Adhey Kangal (1967)

Which means ‘The Same Eyes’.

The first Tamil film I ever reviewed on this blog was a suspense thriller, the excellent songless film Andha Naal. Since then, I’ve come across recommendations for other Tamil suspense films, and when I found a subtitled copy of this one—a major hit of its time—I was eager to watch. ‘Taut’ and ‘tense’ was how I’d seen it described by reviewers, and it sounded right up my street.

Adhey Kangal begins in a tense, suspenseful manner. A man is murdered—someone hangs him in his room—and the man’s wife (G Sakunthala) discovers her husband’s dead body. She has just about started screaming when the murderer (whom we do not see, except as two disjointed hands reaching for her) tries to strangle her.

It’s an aborted attempt: the murderer flees, and his would-be victim, shaken and traumatized, but not dead, is discovered by her family.

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Signpost to Murder (1964)

This film has been on my radar for a long time now—since I discovered that one of my favourite Hindi films, Ittefaq, was based on Signpost to Murder. The other day, I was again reminded of that, and this time decided I had to watch the original.

Signpost to Murder begins in an English village named Milhampton. Here, at a local asylum for the criminally insane, lives Alex Forrester (Stuart Whitman). Alex, who was accused of murdering his wife, has been in the asylum for the past five years. When the film opens, he’s outdoors, shoveling earth in the shadow of the high electric fences that surround the institution. With Forrester is his psychiatrist, Dr Mark Fleming (Edward Mulhare). Fleming has known Forrester these past five years and is due to represent Forrester in an upcoming debate regarding the possibility of bringing up Forrester’s case again.

Forrester and Fleming have a chat

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Gumnaam (1965)

For anybody who’s been following my idea of ‘linked posts’ – each post connected to the one before, and to the one after – this probably comes as no surprise. And Then There Were None was based on Agatha Christie’s highly popular novel and play; Gumnaam is, in turn, an adaptation of And Then There Were None. Not a completely faithful adaptation, but a vastly entertaining one, as you’ll see if you scroll through the comments on my And Then There Were None post: most of my readers, even if they’ve not seen the Hollywood film, have had something to say about Gumnaam.

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Wait Until Dark (1967)

On a flight from Montreal to New York, Lisa (Samantha Jones) smuggles a doll that plays a catchy little tune and holds in its stuffed cloth body a very valuable cache of heroin…

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CID (1956)

Long before TV came into our lives, a family treat would be to go out for dinner or for a film at a local cinema. And though Bobby was the first film I saw, CID was the first black and white film I remember. I don’t recall anything of the film except a very brief bit from the climax, but you can imagine how gripping that must have been to have stayed in my memory for well over thirty years.

Mehmood and Dev Anand in CID

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Shikar (1968)

After all the melodrama of the recent Hindi films I’ve been watching, I decided it was time to sit back and enjoy one of my favourite genres: the thriller. And a thriller the way only the Bollywood of the 1950’s and 60’s could manage: with lots of romance thrown in, a gorgeously vampish Helen, hummable songs, a comic side plot starring none other than the inimitable Johnny Walker—and, interestingly enough, a supporting actor who manages to steal the limelight from the hero.

Dharmendra and Sanjeev Kumar in Shikar

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