When director Rakesh Roshan was casting for Khoon Bhari Maang, his choice was very clear. “I knew Rekha would play the lead heroine. I developed the story and went straight to her. She was really excited and that excitement pushed me further,” Roshan recalls, as the film clocks 35 years today.

On how the other actors came on board, the 73-year-old shares, “I had to cast a usual but charming-looking husband. So, I spoke to (actor) Kabir Bedi and sent him the script, and he agreed. For the antagonist, I was looking for a very fresh face. I had seen (actor) Sonu Walia in a dubbing studio and thought she could play the negative part. That’s how she became a part of the film.”

One of the standout moments during the filming was Rekha’s horse-riding scene. Speaking about its filming, Roshan recalls, “When the moment came, she told me she had never ridden a horse before! But she said, ‘Don’t worry, I will do it’. My heart was pumping throughout, thinking, ‘Kahin yeh girr na jaaye.’ But once she sat on the horse, she rode it like she was a born horse rider.”

Another notable and scary sequence from the film is when Aarti’s (Rekha) husband tries to kill her by pushing her into a lake teeming with crocodiles. “It was a very new concept at that time, so it was very exciting for me to shoot that plot. It was a step ahead of its time,” mentions the filmmaker, ruling out the idea of a remake of the movie as he says, “Classics can never be remade.”