One has now watched enough Punjabi films to realize that anything associated with the name of producer director Akram Khan is virtually guaranteed to provide a torrid dose of smut, sleaze and kinetic, demented low budget energy - especially if it was made before General Zia's misguided purge. Misguided because it purged a bit of harmless if saucy and raunchy song and dance for a culture of guns, violence and hatred.

Nawab Zada is Akram Khan's official sequel to his smash hit Khan Zada (shot in record time and released the same year as Khan Zada) and he tries to retain most elements of his previous formula including virtually the entire cast of his previous masterwork. Again Khan gives all his actors their real names with the exception of Asad who is called Akram in the film. The movie is virtually like taking all the elements and even the plot and music of Khan Zada and just reworking and twisting them just a wee bit to produce something that feels like a continuation of the Khan Zada experience only better and equally successful at the Box Office.

The film begins with Akram (Asad) escaping from prison much to the delight of his transsexual mother Seema and his sister Najma. He takes refuge in at a notorious local club where he is granted asylum so long as he complies with the "Boss's" orders. This mysterious Boss is a bit like Charlie (of Angels) in that he speaks to his subjects only through a speaker fixed into a swivel chair! Aasia is the rich, glamorous bombshell beauty daughter of a mysterious Nawab who is seemingly the most generous philanthropist in town, though something about him seems unreal. His paunchy and exceedingly handsome son is a police officer by the name of Iqbal (Iqbal Hassan) who is madly in love with Akram's sister Najma. Things move along at a cracking pace with Akram performing various dastardly deeds at the behest of his swivel chair, meanwhile we are treated to some truly fabulous cheap club dances that we have come to rely on Akram Khan to provide. With Nawab Zada he hits the bull's eye with each song being a voluptuous Madame Noor Jehan sizzler set to Tafo's saucy tunes.

First up there is a glorious number too too tara ra too too torooroo roo(!) followed by the famous kharkan dil de tar which is filmed on Iqbal and Najma in the very same spot that the director used for Akh Lade te Ladai ja in Khan Zada. The dance movements and even the outfits are virtually identical to Akh Lade te ladai ja! The plot moves along at a fair jaunt despite the several noticeably lame attempts at comedy involving Nirala who is even given a painfully laborious and endless song along the way. There is a magnificent twist, not totally unexpected it has to be said, at the end of the film and after a few hair-raising fights involving the wonderfully ebullient and mighty chubby Iqbal Hassan (The "Peoples (C)Hunk") things wind down to a totally satisfying conclusion. The only sad aspect of the film is that though Mussarat Shaheen has been credited prominently in the cast it seems the version of the film that we watched is missing her role almost entirely. Sadly another case of the censors no doubt chopping off bits they felt were not in accordance to their mighty standards of decency and morals.

However, let's be thankful for small mercies that at least the other club dances have remained in tact and that the bewitching Nazli number Pyar Tenoon Karna (Madame Noor Jehan) hasn't been axed. Aasia too provides some serious pyrotechnics and proves that she is second to none when it comes to jumping and leaping about the park and thrusting her body parts out with commendable proficiency! And then there are those Dada-esque camera angles that director Akram comes up with in order to capture the true beauty of the female posterior. We found Nawab Zada to be totally in keeping with our expectations - in other words it provided enough cheap and gorgeously vulgar dances as well as some outrageously comical stunts and fights as well as the utterly ludicrous dramatics and confrontation scenes and the infantile dialogues that one has grown to love and admire. And the scene where Nazli's arm is ripped off its very socket to reveal a stash of loot....mindblowing epic stuff - cheap, cheesy and demented, just the way we like our Lollywood films. A minor masterpiece.