Tuesday, December 1, 2020

Shakeela comes before Thalapathy Vijay to save theaters

 


Shakeela ,the biopic of  ex soft porn Queen,  will release on  Christmas  and hopefully bring cheer to  the theaters in Tamil Nadu . Despite  releases that hit Tamil Nadu theaters in the past two Fridays, none has been able to bring in crowds that would fill the 50 % occupancy. Even the adult movie Irandam Kuthu failed miserably. As decks are cleared for Thalapathy Vijay’s Master release on January 13th, the new arrival SHAKEELA will probably bring cheer.


Shakeela was one time the savior of many a producer who lost  money on Star oriented films in Malayalam . The success formula was to use the voluptopus  Shakeela  in a film made within a fortnight and have it dubbed into all known Indian languages. Sell it for double the investment. Make bonus money for giving scenes that were cut by censors. At one point the films of Mohanlal and Mammooty kept on flopping and Shakeela films were hits. Many producers floated benami firms to make films with Shakeela.

The Shakeela wave had many vamps join the bandwagon and some of them did well. What amazed the pundits was that an obese woman could capture the audience imagination , especially the Kerala viewers. Many even did psychological studies on the Kerala men’s attraction to obese woman.  A film Player Girls had two sex bombs- Silk Smitha and Shakeela. Shakeela was then only an upcoming siren and not as famous as Silk. In a scene where Shakeela has to cry after getting slapped by Silk, the latter slapped her really and very hard. Reason that Silk gave was that Shakeela was new to acting and would not have cried naturally and so the real slap. Vidya Balan played Silk in the biopic on her titled Dirty Picture.

Though Shakeela claimed that Superstars lobby used the cops to bust her unbridled run by cracking on theaters showing uncensored `bits’ , the reason was that the fancy of the sex Queen was waning. The bits no more featured the central character and instead had only some junior actors instead. Initially these soft porn movies had so many situations in the plot to bring in sexual scenes. Over a period, the directors got the feeling that mere name of Shakeela was enough to pull in crowds.

The name Shakeela is still connected with soft porn, at least in Kerala. A film was made on a story line of a girl with  name Shakeela facing problems in the public even today and still refusing to change her name. In Chennai there were some theaters that were associated with Shakeela films. These theaters were those on B list and hence could not get any Star film to release simultaneously with A center theaters. These cinema halls managed to keep the house full with Shakeela films.

A Telugu film claiming to be a biopic of Shakeela was released on OTT. We have a film Jangal me Mangal directed by Munggi based on Shakeela. The film Kacchi Jawani with Richa Chaddha in the role of the sex bomb is said to be given the official nod by Shakeela herself. Directed by Indrajit Lankesh and released by UFO will hit screens in the new title SHAKEELA.

Shakeela is currently part of a cooking reality show Cook with Comali   on Star Vijay.

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