KHOON KHOON

With a driving funk theme and blood-dripping title graphic, Khoon Khoon’s opening credits clearly announce that the film’s director, Bollywood B movie maestro Mohammed Hussain, has changed with the times, moving on from the gee-whiz swashbuckling thrills of sixties to lurid subject matter much more in tune with the tenor of the seventies’ less restrained Indian cinema. What’s still intact, however, is Hussain’s tendency to hew very closely to Hollywood models in the crafting of his films. In the case of Khoon Khoon, Hussain’s model is Don Siegel’s Dirty Harry. While, admittedly, some of my enjoyment of Khoon Khoon arose from the novelty of it being a Bollywood adaptation of one of my favorite films, I also found it irresistibly watchable on its own terms. It is a taughtly-paced, rough-edged and deliciously trashy little thriller with all the garish accouterments I’ve come to love from 1970s Indian cinema. That it also turns that freaky, funky Bollywood funhouse mirror on an American classic is just the day-glo frosting on the cake.

In addition…

I’ve started the process of re-integrating a large number of old reviews that were retired from the site either because they were too short and, at the time, I didn’t have a Shrimp Chips category, or because at the time I lacked an easy way to import old material and still have it attributed to the correct author. So we’re kicking this “It’s alive!” project off with a couple Spaghetti Westerns…

DJANGO — Franco Nero and his coffin fulla Gatling gun. Nuff said.

DJANGO, KILL! — In which there is no Django, and the guy who is supposed to be Django-like hardly kills anyone.