This New Show on 90s Pulp Films From India Has Set the Internet on Fire

Barely a few minutes into VICE Studios and Amazon Prime Video’s docuseries Cinema Marte Dum Tak, you enter a world of dacoits, voluptuous women stepping out of lakes in slo-mo, over-the-top action sequences, arbitrary murders, gun fights, and dialogues that are amazing and absurd in equal parts.

This takes you back to the world of Indian pulp cinema that was at its peak in the 90s but stretched to the decades before and after. 

Tan Aggan (1999)
The Unfaithful Hawas (2004)
Main Hoon Kunwari Dulhan (2001)

The titles of these Hindi movies loosely translate to Courtyard of the Body, The Unfaithful Lust, and I am a Virgin Bride. Even though I’d only briefly glance at posters from this era plastered over moss-covered, fungused walls on my commute to school, I remembered them vividly. A few would be stuck on telephone booths and outside public lavatories as well. 

Upper middle-class families like mine regarded this cinema as disreputable, but there’s no denying their massive popularity. These “sleazy” offerings would pack single-screen theatres across the country. One of the projectionists in the docuseries talks about how cleaners would complain about having to sweep cum-stained hankies left under the seats after every screening.  

The audiences for these low-budget mainstream films often shot in less than a week and released in single-screen theatres across India were loyal and came in droves to witness their wildest fantasies come alive. Most were working-class people. Tickets were affordably priced and the internet wasn’t yet as easily accessible as it is today. 

Regardless of how you judged these films, they made you look. You could smirk and walk past, but you still carried a residue of these stories in your imaginings, marvelling at the liberties they took. The hard-boiled world of Indian pulp cinema featured the usual suspects: perverted dacoits, problematic rape sequences, ghosts in over-the-top makeup, extramarital affairs, and punchy dialogues. Not to mention gunfights, revenge, sex, revenge sex, gruesome murders, gang wars, and addictive song-and-dance sequences. They had it all. 

The box office openings for some of these films were anticipated to be so strong that even mainstream Hindi cinema filmmakers, including Subash Ghai, would postpone the release of their films, so as not to lose out on profits. A few films did even better than movies starring superstars like Amitabh Bachchan.

Yet, they were often labelled “B-grade” or “C-grade” cinema – terms that slowly took on largely negative and derogative meanings. But, as the newly dropped series reminds you, these films were an equally integral part of the history of Indian cinema. Bollywood actor Arjun Kapoor, who also features in the series, talks about how such categories are misleading because these films would be made with budget and time constraints. He elaborated on how it’s not fair to label them as B or C-grade films solely on the basis of the quality of content or production. 

The dream run, however, wouldn’t last too long. Certain limits were pushed, unlawful liberties were taken, and the massive crackdown by law enforcement authorities on this once-prosperous industry spelt its doom in the early 2000s. But how did they become so popular? How did an industry that sustained thousands of livelihoods and packed single-screen theatres fade into oblivion just like that? How did these prolific filmmakers bypass the censor board and get these films made? More importantly, where are those actors, directors, and their crews today? 

Created by Vasan Bala, Samira Kanwar (also the VP of Content for VICE APAC) and Niharika Kotwal, the six-part docuseries Cinema Marte Dum Tak currently streaming on Prime Video attempts to answer these questions and more. It’s not preachy and is far from a Wikipedia entry. When filmmaker Vasan Bala of Monica! O My Darling (2022) fame and VICE Studios got together to bring this docuseries to life, they were clear that the series could not and should not be satirical or be an attempt to laugh at or humiliate pulp cinema. It could not be a superficial autopsy report of what went wrong, either. 

And it’s not. 

The series brings together four legendary directors of Indian pulp cinema: Kishan Shah (Junglee Tarzan, Bhoot Mahal), J. Neelam (Sadhu Bana Shaitan, Tadapti Jawani), Dilip Gulati (Gumnaam, Jungle Love Story), and Vinod Talwar (Phool Bane Patthar, Wohi Bhayanak Raat). 

In the series, each of the filmmakers gets a new lease on life as they’re offered the chance to direct a short film in their trademark style and take us behind the scenes to share their process. Aside from directors, industry insiders including distributors, theatre owners, journalists, actors, and screenwriters all weigh in on the complicated legacy of Indian pulp cinema. 

“Getting these directors to trust us was a long process because they want to be off the radar, unlike in the West where even the porn industry has its own awards and are recognised,” said Vasan Bala. “Over a period of time, the team must have made some 20,000 calls and meetings to convince them that Cinema Marte Dum Tak is not ‘spoofy’ and that it comes from a loving gaze of reverence, respect, curiosity, and a place of dignity.” Over time, Bala added, the four directors and others in the industry understood that the team was in their corner. 

And yet the show does not glorify the world of pulp cinema, either. In some scenes, industry insiders – right from distributors to former producers to theatre owners – reflect on what went wrong along the way, particularly the grey area of inserting “bits” into films. In the context of Hindi pulp cinema, “bits” were random and out-of-context sexually explicit clips that were shot separately and later snuck into film reels. Adding “bits” was illegal because these had not been included in the cut sent to the censor board for approval. But risks were taken and boundaries were pushed – perhaps not in the most creatively stimulating of ways. 

“Whatever stories had some scope of erotica would be picked up by distributors and this is how they sold territories based on a title and a poster, so most of these films were pre-sold,” explained Bala. “These distributors would often suggest titles and even make edits in the films. But towards the end, there was no semblance of a story. It was just plain porn and that led to its downfall.” 

Hyder Gola, one of the biggest distributors of pulp cinema, echoes a similar sentiment in the series when he talks about how the “cash-rich” industry of pulp cinema relied on erotica, rhyming dialogues, and sex scenes added without context. It didn’t matter what the content was – the male gaze wanted these films and the industry had to work overtime to satiate these demands. 

At the heart of it, Cinema Marte Dum Tak is a love letter to the world of pulp cinema. While the show emphatically celebrates its appeal, it does not gloss over its dark spots, either. The process followed by the four filmmakers to shoot their short films is equal parts hilarious and revelatory. At one point in the show, when a crew member demands that Kishan Shah needs an art director to shoot his short film, Shah scoffs and asks if the crew member’s father was going to get the additional money to finance the project. “I’m everything in this film,” he laughs. “The director, producer, art director, and actor.”

J. Neelam, one of the few women filmmakers in the Hindi pulp cinema scene, brings her own sensitivity to an otherwise male-dominated industry. In the 90s, she talks about how she had to work extra hard to prove herself and be taken seriously. But, she says in the show, she never sacrificed plotlines for easy sex scenes. 

However, nothing prepared me for the emotional tsunami that was the final episode – Picture abhi baaki hai – which takes one inside the lives of these filmmakers and actors and how they have been surviving after the closure of their industry.

Sapna Sappu, one of the superstars of pulp cinema who starred in more than 250 films in a career spanning two decades, shares her personal story that is beautifully told. Another poignant moment from the series is when director Kishan Shah breaks down saying that he doesn’t have any answers when his children mock him for making the kind of films he made in the past. 

It’s not all massy sex scenes and packed theatres, after all.  

Cinema Marte Dum Tak argues that while it’s easy to laugh at these films and question the aesthetic contribution of these films, the fact remains that they created hundreds of jobs, ensured the survival of single-screen theatres, and provided an affordable avenue of escapism for millions. In those two hours under droning ceiling fans and in front of the big screen, one could let loose – in more ways than one.

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