ABSTRACT

Existing in the margins of the Bombay film industry the Bombay exploitation film travels through informal circuits far removed from the standardized networks of a mainstream film. The Bombay cult film’s invisibility comes from the fact that the cult film enters arenas that other films are unable to and this affords the films a special charge. The Bombay cult film is marginal in the routes that it negotiates, opening up alternative spaces of exhibition. The Bombsploitation film has followed a different route than its counterparts in the rest of the world. The idea of a mutating body is a useful metaphor for Bombsploitation because like the hybrid body of Maut, the Bombay cult film is an object that is in a constant state of alteration. The film is dotted with innumerable characters that help construct the carnivalesque utopia of the great Indian family, in which conflict is minimal and the desire to be united is powerful.