A shy, wealthy widow with a prominent birthmark and an overbite is targetted by a sexy crook. Soon after their wedding, the man and his lover hurl the woman into a crocodile-infested pool. She survives. A fisherman rescues her. She undergoes plastic surgery, returns as a model, and seeks death by crocodile for her tormentor.
This plot wouldn’t leave the writer’s room anymore. Fortunately, Rakesh Roshan’s Khoon Bhari Maang (1988) is from the adventurous era when questions about logic and plausibility never prevented Hindi films from being made, or loved.
Roshan knew that audiences demanded emotional truth and heightened moments, rather than documentary detailing. Khoon Bhari Maang has the kind of unselfconscious manipulation that Hindi cinema was comfortable with before it got branded as Bollywood. Plus, the film has the redoubtable Rekha as the heroine.
Khoon Bhari Maang (A Wife’s Bloody Revenge) is available on Prime Video and YouTube. Roshan stole the basic plot from the Australian TV series Return to Eden. The show too demands suspension of disbelief that nobody can tell a dowdy woman and her glamourous avatar apart.
In Khoon Bhari Maang, the plain-looking, golden-hearted Aarti is struggling to manage her riches and her two children after the successive deaths of her husband and father. Her father’s devious employee Hiralal (Kader Khan) gets his nephew Sanjay (Kabir Bedi) to seduce Aarti.
Sanjay ropes in his devoted girlfriend Nandini (Sonu Walia, uncredited for an inexplicable reason). Nandini’s feelings for Sanjay are amply evident in the scenes of them cavorting in a pool. It’s unsurprising that Aarti falls for His Hunkiness too.
After she is nearly mauled to death, Aarti travels from India to America for plastic surgery without any documents and strictly on the strength of a pair of chunky diamond earrings. Is this even possible? At this point, do we care?
We are already firmly on Aarti’s side. We want to see Sanjay’s studliness punished. We whoop when Aarti, posing as the supermodel Jyoti, meets her family again, when her loyal dog instantly recognises her, when her old caretaker and horse groomer know it’s her.
Aarti’s transformation from demure housewife into avenging angel happens in a single scene. Roshan and writers Mohan Kaul and Ravi Kapoor move with speed, keeping only the core ideas of Return to Eden and pushing Rekha to the front at all times. Fleet and purposeful, the film’s main drawbacks are a ghastly sub-plot revolving around Kader Khan and the fact that we never again meet the fisherman who saved Aarti’s life.
There’s nobody else other than Rekha to play the retiring, maternal Aarti, and the flamboyant Jyoti, looking like she has walked out of an MTV music video. Rekha’s effortless oomph is as believable as the moment she picks up a whip and tells Sanjay what she will do to him.
The scene of Aarti being fed to the crocodiles has been referenced in Bejoy Nambiar’s upcoming survival thriller Tu Yaa Main, an official adaptation of the Thai hit The Pool (2018). Nambiar’s film is about two young content creators trapped in a swimming pool with an irate crocodile.
As Sayantan Mondal pointed out in his survey for Scroll (‘Tu Yaa Main’ and a short history of the crocodile in cinema), humans and crocodiles have been at each other in Indian films for decades. But whenever we think of crocodiles, we think first of Khoon Bhari Maang.
Perhaps it’s because the biggest threat to Aarti isn’t the bloodthirsty crocodile. It’s Sanjay, who shares his light brown eyes with the creature. When Aarti poses as Jyoti, she too wears contact lenses that give her deadly reptilian intent.
It’s enough to fool Sanjay and the rest of his posse. Rekha, of the mesmerising presence and husky drawl, tends to have that effect on people – something Rakesh Roshan puts to superb use in the unbelievable, undeniable Khoon Bhari Maang.
Also start the week with these films:
Why ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ is leading the Animated Feature Oscar race
You’ve read Scroll.
Now help sustain it
Scroll is funded by readers, not corporate owners. If you believe our work matters, support our newsroom. Become a member today!
We’re not driven by clicks or corporate interests – just honest, independent reporting. Keep us going. Support Scroll today!