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Shoktir Lorai
InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Shoktir Lorai (Review)

June 28, 2016By

Shoktir Lorai

aka শক্তির লড়াই
Shoktir Lorai
????
Written by ???
Directed by ???

Still better than the remake

Robocop gets remade by Bangla cinema, and the result is far from the worst Robocop film. Shoktir Lorai (শক্তির লড়াই) takes the basic premise of a murdered man being rebuilt into a robot who fights for justice, adds an evil counterpoint built by the villains, and throws in as many other Bangla tropes as they can to bring about a movie that is amazing and ridiculous while still being as Bangla as possible.

Bangla cinema is full of over the top characters and over the top action films, and it’s amazing just how naturally science fiction fits right in. We’ve seen a prior example of Bangla robots battling it out with Machine Man, and that film even stole some of the same parts of Robocop that Shoktir Lorai did! (though it was mostly stealing from Terminator franchise!)
Shoktir Lorai
As usual with these rarities, the review is a longform synopsis with commentary and we’ve included plenty of pictures and animated gifs. Thanks to Bangla cinema being so rarely written about in English, the cast and character names are partial guesses, and there are no subtitles to speak of. But at TarsTarkas.NET, we don’t need no stinking subtitles! I can’t seem to tell if this film was originally made for television or if it had a theatrical run, but television is where it first caught my attention as someone uploaded a clip to YouTube, and after that it was only a matter of two years of searching before I located a copy. Basically, any rare film you can’t find in less than an hour will probably take years to locate, that’s the disparity of rare cinema. So if people can fill in the blanks on who Shahin Alam and Notun are as well as all the actresses/actors who are nameless, it would be a great help!
Shoktir Lorai

Dr. Johan Buchi (Danny Sidak) – Our Hero is a do gooder scientist who tries to do the right thing and stand up to criminals, but just ends up putting his family at risk. The villains get their revenge and Johan is 99% murdered, but is rebuilt into…
Robocop (Danny Sidak) – Dr. Johan Buchi is back in Robocop form, rebuilt by his father in law to be a powerful cyborg that just so happens to be handy to use as a blunt instrument of revenge. He at first doesn’t remember anything except having a sense of justice, but eventually remembers his family.
Wife (Munmun) – Dr. Johan Buchi’s wife and Dr. Mola’s daughter. I couldn’t figure out her name, which is a real shame. Her and Johan have a daughter who might be named Lita, but she gets killed early in the film. Supports her newly Robocopped husband’s excursions of vengeance where he beats up the criminal underworld. Oddly she didn’t have her daughter rebuilt into a cyborg warrior, a shame because we missed out on Kindergarten Robocop! Munmun was also in Banglar King Kong
Dr. Mola (???) – Tubby Buddy! It’s good to see a familiar face, this guy who is in practically every Banglar film we watch! This time he’s a famed scientist who works on cyborg technologies and rebuilds the nearly dead Dr. Buchi, as well as Julie, into cyborg super powered people.
Inspector Suhil (???) – A heroic cop who tries his best to clean up the mean streets, which might happen now that a cyborg is throwing piles of criminals into his police station every night. Is sort of in a relationship with Charmine.
Charmine Mola (???) – Wife’s sister and Dr. Mola’s younger daughter, she has a carefree attitude and playfully flirts with Inspector Suhil, though she also flagrantly breaks the law while doing so with no remorse. Does little to advance the plot besides adding two songs.
Sharif Mohammad (???) – The grey haired businessman villain whose criminal empire blunders across Dr. Johan Buchi, so they order him wiped out when he refuses to not testify against them. Is incredulous when Robocop starts smashing up all his stuff.
Julie (???) – Sharif Mohammad’s girl who he shoots so she can have Robocop-ish powers of her own, though she’s more of Wonder Woman with super strength and bullet-deflecting metal bracelets. Her soundtrack is punctuated with crows shrieking which is awesome.

Shoktir Lorai

InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Banglar King Kong (Review)

