Mistri filmed a Hindi version of the simian classic that starred world-wrestling force Dara Singh. We were unable to ascertain, however, whether Mr. Singh played a human or Kong himself — this movie never made it to the United States because of the copyright infringement lawsuits that would have resulted. [Link]
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p align=left> The most promising appears to be Zinda Laash (Living Corpse) (1967). It is a Lollywood re-make of Dracula:
The 60’s black and white production starts off with a clearly unstable mad scientist type (Professor Tabani) working profusely in his very Hammer-ish lab. Test-tubes bubble away furiously and while the distinguished professor pours himself a beaker of a very strange looking substance and proceeds to knock it back. The next morning an assistant finds the Professor’s corpse lying crumpled up and a note which explains what had caused it. After the professor is buried, the potion starts to take effect and he is abruptly woken from the sleep of the dead and returns to the animate world as the Living Dead.
Fortunately for him, he appears to have been buried in a coffin with a lid that opens very easily as he is out and about searching for victims within moments of reawakening. He finds his buxom accomplice (Nasreen aka Salma Agha’s mum) reclining and doesn’t waste much time in jabbing those fangs into her fragile neck and feasting on her blood. [Link]
Oooh. Kinky. As the site proudly proclaims: “In the 1960s, EVEN Pakistan was swinging.”
Dara Singh rocks. He played Hanuman, wonderfully, at least twice.
Hmmm… I’ve never seen those actors before…. b-rated campy bollywood flicks? Sounds interesting! The headless one looks kind of creepy… but not as creepy as Japanese horror. I heart the scary movies… even if I spend half the film peeking through my fingers.
Oh, for cryin’ out loud! Quit the pining and whining – you shouldn’t have trouble in that department. Plus you live in L.A.!! I recommend you stop the “indie boy self-loathing” and practice a cool swagger instead. Take it from a gal 😉
Without indie boy self-loathing what would be left of me? My blog posts would suck. 🙂
This story aroused my interest enough to sit and do some furious googling for 15 minutes (at 1:15 AM, I might add, sigh I need to get a life). But anyway, no he didn’t play King Kong in the movie. King Kong was a title bestowed on a fighter……
Here’s the whole story.
Dara Singh also starred in “Tarzan and King Kong” as Tarzan. Dunno whether King Kong refers to the real King Kong here.
The photo appears to be of a different flick, Shikari (Hunter).
That’s strange MJ. I read the description and then look at the poster and the two don’t seem to jive that well. Perhaps the “mysterious man in the forest” looks like a mountain gorilla. Thanks for the dedicated late night Googling.
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Hmmm. That could explain my previous comment. The picture of the poster was linked to a .jpeg that was titled “King Kong Bollywood” on Google.
FYI there’s an archived page for Bubonic Films where you can get a higher resolution pic of the Shikari poster – here.
the reubenesque Cat-Beast is the BEST.
Great find, Abhi! but is Syriana considered a “date movie”? 😉
Ooooo, thanks for the link, Abhi. I would suggest Aurat Raj over Syriana as a date movie. One of the funniest movies I have ever seen. It’s about a wife with a horrible husband, she forms a feminist group, they thrash the men, win an election, then set off a bomb that turns men into transvestites and women into really butch versions of themselves! At this point it really doesn’t matter whether you speak the language.
I believe the writer of the sidebar at 1up.com got it wrong, and neither the Bollywood KING KONG nor TARZAN VS. KING KONG have anything to do with the Hollywood King Kong. Rather, these pictures starred freestyle wrestling champion Dara Singh, and in them he squared off with lots of his wrestling buddies, including the biggest baddie of the lot, the eastern european wrestler KING KONG, real name Emil Tazaya. They fought in the ring, they fought on the screen. That’s all. No giant ape. I suspect the sidebar writer at 1up.com simply did an imdb search for the keywords King Kong and wrote what he found. On the other hand, the SHIKARI poster looks great, and though it is impossible to tell if the ape is supposed to be giant, it could be. But I think it bears no relation to the Dara Singh movies you mention in your post.
There is now a clip of Tarzan and King Kong on YouTube. King Kong is a human-sized gorilla in this Bollywood film.