Shikar (1968)

1968

Directed by Atma Ram

Music: Shankar-Jaikishen

Starring: Dharmendra, Asha Parekh, Sanjeev Kumar, 

Helen, Johnny Walker, Rehman

The last few weeks haven't been fun. Battling deadline demons and ill health at the same time took its toll, to the extent that I didn't feel like watching a film, much less writing a review. With the pressure off, for the moment, I dragged my creaking bones, weary and protesting to do some much needed housekeeping, quite forgetting that my ill health meant that I tired quicker, and that aches and pains seemed much sharper and lasted much longer. Trying to not think of the pain, I was browsing through a new website that a friend told me about; I wasn't in any mood to watch any movie that required me to think, so when I saw Rajkumar, I decided a raja-rani film, even one from the dreaded nineties, would be the very thing. Ugh! I'd obviously forgotten how bad the early nineties were - fashions, dances (or what passed for them), plot (or the lack, thereof) - even Naseeruddin Shah hammed his way through an execrable excuse of a film. Ghastly!

The next day, I decided to be a bit more circumspect. Scrolling through the selection on the site, I came across a film that was described as a murder mystery. I had never watched this film, and truth to tell, had not heard of it before. No, that is not true. I do (vaguely) remember discussing this with someone in the blogging world, but I have no clue who. Whoever it was spoke highly of the film, and that is all I knew about it. But Dharmendra in the 60s had not entered his Main tera khoon pee jaaoonga phase, and was rather dishy to boot. So was Sanjeev Kumar, long a favourite of mine, and while Asha Parekh is not a house favourite, the film had Helen and Johnny Walker. It had  to be better than Rajkumar! (It was.) 

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