Khatarnak (1974)
Cast: Yousuf Khan, Neelo, Anita, Nazli, Mustafa Qureshi, Afzal Ahmed
Director: Rehmat Ali
Synopsis: The film broke box office records based mainly on unprecedented levels of sleaze and violence.
Reviewed by: Omar Khan

This film earned a notorious reputation when the Film Censor Board withdrew its certification. The new military government tried to look smart and appease the Fundos in the glory days of the mid-‘70s. However, this was after the film enjoyed a massively successful run at the Box Office in Lahore, even if the business in Karachi was initially tame.

After the film gained notoriety, it exploded at the box office, setting numerous records along the way, including the most successful Punjabi movie to ever play in Karachi with a run of 100 weeks. However, despite the subsequent ban, it seems everyone has seen the film with all its legendary saucy numbers and bed scenes (that got the movie into hot water) intact.

The film is the usual revenge bloodbath and is disappointingly predictable until the end. It begins by informing the audience that the story of Khatarnaak is inspired by the famous American novel The Lone Star Ranger, though it doesn’t mention the author.

We have a reformed criminal Bahadur (Yousuf Khan), pardoned by a kindly jailor sahib. He heads home to a gushing mother and a doting father, who are delighted that their son has given up the ways of violence and is now ready to walk on the right side of the law. However, the new peace-loving, non-violent Bahadur becomes the town’s laughingstock, and his peers mock him for his passivity. To add insult to injury, the village beauty Neelo finds that he is hardly the prince charming she had expected, and she also proceeds to bully and taunt the poor sod.

Bahadur becomes depressed and threatens to leave for the city for a clerical job, but his father persuades him to stay by recounting his own experience with crime. Years ago, when Bahadur was a mere tot, his father had tried to rob a bank with four other cronies. The heist went wrong, and the robbers, including Bahadur’s dad, were jailed. However, if he grassed on his mates, the jailor offered Bahadur’s dad amnesty and a future with his wife and child. The offer proves too tempting, but as Bahadur’s father walks away from prison to his freedom, Mustafa Qureshi warns him of the dire consequences of informing against the gang – death, if not worse!

It doesn’t take long for the gang to escape from prison, and they head straight for a nightclub where they team up with their shapely accomplice, Miss Tina (Anita), who happens to be a deadly part-time Ninja. She welcomes them home as all good friends would, with one of the voluptuously lewd dances that got the film slapped with a ban all those years ago, a sizzling, filthy dance to Mala’s sultry, breathy number which goes, “we kar, we kar, we kar…pyar menoon kar.” The opening shot of Anita is spectacularly disorienting. The camera shoots from below her legs so that her crotch is the focal point. No wonder the film was banned; it’s mucho sleazy!

Anita shows why her presence in a film guarantees an element of vulgarity to the adoring, thirsting masses. Recalling a performer so adept at the sublimely vulgar Lollywood club dance is difficult.

Mustafa Qureshi’s murderous gang wreaks havoc on Bahadur’s village, leaving both parents dead. Bahadur finally throws off the

Khatarnak (Old)

shackles of his limp-wristed passivity and vows revenge on Qureshi and his gang—very much the usual Lollywood scenario.

The film suffers from uneven pacing and overlong in arriving at its inevitable conclusion. Yousuf Khan appears worn out and old; he was in his twentieth year of acting as a hero in 1974 and is still going strong in 2001; bless him. He does reasonably well as the mild-mannered Bahadur who has to toughen up and live up to his name.

Mustafa Qureshi is one of Pakistan’s truly remarkable actors. He has a tremendous screen presence and can electrify scenes with his magnetism. Of course, Qureshi needs the stage to perform his wonderful antics and a suitable adversary, which this movie may be unable to provide. Few in the world of cinema slip into a deranged personality with the ease he does and exude the menace he manages to ooze.

Neelo has nothing to do except look pretty and bat her eyelids. She accomplishes both tasks with considerable ease, but her dialogue delivery in dramatic scenes is so overwrought that it grates. But then, the word subtle doesn’t exist within the realm of Punjabi cinema. That said, Neelo was nominated and won the Nigar Award as Best Actress in a Punjabi Movie for the year.

Nanna does his thing, and Afzal Ahmed is in top form. He shares a spectacular scene where the sexual energy between him and Miss Tina proves overwhelming, and they have no option but to give in to their lust. We see both head to the bed, where they start to disrobe. We then see them slip under the sheet and various articles of clothing sent flying, discarded from within!

There is the delightful sight of much jostling beneath the sheets. Finally, the scene is rudely interrupted by an untimely phone call.

Another highly risqué scene from this infamous movie has two or three ultra-sleazy cheap dances, replete with gyrations and camera angles Alfred Hitchcock could never have dreamed up. To his credit, director Rehmat Ali breathes life and manages to infuse a sense of intensity and raw power with his gritty black-and-white cinematography and frenetic, creative camerawork (Cameraman Masood-ur-Rehman – actor Faisal Rehman’s father).

Likewise, the editing is precise and keeps things rolling rather than the laborious, plodding norm. There is specific creative energy to proceedings here—mainly in the camerawork, the lighting and the editing departments. The same team followed up the massively successful Khatarnaak with a follow-up entitled Khaufnaak, with many of the same ingredients as their original smash.

The sleazy dances (We Neray Neray Aa and Touch Me Not), allow numerous opportunities for the cameraman to snatch ample glimpses of the dancers’ skivvies, a favourite pastime of the local directors. No doubt audiences appreciate their efforts; we certainly do. Overall, the movie is not much to write home about. Still, the sleaze factor is way up there with the best, and the film will remain in memory for those wonderfully frightening camera angles, the fabulous tantalizing undie shots, and the epic bed scene. You may need smelling salts just in case some unwary family member accidentally happens to watch this!