Paap se dharti phati
Adharm se aasmaan
Atyachaar se kaanpi insaaniyat
Raj kar rahe haivaan ...
Jinki hogi taqat apoorv
Jinka hoga nishana abhed
Joh karenge inka sarvanaash ...
Woh kehlayenge Tridev
Tridev Tridev!!
Most of the 80s kids would recite this prologue of this film. School ho ya picnic. It was a huge hit. Haha! So was the film.
Being a Gen X kiddo, I love multi star entertainers of those times. Tridev, for me, was a complete film in that aspect ticking all the right boxes in terms of stellar cast, hit songs, pulsating action, a formidable villain and above all, guaranteed entertainment. Infact, it is a film I have seen more than 100 times...yes, you read that right, 100 times on VHS. No other film comes close to this personal record.
Those days, any new movie used to be released simultaneously in theatres as well as video (and I mean original, not pirated camera prints!!) and I saw Tridev on VHS the very first day of its release. For the next few months, I watched it practically every day sometimes rewinding my favorite songs and scenes. One scene I love in the film is where Jackie Shroff helps jailbreak Rajesh Vivek in a helicopter. Another one is just before the interval where the villains visit Sunny Deol in village and set his home on fire.
The film's music is still memorable (Kalyanji Anandji were credited as music directors though most of the work including BGM was done by Kalyanji's son Viju Shah) and has lend itself to many remixes in recent times.
The Oye Oye song had become a national craze already and it was impossible to get the movie tickets for first few weeks. Expectedly, the film became a resounding hit at the box office. It played at Regal cinema (Colaba) and the Minerva, Mumbai for first couple of weeks before shifting to Roxy cinema where it completed 50 weeks.
More about the film, well, it was Naseeruddin Shah's first commercial outing and he got a meaty role. Sonam had more screen time than Madhuri Dixit while Sunny Deol got the best dialogues and fight sequences. Jackie Dada looked smashing opposite pretty Sangeeta Bijalani. And ofcourse, Amrish Puri was brilliant as Bhujang, the main antagonist to our three heroes.
