In Bangalore, third-rate Malayalam films come as a boon for older cinema halls

More daring than any festival film - only one night' blares a hoarding outside a run-down cinema hall in Bangalore.Chora Chuvana Chora, a third-rate Malayalam film and a box-office failure in Kerala, is being screened. A long queue of middle-aged men threads its way through a crowd towards the ticket counters. Then, clutching the flimsy slips of paper, people throng the hall which is more or less packed to capacity.How does a failure in Kerala turn into a resounding success in Bangalore? The answer is simple: Chora has been cut up, some sections thrown away, and strips of tailor-made blue films, running up to 20 minutes at a stretch, spliced skilfully into the gaps. After undergoing this 'sex-change', the rejuvenated film treats the men to spicy bedroom scenes of lusty males and lascivious females, and the cash counters don't stop ringing as the take mounts up and the people clamour for more.A lure for customersChora is not an exception. Bangalore teems with cinemas touting films with highly suggestive names: Sexy Dream, '69 Nights, Sexy Lady, Passionate Nights and the like. The 'sexy' or the 'nights' is a must, for, as a local film distributor admits, "The Malayalam title is irrelevant. Those two words are all that are needed to attract the public." But language is no barrier: nothing is lost in the translation, as the title 'Nirodh Tirudi' (the girl who stole Nirodh) clearly illustrates.Strangely, it is mainly Malayali films that have gained a great deal of notoriety for sex. The managing director of a film producing company felt that this was because "the censors in other languages are not so lenient as the Malayalam censors." But it is not that film-makers from other states have not tried to cash in on sex.A Tamil film, Papathi, for example, had very suggestive posters but the film flopped. Explained Kamalahasan, the super star of the south: "It is a typical example of double standards. They don't want Tamil films to be filthy but at the same time they make a beeline for these Malayalam films."Boon: But KG. Menon, an architect by profession and member of the censor-board for Malayalam films says: "About a year back more than half the Malayalam films had sex as the theme. If we had put our foot down, some of them would have had only the titles and the closing scenes after censoring. My personal opinion is that there is no point in curbing it. Experience has shown that in the long run, people in Kerala themselves have rejected these third-rate flesh films."According to an official with the censor board, it all really started with the venture of I.V. Sasi and producer Ramachandran, Her Nights. Sasi told India Today: "Nobody has heard my side of the story and my relentless battle against the censors. Let them define what is pornography and lay down specific guidelines about how much a director can indulge in nudity." I am all for nudity on the screen," he added, "our sex-starved millions are ample proof of a society where sex is taboo."Suggestive hoardings: Low-priced, low-key publicity, and fantastic returnsIn Bangalore these films have come as a boon for the older cinema halls which faced a slump in custom with the boom in the construction of modern cinema houses in recent years. The manager of one of these older halls said that until a few years ago he used to screen only English films. Then, in the wake of competition he couldn't face, he took Malayali films with liberal doses of sex.Though his 'House Full' board has been in constant use ever since, he confided that three-fourths of the box-office collection was taken away by the distributor. When India Today contacted some of the leading film distributors, they refused to talk. One spoke only to say that "what is being shown in Bangalore is nothing compared to prints prepared for the Gulf market. Every scene is juxtaposed with shots of blue films."The cinema hall owners had another problem besides. Enticed by the posters, the viewers stepped into the hall with great expectations. "If they are dissatisfied, they end up breaking chairs and fittings. We have to post extra bouncers to maintain peace," said an owner.Good Returns: What it really comes down to is a question of risks and returns. Said a top distributor in Bangalore: "I have lost heavily recently on big budget Hindi multi-starrers, where territory wise, the price is touching Rs 60 lakh. And after publicity and high theatre rentals, my returns are nil. On the other hand, I can get hold of a Malayalam film for as little as Rs 5,000 and with low key publicity, mint money."Sankaran Nair, the veteran film director who makes titillating Malayalam films based on Harold Robbins best sellers, even went to the extent of dubbing one of his flop Malayalam films in Hindi with Sharmila Tagore as Daisy. According to Adarsh, the editor of Trade Guide, a Bombay film business magazine, "with the success of Man Ka Aangan, a dubbed Malayalam film, there was a sudden spurt in the market for Malayalam films. Today all 'hot' Malayalam directors' movies are bought for a a premium, just for the dubbing rights."M.G. Ramachandran's Government took stringent action against the sex pedlars and even banned posters depicting sex in and around Madras. But the same cannot be said of other governments and southern states. Says Menon: "At the time of censoring, the producer is supposed to surrender the negatives of the censored scenes. But they deliberately do not show us these scenes and later add them before exhibiting them in far away places."But said Nizamuddin, Bangalore's police commissioner: "I have heard about these goings on but whenever my men raid a cinema house, the blue strips are missing." And while the police conduct their "friendly raids", the show goes on.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Nov 26, 2013 13:32 IST--- ENDS ---

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In Bangalore, third-rate Malayalam films come as a boon for older cinema halls

Bangalore teems with cinemas touting films with highly suggestive names: Sexy Dream, '69 Nights, Sexy Lady, Passionate Nights and the like.

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