Crocodiles and aliens: How Rakesh Roshan shot his movies

Rakesh Roshan discusses his classic films, from ‘Khoon Bhari Maang’ to ‘Koi... Mil Gaya’, and rebuffs reports of his retirement

The most accurate observation in The Roshans, a four-part docuseries on the famous Roshans clan of Hindi cinema, is made by Sanjay Leela Bhansali. As one of the several celebrity talking heads, Bhansali, speaking of actor-turned-director Rakesh Roshan, says, “I thought he was a very intelligent man who wasn’t a tad bit uncomfortable doing films that were made in those times.”

Rakesh Roshan acted in all sorts of films through the 1970s and 80s. With his charming looks and inquisitive manner, he kept himself in the business, frequently playing second fiddle to more established stars like Rajesh Khanna and Rishi Kapoor. Despite his lineage (his father was music composer Roshan Lal Nagrath), he had a tough start in the industry, assisting director Mohan Kumar and, as he recounts in the docuseries, organising house parties for industry bigwigs. “I would fix the tables and chairs and order the food. I always stayed in the background,” he recalls in an interview with The Hindu.

Roshan made his first directorial, Khudgarz, a reworking of Jeffrey Archer’s ‘Kane and Abel’, in 1987. His second film, Khoon Bhari Maang(1989), starring Rekha and Kabir Bedi, was even more iconic—a campy, darkly compelling croc thriller that shocked audiences and left lasting bite marks on popular culture.

“If you notice carefully, there is a trick shot where it looks like Rekha and the crocodile are in the same frame, which they weren’t,” Roshan, now 75, frailer but articulate, says with a twinkle. The crocodile was shot separately in a 3-feet-deep lake in Chennai; the actors filmed their portion at Abbi Falls in Coorg.

“There used to be a man who supplied animals for film shoots: horses, camels and the like. He was surprised by my request for a crocodile,” Roshan chuckles. Veeru Devgn, father of Ajay Devgn, was the action director on the film, while Sanjay Verma, a longtime associate of Roshan’s who passed away in 2023, handled the editing.

“I shot the crocodile from many angles — underwater, from on above, opening the mouth, grabbing meat — and we mixed it all up in the editing.”

I ask him if it was his toughest trick to pull off. “That was actually Jaadoo in Koi… Mil Gaya (2003),” he counters. James Colmer, an Australian special effects man, had designed the animatronics head for the benign blue alien who befriends Hrithik. Its movements and facial expressions were controlled via remotes, from afar, which posed a challenge for convincing scene work with real actors. “My solution was to take a wide shot and then only do closeups. In essence, it was a similar editing solution to Khoon Bhari Maang.”