I’m not much into writing tributes for dead Bollywood personalities but this maker of über stylish movies way ahead of their time in terms of trends, certainly deserves a mention. With stylishly made potboilers like Dharmatma, Qurbani and Jaanbaaz, often imitated never duplicated comes to mind. FK was famous for his guy movies – stylish, fast paced, foot tapping music, phoren locales, dazzling music videos, stunning women and packed with action. The best part? He was unapologetic about any of it. His movie making style would spawn hundreds of copycats throughout the 80s and well into the 90s.
Dharmatma, was his watershed movie. Not only did he try to adapt Oscar winning The Godfather to Indian sensibilities, he did so by filming the first half of the movie in the rugged pre-Soviet invasion Afghanistan countryside. On-screen he romanced two of Bollywood’s top leading ladies, Hema Malini and Rekha, and off-screen he called Hema Malini “baby”, and she liked it! He would go on to don cowboy gear and complete the perfect South India trifecta by romancing Sridevi on-screen in Jaanbaaz. At this point we’d like to interrupt our narration – Bollywood ishtyle – with a Feroz Khan number.
As much of a flamboyant movie maker as FK was, he was particularly picky about the music in his movies. The effect of his movies’ soundtracks on Bollywood music often gets overlooked. [GlamSham]
To mention Feroz Khan’s contribution one would have to start with Dharmatma.
Dharmatma:
The song “Kya Khoob Lagti ho”, with combination of a mouth organ and bongo as the accompanying acoustic instrument is still one of the all time favorite romantic songs that transcends across generations.
Of course, no mention of Feroz Khan is complete without the movie that made him a household name, Qurbani. He, brought sexy back by re-igniting the trend of carbaret dances in Indian movies, O Laila, anyone? While Qurbani was hardly the first movie to feature a cabaret number, it was one of the first to do so with the lead female actor. In modern Bollywood terms we call them “item numbers”.
QURBANI:
It was indeed a milestone in the Hindi film music as it had happened for the first time in all probability where two music directors were used in a film,
Not only did FK romance a much younger Sridevi in Jaanbaaz, but he made the world cringe at the sight of Anil Kapoor’s hairy chest in the song “Jaane Jana”. Jaanbaaz also had the country western tuned “Har Kisi ko” (featured in above video) and the S&M inspired, “Ek to kum zindagaani” (with an English remix).
Yalgaar, was one of Feroz’s biggest duds. How else can you describe a movie in which a much older Feroz Khan calls a much younger Mukesh Khanna “dad”? So what is Yalgaar doing on this list? Well, it turns out much of current day Hindi movie soundtracks draw their roots from the trend started by Yalgaar.
With YALGAAR Feroz Khan introduced for the first time the popular club music popular in the clubs of London, which was retro, funky and contemporary. It was only after YALGAAR that the Punjabi music of the London club variety characterized by beats of Dhol and heavy strumming of guitars became a norm in the subsequent Hindi films.
Quite a trendsetter this Feroz Khan guy was. RIP, dude.
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