Indian Superman began as a rumor. My brother-in-law was always a big Superman fan, and one day he mentioned a rumor of a version filmed in India. I didn't think much about it at the time, but as Christmas approached I remembered his remark and wondered if I could actually find a copy to give him. The internet being what it is, it was simply a matter of spending several nights checking numerous combinations of keywords on a variety of search engines until that magic night when there it was! It was a bootleg copy, taped off of English TV with weird commercials intact. (Things like this don't get sold at Wal-Mart, you know.) I gladly sent my money, and a couple weeks later I held in my hands a copy of Indian Superman. Of course, they don't call it that in India. They just call it Superman, or whatever the equivalent is in the local dialect.
I didn't watch it right away, and when I did, well, I couldn't watch it all in one sitting. This thing is long. I mean really long. Two-and-a-half hours long. It's all in Hindi with no subtitles. Like any Bollywood production, there are dancing-girl scenes every 20 minutes that have nothing to do with the plot. Unique to this film, however, are the Superdad girls. I don't know what their names are in the film, but they were wearing Superdad t-shirts so that's what I call them. They are teenage henchmen who know a few kung fu moves. I mean, they almost know them. They work for the bad guys. Did the director not realize that Superdad shirts came about because of the popularity of the Superman movie in America? I don't think this was deliberate irony because not all of the girls are wearing the shirts.
Other incredible scenes include young Superman bending a garden hose to prove his strength, and a party scene where he breakdances to a Michael Jackson song! The special effects are excruciating, being a mix of bad models, nauseating attempts at mimicking flying (two crew members are visible on the stage in one such scene), and scenes stolen from the American Superman! I guess U.S. copyright laws don't extend to India.
Needless to say, Indian Superman was worth the effort it took to find it.
