Hathyar (1989)

Cast: Dharmendra, Rishi Kapoor, Sanjay Dutt, Amrita Singh, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Asha Parekh, Sangeeta Bijalani, Paresh Rawal

Director: J.P. Dutta

Lyrics: Hassan Kamal

Capsule Review: Hathyar did a remarkable job of portraying the end of innocence and the beginning of crime in the life of its protagonist Sanjay Dutt who moves to Mumbai with his innocentparents (Asha Parekh, in one of her last screen appearances; and J.P. Dutta’s favourite actor, Kulbhushan Kharbanda). Once in the city Dutt gets sucked into a world of crime, represented in the film by two kinds of outcasts, the benign don played by Dharmendra andthe low-down gangster Paresh Rawal. Sanjay Dutt, in his career’s best, goes from vulnerability to violence sometimes bringing both qualities into the same range of vision.

Teesri Manzil (1966)

Cast: Shammi Kapoor, Asha Parekh, Premnath, Helen

Director: Vijay Anand

Music: R.D. Burman

Lyrics: Majrooh Sultanpuri

Capsule Review: Blending producer Nasir  Husain’s trademark formula of frolic and romancewith director Vijay Anand’s penchant for using song, dance and drama as extensions of the characters’ inner world, Teesri Manzil created a storm at the box office. The plot is a murder mystery about a girl befriending a musician at a hill station to find out the identity of her sister’s killer. Much of the plot seems an excuse for Burman’s rousing songs rendered with glorious gusto by Mohammad Rafi and Asha Bhosle. In his first major tryst with the hit parade, Burman created smash-hit tracks like 0 mere sona re, 0 haseena zulfon wall, Aaja aaja main hoon pyar tera and the uncharacteristically sober Rafi solo Tumne mujhe dekha which was filmed immediately after the leading man’s wife Geeta Bali passed away. One of the lead pair’s biggest hits, Kapoor and Parekh somehow failed to click together in subsequent projects like Jawan Mohabbat and Pagla Kahin Ka.