January 16, 2012By

Banglar King Kong


2010
Directed by Iftekar Jahan
Banglar King Kong
The movie. The myth. The legend. Banglar King Kong! Yes, folks, we have an awesome treat for you today on TarsTarkas.NET! Straight from the heart of Bangladesh comes this Kong-tastic take on everyone’s favorite giant ape. The story of King Kong is timeless, and Kongs have appeared throughout the world, some more official than others. Is Banglar King Kong licensed and legal? Hell no! But it exists anyway and mirrors the plot of the King Kong films so closely that even without subtitles, you know exactly what is going on. The tale of King Kong will be one of those things that people 300 years from now will know. In future digi-hologram movies, Space Kong will climb to the top of the Space Elevator and toss around Starship Enterprises, and you know things will play out just like the 1933 classic. And it will be glorious.
Banglar King Kong
Unofficial King Kong knockoffs have existed in foreign markets since 1933’s Wasei Kingu Kongu (和製キング・コング aka Japanese King Kong), which along with the 1938 King Kong Appears in Edo (江戸に現れたキングコング aka Edo ni Arawareta Kingu Kongu) are pre-WW2 tales that have not been seen since their initial theatrical runs. As we all know, Japan made two real King Kong films much later. Giant apes and Kong-ish story lines appear in such cinema classics as India’s Shikari, the Korean film A*P*E, the farcical Queen Kong, and the microbudget The Mighty Gorga. There might even be one in India’s 1953 film Gorilla. As far as I know, this is the first giant ape in Bangladeshi cinema.
Banglar King Kong
The costume for Banglar King Kong is among the worst ape costumes ever put on film. I say among the worst, because there is no doubt a low budget Indian horror film (probably by Harinam Singh) that will have a worse ape costume. But it is by far the worse King Kong costume that ever existed. From the sneering mask to the visible spaces for socks, the whole thing is a Halloween disaster. Though I do give them props for the blinking eyes, that was a nice touch and made the ape have some actual feelings on display. We give credit where credit is due on TarsTarkas.NET.
Banglar King Kong
The director Iftekar Jahan has directed several other films, of which I can find little information thanks to a billion sites copying the same Banglar King Kong article and clogging up Google. The actors is even a bigger mess, despite some of them having names spelled different every time I saw it typed out, I can find little information on any of them. What we do know is that Banglar King Kong was produced by Sharmin Osman for the Bangladesh Film Development Corporation (BFDC), the main government body that overseas much of Banglar cinema, so this is some government funded B-grade fun! TarsTarkas.NET has encountered Banglar film once before, the actionfest Banglar Hero. And one of the stars of Banglar Hero, Tubby Buddy, has a role in Banglar King Kong playing another comic relief character. I still cannot figure out who is playing him. Of the cast list: Munmun, Danny Sedak, Shamim Osman, Afzal Sharif and Kazi Hayat, I was only able to identify Munmun as Milly and Kazi Hayat as the lead female tribeswoman Tubby Buddy pairs up with.
Banglar King Kong
When you watch Banglar King Kong, try to keep in mind this film was made in 2010. But between the scratches on the print, the mistimed dubbing, and the blue screen effects that fan films put to shame, you could swear up and down that this is a product of 1961. Only the musical numbers, which were shot with some sort of HD camera and with professional lighting, look modern. But even those snippets are transferred from a film negative, and have scratches – though not nearly as much as the rest of Banglar King Kong, which looks like the print was shot up by helicopters and dumped off the top of a random tall building.
Banglar King Kong
The non-singing soundtrack is 100% stolen. I recognized the themes from Gladiator, Empire Strikes Back, James Bond, King Kong 1976, Last of the Mohicans, and 2001 among those that were playing. I’m guessing they weren’t banking on an international release… The vcd must have been encoded by the anipal monkey Buntoo himself, because it is rife with errors and digital trash. The images suffer as well, with this 2 1/2 hour film compresses to just two vcds. I did my best to get clear shots, but as you can see, there is no refined BluRay clarity. Sometimes the discs have sounds problems so bad we might as well be getting the audio from the next theater over!
Banglar King Kong

Milly (Munmun) – An actress recruited to be in a film on a tropical island. Her father Rakul accompanies her on this journey, though he is killed on the island. She herself is kidnapped by the natives and given to King Kong, who falls in love with her. When Kong is kidnapped and displayed in Bangladesh, she tries in vain to save him from his predestined fate. Munmun is an actress of B-cinema in Bangladesh. One of her bigger roles was in a film called Moron Kamor.
Rocky (???) – Rocky is a famous film star and we can’t believe how lucky the film crew was to score him for their weird nature documentary. But there you go. Rocky takes and immediate shine to Milly, and when she’s Kongnapped he does numerous rescue attempts in between musical numbers.
Tubby Buddy (???) – Tubby Buddy is back and as wacky as ever! Goofy banjo music announce his entrance. Tubby Buddy works on the movie shoot and helps recruit Milly into the film.
Captain Ashool (???) – The ship captain, who along with first officer Mr. Jones, take King Kong back to Bangladesh and put him on a stage show. This works as well as it does in all the other versions of King Kong, and Captain Ashool is soon squashed. Once the Captain goes evil and kidnaps King Kong, he’s suddenly wearing black!
King Kong (Man in Suit!) – The King. He’s Kongtastic. The Great Ape. The King of Skull Island, or whatever island this is. He’s fought airplanes, Godzilla, mechanical doubles, helicopters, giant snakes, tyrannosauruses, all sorts of ugly things. But now he fights his greatest battle: $0 budgets!
Buntoo (A monkey) – Buntoo is the film’s anipal, betraying the influences of Indian cinema on this Banglar film. Like all anipals, Buntoo helps the hero and is used to save the girl and to steal tickets to the King Kong stage show. I think Buntoo is the same word that Milly calls Kong, but thanks to lack of subtitles I can’t find the exact word.

Banglar King Kong