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Dance Raja Dance

1987 140’ col Kannada d/p/s Dwarkeesh pc Dwarkeesh Chitra dial/co-lyr Chi. Udayashankar co-lyr R.N. Jayagopal c R. Deviprasad m Vijayanand lp Vinodraj, Divya, Sangeeta, Srinath, Sundarraj, Devaraj, Kirtiraj, Ravikiran, Master Ravi Shankar, Narasimhraju, Ratnakar, Chetan Ramarao, Sundaresh Singh, Negro Jani

An attempt at a Hollywood-type dance movie (mediated by the B. Subhash style, cf. Dance Dance, 1987) interspersed with more conventional melodrama. The villain J.K. (Devaraj) kills the popular leader of a music band (Srinath) and tries to rape the band-leader’s wife. The film shifts into a second generation as the band-leader’s widow brings up her son Raja (Vinodraj) and a music manager (Sundarraj) makes him into a rock star. The villain’s daughter (Divya) is the film’s female lead, while Uncle Andrew, a former drummer and now a legless beggar, seeks revenge against J.K. Among the film’s highlights is Raja being forced to dance on broken glass to save his mother’s life, a distant echo of Pakeezah (1971). Others include Raja’s somewhat inept breakdance numbers.

Film