The best of the worst

There are some films so bad that they are just plain bad, and there are some films so bad they are awesome. Somewhere in the large wasteland between these two extremes (but no one knows exactly where) falls Red Rose, a 1980 movie about a psychotic, woman-hating killer.

What makes Red Rose both terrible and sort-of excellent is its combining of disparate elements: on the one hand, it's a cheap rip-off of psychological-horror classics like Peeping Tom and Psycho, presented in the B-movie style of the Ramsay Brothers; on the other hand, there are little nods to the long-defunct superstar persona of Rajesh Khanna.

Khanna plays a wealthy man, “Mr Anand”, who lives alone in a mansion and manages a large business (we never learn exactly what it is, though at one point someone remarks that “the 2,000 buckets haven’t reached Dubai yet”). But he also has a murderous alternate life, and the actor conveys the complexities of the character by adjusting his glasses every few seconds and looking distracted, as if he has misplaced a pencil.

Red Rose is a remake of the Tamil film Sigappu Rojakkal, starring Kamal Hassan. Knowledgeable friends tell me the original is better, but I don't care: the use of Rajesh Khanna in this remake is so much more intriguing. For an inexplicable period between 1969 and 1972, Khanna had the loins of every Indian woman (and many Indian men) all a-flutter. Now, a decade later, when his market value had plummeted, this film cast him as a Lothario who slays women immediately after seducing them. It's the sort of thing that howls out for subtextual analysis.

The main plot begins with Anand meeting garment-shop salesgirl Sharda (played by the young Poonam Dhillon) and engaging her in double entendre.

“Kya chaahiye aapko?” she asks sweetly.

“Aap...” he says, and after a significant pause that gives her time to gasp, “...ke paas koi roomal hai?”

This scene is disturbing because we know there's something very wrong with Anand. But it's worth noting that if exactly the same scene had occurred in a straightforward romantic Hindi movie where the (roguish but basically goodhearted) hero was gently teasing the heroine, it would have been seen as acceptable, even cute. Heck, if Khanna had played it 10 years earlier, everyone in the hall, including the projectionist, would have swooned.

Soon, love blossoms in Sharda’s heart. Again, this is very hard to believe within the world of the movie itself, but completely understandable in the subtextual way: in real life, Dhillon was on the cusp of adolescence when Khanna first appeared, gently bobbing his head, on the personal horizon of the Hindi movie-watching schoolgirl. Now he comes to her shop, engages in innuendo-filled chatter and even hurls a handkerchief at her head. Wouldn't you fall head over heels?

There are, of course, many other things going on in this film. There is much misogyny, strange insert shots that suggest Anand's childhood memories, lots of bad acting, and perplexing dialogue (“Main sab kuch bedroom mein hi karta hoon: I am a very lonely man, you see”). But to my mind Red Rose is most interesting as a commentary on its star's fading career. By the time the film reveals itself to be a cry of outrage against depraved women who lust for young boys, you have to wonder if the reference is to all those aunties who leered at the young Rajesh Khanna in the late 60s, bringing damnation on the rest of their kind.

Jai Arjun Singh is a Delhi-based writer