I came across this email floating around that had a nice compilation of great (and mostly unbelievable) stunts from Bollywood, basically homage to two of the greatest action heroes India has ever produced - Mithun Chakraborty, the Bengal Tiger, and Superstar Rajnikant. I don't know who originated this email, but thanks a lot! I don't know who you are, but you know the spirit of timepass! Hopefully, with Subroto's help, I can find out the names to all the movies that you couldn't figure out, and we will have a complete set!
 

Some of Mithunda's great moments

In this movie, Mithunda has a brain tumor which, according to the doctors, means imminent death for him. But as usual, the Bong gods and godesses have something different in store for the great Tiger. During one of the fight sequences, he gets shot in the head and the bullet miraculously passes through his head, taking the tumor away with it in the process.
Long live Mithunda and his "Assembly Line" Productions !!!
(Note: Thanks to Subroto for the following information: This scene was taken from the movie Avinash, and the plot is as follows: the medicine men - most probably some Pinchoo Kapoor look-alikes in white coats -  discover that Mithun has a very unusual condition - the tumor in his brain is giving him amnesia and at the same time has given him awesome powers - making him Avinash, the indestructible. When the bullet removes the tumor, at first Mithun is very very happy realizing that he isn't going to die, has defeated death once again, and has regained his memory, but then of course he gets a huuuuge bunch of kelas when he realizes it means that he's not Avinash anymore - and the bullets really start to hurt, this time! But of course, the doctors and the law get to him before its too late)
 

In another film, Mithunda is confronted by 2 gangsters, but has only one bullet left in his gun. What do you do? Mithun holds up his trustworthy
knife and shoots the bullet towards the knife. The knife splits the bullet into two halves, which end up killing both gangsters. This is called making complete use of one's resources! As soon as he accomplishes this unbelievable act, he says, ``Apun ka naam Hira, apun ne sabko cheera'' (my name is Hira, I have penetrated everyone, literally!)

In yet another movie, when being chased by a gangster, Mithun realizes that his revolver is empty. Guess what he does....
He waits for the gangster to shoot. As soon as the gangster shoots, Mithunda opens the bullet compartment of his gun and catches the bullet. Then, he  closes the bullet compartment and fires his gun. Bang... And the gangster meets his destiny. Moral of the story: Never hold a loaded gun to a Tiger that has an empty weapon.

Alright, its not just in action sequences where he's being chased by gangsters that Mithun has this style. Consider this next scene. Our Mithunda is imprisoned. He has a standard prison issue topi (cap) on his head. He starts looking around the jail cell, and suddenly puts his finger against the wall and literally uses his finger as a power drill, making a hole. Taking his pen out of his pocket, he uses it as a nine-inch nail and gives his cap a resting place... Now that's called hanging up your hat!

In Watan Ke Rakhwale (mid 80s multistarrer also featuring Dharmendra), Mithunda is in prison once again, and desperately wants out. He uses his
radioactive spider powers (but of course, Indian heroes don't need radioactive spider bites, they only need poor storylines) to scale a 50 ft wall and jumps over... OK, OK, I know that the 50 ft. estimate seems a little... exaggerated... but thats the point entirely. This is a fine example of what a director can do when he has nothing to think of.

Speaking of Dharmendra, our Dharam Paaji gets real pissed at the goondas in Kundan, and he takes care of them Arnie style. Without hesitation, he lifts up a telephone booth and throws it at the gangsters.... grrrrrrrr.....

Before you start laughing and dismiss this as being only stupid Bollywood garbage thought up by second- (or even third-) rate scriptwriters, stuntmen and directors, listen:

Patriotism in ANY country is like that... full of dramatic exaggerations (``we were in love when that great war happened'') be it India or France or, as we show in our next example, The USA. Anyone who has seen the movie Behind Enemy Lines should know that the same things are exaggerated in Hollywood. The climax scene of this flick. The hero is in the middle of a Bosnian wasteland, with ice-covered mountain tops in the background.The visibility is pretty good, you can definitely make out anything non-white, is what I mean. So how come when this guy comes down the mountain wearing a black jacket, being shot at by AK47s, tanks, rockets from launchers (not knives, you know), he doesn't get hurt at all? Either the Bosnian rebels are badly trained (But how could they be!! They handle the monkey bars so well!), or they are all blind. As I said before, this kind of stuff is supposed to inspire you with patriotism for your country. In the words of John Cleese, I call it crap, and it gets me verrry eeerrrreeetated!

