Now the late Krishna Shah (1938-2013) was a woefully dismissed director that left behind one of the more colorful cinematic canons in recent memory, unarguably the most likely of which to bring enlightenment - 1979's Cinema Cinema; a celluloid decoupage of various Indian films. And chances, they are slim that you should hear his name shouted or even whispered across the roof-tops alas Shah still stood as one of the most acclaimed film artists from his country and would consecrate the genre as it was an ambitious Shah who introduced Bollywood to Hollywood with the breakthrough effort Shalimar (1975), historically the first international Indian production which starred both Rex Harrison and Hindi sensation, the late Shammi Kapoor.
Krishna Shah's Deadly Rivals (1972) an Oedipal odyssey that starred Scott Jacoby as a troubled yet precocious pre-pubescent and Joan Hackett as his enabling mother, though whittled down for television where it was aired on rotation (and I remember it best) during ABC's 1972 fall line-up was a theatrical feature containing tell-tale signs of being shot prior in the late 1960s a noticeable novice entry - Shah never staved off controversy but not for controversy's sake, he had an authentic message to convey. The seemingly more uncomfortable scenes border on acts of pedestry, when we discover a ten-year old Jacoby invited to come out and play with his carnally curious babysitter, the same scene that perhaps belies the director's earnest intentions, it is at this point we realize Rivals at surface is little more than a Freudian free-for all, leaving unanswered queries and quandaries endless. Opting for the television edit would leave you all the wiser and Joan Hackett never had any bad hair days here. And as for the original cut of Krishna Shah's Deadly Rivals - I am certainly no religieuse but boundaries is boundaries.
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| Scott Jacoby is the monster under the bed . An unwelcome visit in Deadly Rivals (1972) In bed : Hackett and a begrudging Robert Klein |
And when all is said and done if Shah is to be remembered at all for his contributions to cinema, it would sadly be for his personal foray into the world of graceless 1980s horror among the B-status brethren and their pajama party massacres, Shah's 1985 old-college try entry Hard Rock Zombies journeys into the ether, inhabited by a vast assortment of Nazis, libertines, lecherous Lilliputians and other such miscreants.