The legendary Shalimar ruby, the world’s largest ruby and most expensive rock of all time, the holy grail of thieves. It is both Madonna and w.hore, says one character in the film - it inspires both total devotion and rabid lust. Large rubies are far rarer finds than large diamonds. And a perfectly flawless one as big as an egg....
Sir John Locksley, master thief, and its current owner, invites the cream of the underworld to his remote Pacific Island retreat. Reason- find a worthy successor for his greatest treasure, the incomparable Shalimar, as he is dying.
So he sets up a little do-or-die competition for them to steal the ruby from him. Shalimar will be a fabulous reward for success, but failing means certain death. On his island, they will be working against his not very tame native tribe, armed with every expensive gadget under the sun-guns, pressure mines, closed-circuit TV.
Krishna Shah, an Indian-American producer-director, is the father of this first crossover experiment, which flopped expensively. Shalimar was the first (and possibly last) Indian panavision film to star major Hollywood talent like Rex Harrison ( My Fair Lady), John Saxon (of Bruce Lee vehicle Enter the Dragon), and Sylvia Miles (Midnight Cowboy), in addition to an all-star Bollywood cast - Dharmendra, Zeenat Aman, Shammi Kapoor.
Still, this movie is worth seeing.
The original script, by Krishna Shah, was a lot better than the movie, which has choppy editing and script. Read it if you can, it rounds out the movie so much better.
(BTW, wishlist alert !! lost this book many years ago, so if anyone finds another copy and is willing to mail it to me, GNS will send tributes of gold, frankincense and myrhh-or just a briefcase of plain unscented cash if u prefer).
Chain of ideas - Krishna Shah cites a similar role in one of Rex Harrison’s earlier movies. The Honey Pot, by Joseph Mankiewicz (1967), in which Harrison plays a dying lover, who summons all his past mistresses to be near him, and perhaps inherit his money. And The Honey Pot was in turn an adaptation of a classic 17th century Ben Johnson satire Volpone, in which Volpone fakes an illness to test those who aspire to his fortune. Shalimar is perhaps a combination of these.
Rex Harrison plays the dying, suave and masterful host, who has a hidden agenda (his voice was dubbed by Kader Khan, so don’t be surprised by his unaccented Hindi. The houseparty of thieves invited include John Saxon ( a mute peg-legged hitech expert), Sylvia Miles (the sleazy past-her-prime acrobatic Countess Rassmussen, Shammi Kapoor ( a benevolent portly con, flowing beard and beads, whose trick is playing the man of god), and O.P. Nayyar (as the bug-eyed slimy Mr. Iyengar), Dharmendra (as Kumar, a minor pickpocket).
Zeenat Aman is Sheila, hired to nurse Harrison, and also secretly nursing a broken heart over Kumar, who had disappeared from her life suddenly, and reappears on the island as someone else.
General nostalgia for the 70s helps when watching it :) - I’m a fan of those mindless films. When villains were ’players’ - they dressed in rakish clothes, drove splashy cars, and sportingly gave the hero a second (and sometimes a third) chance to kill them. Much more fun and egalitarian with their bold hit-girls and sexy ’’Mona Darrlings’’, and general inclination to party (no expense spared) at the drop of a hat (how many times have u heard ’’Aaj raat ko jashn ho jaaye’’?).
(V/s the hero with his maa-bahen-heroine brood who needed constant watching to keep them out of trouble. Who wouldn’t get tired of shopping for sewing machines and raakhis? Imagine bumping into the villain at the mall, buying lingerie. No wonder the hero was one angry young man.)
What can I recommend? Mostly everything. plot, cinematography, lavish sets, unnecessary and comical insertion of tribals (read mini-reed skirts, sacrifices and songs), the stereotyped nasty with the bald head, Dharmendra predictably hamming it up to the hilt as usual, Shammi Kapoor in a role tailor-made, and that last 1/4 of the movie when Dharm-boy finds a clever way to steal the ruby ( etched in slo-mo in my mind).
RD Burman’s haunting music...... novel use of African drumbeats and tribal chants. Usha Uthup singing the light-hearted One-two-cha-cha-cha, in her throaty style, Kishore singing that classic ode to love betrayed -Hum Bewafa Hargiz Na The, voice laced with regret, and it-could-have-beens. Asha in the stirring theme melody Mera Pyar Shalimar.
A B movie, but full of sly charm. Both Madonna and w.hore.