‘Once in a blue moon, kabhi kabhie…’ (on Ghai’s Vishwanath)

This remains my favorite among all of Ghai’s films. This was his second film as director, the first being (also with Shatrughan Sinha) Kaalicharan, itself a very engaging masala effort. But Vishwanath is a camp classic which is also at the same time a rather dark vendetta theme with a whole (and rather disturbing) gallery of rogues led by the redoubtable and always show stealing Premnath. There was a whole tradition of Leone and (perhaps even more than this) Corbucci inspired ‘Westerns’ made in Bombay in the 70s, many of which starred the recently deceased Feroz Khan. I am thinking of films like Kaala Sona or Khote Sikkey or Kabeela. But even in other masala genres the ‘villains’ of that Italian or Italian-Hollywood tradition often spilled over. Vishwanath is one of the films in this latter tradition and there aren’t too many other works in this period where the henchmen are as much fun!

The film has some really cheesy and by now cult lines. My favorite remains Ranjeet’s “once in a blue moon, kabhi kabhie” (which gives this post its title) but when Qalandar here reads this post he will assuredly reproduce the great bit of ‘poetry’ from Sinha that occurs late in the film.

This 70s masala phase of Ghai was very different from the later works of the 80s that in turn increasingly reflected the politically emergent right wing ethos of the period. But the other films that belong to this phase, besides the two mentioned, are Gautam Govinda, Krodhi, Karz with Vidhaata possibly at the cusp.