He wasn’t confident about actually making this a compelling murder mystery. Director Rajiv Rai was a little hesitant while writing Gupt. If you haven’t seen or heard about the climax, I’m not going to spoil it for you. What could have been a typical 90s potboiler Hindi film was saved by its big reveal and the blockbuster music. To prove his innocence, Sahil manages to escape prison and looks for the real killer.
Sahil, who is viewed as the prime suspect, is arrested and put on trial for murder and ends up receiving a life sentence in jail. After a lousy argument erupts between them, Jaisingh turns up dead. However, his tyrannical step-father, Jaisingh (Raj Babbar), insists that he marry the girl he has hand-picked. Sahil Sinha (Bobby Deol) is in love with Isha (Kajol) and wants to marry her. Well, you were not expecting a list of Indian murder mystery movies without Gupt, right? If you are the 80s or a 90s kid and were in age to be slightly aware of things during its release, you know the mass hysteria this film had created. Watch the songs on YouTube, and they are fun on their own Never mind the plot holes and continuity issues if you love 60s kitsch, a potent mystery, and the adorable Helen, you cannot miss Gumnaam.
As much as these song & dance routines reduced the tension & distracted the audience, there’s no way you can not fall in love with them, especially the most sensational dance number ever to open a serial killer movie, “Jaan Pehchaan Ho”! This song has captured the English-speaking audience in a big way, with multiple covers, sampling, and remixes over the years, even used in the opening credits of Ghost World (2001) and the 2011 commercial The Date for Heineken. The script mostly stays true to the novel, barring, of course, the songs and dances. The atmosphere, background score, and hazy reality of the characters will suck you in. There’s an eeriness that surrounds the film right from the word go. Such was the popularity of Mehmood at the time that he got paid more than Manoj Kumar & Nanda, which led to an alleged cold war between them. This multi-starrer film includes Manoj Kumar, Nanda, Mehmood, Pran, Helen & Madan Puri, among others. Based on Agatha Christie’s 1939 novel, ‘And Then There Were None,’ the film remains a solid murder mystery even after more than five decades. Gumnaam was one of the early few mystery-slash-thriller films from Bollywood. As deaths continue to rise, the mystery continues to deepen. Raja Nawathe) (Hindi)Ī holiday goes wrong when a group of young people is invited to spend a weekend on a deserted island when they arrive, there is no sign of the host or the island’s owner, and the following morning, one of the groups is found dead. You might disagree with the list, but let me know your thoughts. These are not thrillers but actual whodunnit murder mysteries. Here, I’m trying to bring together an assortment of Indian murder mystery movies across eras, which I really enjoyed. But, the experience is nothing short of exhilarating whenever we get everything right. Murder on The Oriental Express, Te3n, Kahaani 2, Malang, Ek Villain, and the list goes on. More often than not, the lack of slick treatment gives us a generic mystery. Without these, we just have a story where we’re waiting for the big reveal. The functionality of atmosphere, mood, pace, suspense, cinematography, lighting, and brain-teasing tension plays a much larger part in a murder mystery. The foundation can and should be strong enough to hold the building, but what the audience would buy is the building. However, the material used to construct the building on this foundation is the treatment. Plots in these films are like the foundation, invisible, and pretty similar in nature. How they treat it saves a good genre film from being generic, which most certainly holds true for murder mysteries. In horror, courtroom drama, noir, murder mysteries, and many more, the director is paramount for these films. Like termite art, they mutely chew on the boundaries of conformation. 20 Indian Murder Mystery Movies: Genre cinema can be incredibly transgressive.