This blog is my one more effort to briefly review the movies through memory lane which I have seen since my child hood. I have tried to recollect and share old memories and event associated with the movies and I am sure these would revive your forgotten memories too.

I have been watching movies since 1976 when I was around 10 year old and each movie has always been like a sealed bag of wonders which was to be opened with all the curiosity and interest for the expected entertainment. I guess, similar curiosity levels are still alive.

I still remember those days TV was not very popular the only popular medium available was radio which was free. Producers used to air a 15-20 minute radio program for the movies which were expected to be released or even running. On every Sunday I used to remain tuned to radio for the radio programmes which were aired from 1.00PM to 3.30PM .Those radio programmes were mainly of movies but there were few other sponsored programmes in between. A movie radio programe used to be presented with brief characterization, story idea, name of music director, lyrics writer, dialogue writer, producer, Director with some brief songs and dialogues. Those 15-20 minutes used to create such a curiosity and impact on my mind that I used to get lured to the movie. I can recall few names of presenter even today for example, Amin Sayani, Ravi Bahal, and Kamleshwar.

Those were the days when very few theatres were available I had once counted all the Delhi theatres which were approximately 80-85 in 1980s .Movies used to run, 3.,4 or 15/25/50 or more weeks. If any movie had run 15 weeks continuously 100 days were celeberated similarly if it had run 25 weeks it became silver jubilee hit and if it ran 50 weeks it was declared Golden jubilee hit. Even 50 days were celebrated with new posters on street mentioning’ CELEBRATING 50 DAYS’ So no. of weeks a movie had run was the criteria for success or failure of any movie irrespective of money a movie makes. I remember there were many movies which ran 3-4 weeks and were declared flop.

Another interesting thing about movies in that era was that old hit movies used to get re-released on theatres and used to be big crowd puller. This was mainly done by film distributors when there was no new movie available for release for the week. I had seen many old movies which probably were of times when I was not even born or had not started watching movies and watched later when got rereleased. Many of old  ,Rajender Kumar starrer like Ganwar, Ram Aur Shyam etc Rajesh Khanna’s Roti, Prem Kahani, Joru Ka Gulam and , Devanand’s Johny Mera Naam  were seen very late by me. Also many thetres used to run morning show where old movies were played at reduced rates to attract the crowd. Unfortunately as a kid we were not permitted in morning and noon shows and to take enry into theater a kid needs to be accompanied by an adult and , many movies which were seen in morning or noon shows we had to request and hire guardian support from unknown persons for just taking an entry. Yes we had bunked school on couple of occasions to watch movies in morning and noon shows.

So Let’s rewind and relive the time through some old movies.