Red Rose

This surprising little diamond was released in 1980 and its no surprise that it was received coldly. The reason is, It was far ahead of its time. Rajesh Khanna's brilliant performance embellished by the presence of professional actors like Poonam Dhillon, Om Shivpuri, Aruna Irani and Satyen Kappu makes this film precious in all regards. The name 'Red Rose' has a special meaning here, which has something to do with the perverted fantasy (or reality) of a psychopath, and symbolizes the color of blood which has a special role to play in the life of our misogynist. I can clearly understand that 80s was a time of fantasy, action and loud social films, and 'Red Rose' was particularly hated for two reasons: 1. People weren't ready to accept Kaka negatively and 2. The concept of 'misanthrope' and specifically 'misogynist' was unacceptable to the common social standards of a heavily socially-oriented country like India. I don't blame the director or the actors for this, because they have simply made the concept work in an alien country, and the only thing to blame here is the time, which wasn't too favorable for this powerhouse of a movie. In the coming years, Khanna signed 'Kudrat', and 'Souten', which were overwhelmingly received by the Indian audience, so you can evaluate the mentality of the masses during that decade as they were more open to the family dramas and reincarnation stories than something hellish and wicked like "Red Rose.'

Anand (Rajesh Khanna) lives a very wealthy but secluded life style in his palatial house. He owns an export company and addresses at least hundred 'Good Mornings' a day. His activities are obscure and his awareness to the surroundings is questionable, but something is down inside Anand that the viewers don't know. He is a psychopath. Most of the girls he comes across remind him of his tormented and annihilated past, that has left him like this. He has special empathy towards dangerous prisoners and considers them innocent in a way. One day, he comes across a salesgirl Sharda (Poonam Dhillon) who is down to earth and comes from a lower-middle family. Khanna is impressed by her attitude and soon proposes her. Taking his love for Sharda a step ahead, he decides to marry her only to make his father (Satyen Kappu) furious. We also come to know that a young and attractive stenographer Chitra (Padmini Kapila) goes missing after spending couple of days in Anand's firm. Sharda is shocked to find that Anand is a great disbeliever and things like religion, chastity, veneration, love and ethics don't mean much to him. Thinking that its her responsibility to put Anand on the right path, she decides to set things properly.

On the first day of their wedding, Sharda peeks out of the window and screams when she gets a glimpse of a dead body in Anand's garden. She also discovers Anand's father reveling real snuff films in his room along with the gardener Shera (Om Shiv Puri). With great courage, Sharda locks the two men inside and lands up in an anonymous room only to find the walls filled with Anand's hate notes. She comes to know of the reasons that forced Anand take his wayward lifestyle and decides to get away from Anand's clutches as soon as possible.

I really admire the director Bharathi Rajaa for his brilliant direction and the continuity he is able to maintain for more than 2 hours. The film doesn't flip a bit and maintains its pace throughout the course. Rajesh Khanna is undoubtedly India's first superstar and he really validates this honor awarded to him in this flick. Poonam's innocent face is unforgettable and I am sure you'll develop a great sympathy to her in those 2 hours. Satyen Kappu has a precise but over-the-top part to play here and Aruna Irani and Om Shivpuri should be watched for their abilities. Let them say whatever they want to, I still advise those who have lost their faith on the classic Indian films to look for this promising little gem as this may be easy to miss but is really hard to forget.

The original with Kamal is way more intense and serious .RK is much older than Kamal and it shows. He is a great actor but his soft romantic hero image makes it difficult to imagine him in this role . Poonam is cute despite her glam image , she looks good in her role of a soft innocent homely girl. Aruna Irani lights up the screen in her small role as a girl looking for easy life and money . Janak raj looks innocent as a lamb in his role as RK's house keeper . A movie , you will like if you don't watch the origial Tamil one . A thriller of its times.

Clearly the movie is well ahead of it's times, let's not have any doubts about that.This one must have surpassed the majority's taste & intellect when it first got released , with people walking out and thinking, crazy stuff , why on earth will anyone bury bodies in the backyard and watch 'snuff' movies for pleasure.wonder how many people have related this movie to the recent gory escapades involving the famous 'pander-kohli' case near Delhi,where children were raped ,killed and dumped in the backyard. Reality in 2007 , that got scripted in 1980, that's what I call a classic, ahead of it's times. RK is good as he plays the sadistic murderer, PD is very very good in this movie(her 5th here). She's quiet fresh and plays her role to cudos.people would go for the climax of the film, but the anticlimax(oh yes , there's one & the movie's true highlight) is what excited me, and that was somewhere after the middle, it was that dark room with the projecter camera beaming a 35 mm snuff film with it's two grim audiences, who get startingly discovered by PD. This was some chilling scene...brrr.

Good story line, some directorial hiccups of course, but on the whole bhaarti raaja gets the pulitzer from me :-)

It astounds me that a total of 22 people with dubious taste have given this film 9.4 stars on an average. Assuming that these are not simply the film's crew, I suppose that must have been the total viewership from its creation in 1980 to date. It certainly does NOT deserve more. Rajesh Khanna by this time must have been seeing the end of his tunnel. Amitabh Bacchhan had already taken over the reins of stardom from Khanna and co., so the offers pipeline must have been thin. And it shows. This is old India's attempt at a spooky thriller, but it's simply spooky, for all the wrong reasons. Utterly forgettable fare (if anyone does ever come to read this) and better left to its own mire.

Rajesh Khanna played a psychopath in this murder mystery and thriller classic film. Due to its unorthodox story-line and since it was made in 1980, it was very ahead of its time for Hindi Film Audiences. The film bombed at the box office but got critical acclaims for the story-line and Khanna's strong attention holding performance.Lot of political parties back in 1980 protested that the film be banned but amid protests the film was released but audience did not flock to theatres. Subsequently look at English film like Joker (2019) which became succcesful despite it having similar storyline.Redrose has been remade in Russian and Japanese languages.

Rajesh Khanna has done films of all genres and people used to go with their families to go to theater to watch his films. But for this film people feared to go out with family and this affected its box office collections.People did not want to see their hero doing wrong things. Its a must match for people who are fan of films from phsycological thriller or adventure or mystery genre. A must watch for both Rajesh Khanna fans and his detractors. Kamal hassan won many awards for the same role in Tamil, but Khanna was not even nominated in any award function for best actor, in-spite of Khanna having given splendid performance.