Blast from the Golden Past CHARAS

28th May..

Today sees 

18 years of Hum Tum ( Saif&Rani)

23 years of Biwi No.1

29 years of Aashik Aawara ( Saif Debut)

40 years of Teri Kasam

( Already covered by S B )

40 years of Gazab ( Dharmendra)

And the film I am writing about

Blast from the Golden Past

46 Years of CHARAS 

Made by Ramanand Sagar much before he came in to limelight with "Ramayana" Ramanand Sagar had displayed a penchant of making films which satiated the appetite of the all important box office to the hilt. Made within frames of the commercial matrix, these films were in the genre of action-thriller, inspired, as many will vouch, by the Bond format; and Sagar kept the budget large and the span overreaching. Aankhen was one of them.

CHARAS is a sort of Sequel to that series of the crime thriller genre.

A simplistic story of Suraj (Dharmendra) who journeys through India, Rome and Malta to take revenge against his father’s killers Robert (Amjad Khan) and Kalicharan (Ajit).

After Suraj’s family is ambushed in Africa by Kalicharan’s men, Suraj and his sister Nimmu (Aruna Irani) are separated. Suraj comes to India in search of Kalicharan but makes a hasty escape when things go wrong. Suraj is then recruited by the police to stop Kalicharan’s smuggling activities which leads him to Europe. He meets Sudha (Hema Malini) a beautiful dancer, who has been blackmailed by Kalicharan, into helping smuggle the drugs. Suraj must try to find his sister, end the drug smuggling and take his revenge on Kalicharan ends up in Malta, where Robert handles most of the drug business. The question is will he able to accomplish this or will he himself fall prey to Charas.

Almost all the songs (lyrics by Anand Bakshi and music composed by Laxmikant-Pyarelal) are chartbusters and retain their lure to this day, including “Kal ki haseen mulaqat ke liye” by Kishore Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar.

CHARAS when released was banned as Emergency was in vouge. After many cuts and censor manipulation it was released.

It was the opening release at Raj Mandir Jaipur which was then considered the Royal Theatre built in a Palace.

After it was banned they re-released Sholay for a week and when the ban was lifted a fortnight later CHARAS was reinstated. It ram for 100 days in regular shows and completed silver Jubilee in Matinee.

I recently visited Raj Mandir and they have this gallery depicting the  history of the theatre.

(Images are below)