Memorable Superstar moments:

just have a look at these amazing fight
 sequences, featuring
 rajnikant...

Sequence 1
Scene: The climax of Tyagi (the Hindi remake of Dharmadurai, an early 90s Rajni movie in Tamil that starred Gauthami). The villain takes a shot at Rajni, but of course our Superstar just jumps up and catches the bullet in his hand... What a catch!

Sequence 2
Scene: The climax of Padayappa (anyone who hasn't seen this great Rajni starrer has not witnessed the might of Shivaji Ganesan and Rajnikant together!). Rajni's daughter is in love with his enemy's son, played by Tam heartthrob (yeuuuck) Abbas. Mustaffa, Mustaffa, my ass. Abbas' parents are getting him married off by force, but Rajni comes to the rescue and carries Abbas away in his Ambassador/Fiat (No, I still can't tell the difference! - Sundar)... On the way, there's a roadblock - about three dozen goons waiting for the Superstar. He asks Abbas to stay in the car, but Abbas says, ``Sir! I should take care of them, after all your age...'' Rajni smiles a gentleman's smile, and says, ``I will show you how OLD I am''....
Needless to say, within the first minute, 50% of the three dozen goons are on the ground wishing they hadn't messed with this ex-bus conductor.
Abbas just smiles from inside the car, shakes his head (and this guy made women crazy... why?) and says, ``You haven't aged at all''...
A minute later, someone manages to cause a small rip in Rajnikant's shirt... Rajni takes this opportunity to get totally pissed and tears off his shirt..
Then there's a stunt double who shows off his chest and rippling muscles (supposed to be Rajnikant, but you can easily notice the difference) to the goons, who get ready to shit their pants...
And Abbas, still inside the car, says with a lot of admiration on his face, ``What a man!''
Female heartthrob, my ass!

 Sequence 3
 Rajni gets to know that the bad dude is on the other side of a very high wall, so high that even Rajni can't use his radioactive powers to scale it. Instead, Rajni uses the satellite technique. He throws one gun high up in the air, and shoots it with his other revolver. The first bullet hits the trigger of the second gun, which fires directly at the bad dude, proving that it IS possible to waste bullets and still end up looking real cool in the process!

 Sequence 4
Rajni's sitting on the edge of a swimming pool talking to the villain (who's in the pool). On the other side of the pool, half a dozen goondas wait for instructions from their boss. Eventually, the bad dude gives the signal (in this case, a wink) and each man throws a knife at Rajni. Our superstar effortlessly catches them all with just the swing of one hand, and all at the same time. He then spreads them out evenly like playing cards, so that all knives are visible, and then throws them back, of course killing all six goons in the process.
``Yisey kehte hain yek teer se chai shikaar''

Sequence 5
In this other movie, Rajni is a police officer sitting on his motorbike under a coconut tree, when he sees a couple of goons making their getaway in a car... He grabs the clutch, puts his bike in gear... and fires his gun in the air. A coconut falls on the starter and Rajni releases his clutch and away he goes in pursuit of the bad guys! Apparently this is called Coconut triggering...

Sequence 6
Another half a dozen goondas accost Rajni. Rajni pulls something out of his pocket... is it a gun? Nah, nothing that ordinary. Its a knife. Of course, true to Rajni style, all his actions make the wind-whooshing sound (later copied by all the martial arts movies in Hong Kong - when will they ever learn to be original!!) But Rajni is not interested in bloodshed.... he just raises his knife in his hand and gives it some acceleration in the +y direction
and some finite angular momentum in the +y direction (for the physically challenged, that means he sets it rotating in a plane parallel to the ground), and the knife turns into a perpetual machine... The knife keeps rotating in air, apparently the gravitational force balanced by some mysterious force, and the air resistance taken into account by some mysterious motor... Rajni has turned into Lord Vishnu with this Sudarshan Chakra! All this being
overwhelming for the goondas, the faint. Rajni walks away unhurt, smiling and shaking his head in his inimitable style... (``Eeeeedu eppadi irukku'')

now the last thing that this email had was an email address... I don't know if this is for real, but for the sake of completeness, here goes:

"Rajni's email id is: RajniLord_Vishnu@stunt15.com
 I have no Words left with me to comment on this."

Oh, but IIII DO!!!! And I will be back with scenes like these...