Teesri Manzil: Difference between revisions

The film begins on a dark night with a young girl Rupa (Sabina) driving her car madly around the bends of the hilly [[Mussoorie]] and stopping at The Park Hotel before she rushes inside and mysteriously falls to her death from the third floor. Her death is assumed to be suicide by everyone at the hotel. One year later, Rupa's ex-fiancée Ramesh ([[Prem Chopra]]) is trying to fix his marriage with Rupa's grieving younger sister Sunita ([[Asha Parekh]]), who is not as enamoured of the proposal even though he tries to ingratiate himself with her. Sunita reveals to her friend Meena ([[Laxmi Chhaya]]) that on the day of her death, Rupa had written a last letter to her, confessing that she was in love with Rocky ([[Shammi Kapoor]]), a drummer at The Park Hotel and implying that they had sexual relations, and that she desperately needs him to marry her. Sunita believes that Rocky seduced and then jilted her sister, which led her to commit suicide. She intends to travel to [[Dehradun]] and Mussoorie and find Rocky to avenge her sister's death.

On her way to Dehradun, Sunita runs into Anil Kumar Sona ([[Shammi Kapoor]]), a charming but mischievous man, who flirts with her from the railway station to the end of the train journey. As she checks into The Park Hotel with Meena, she is surprised to find Anil there too and his presence keeps irritating her. Unbeknownst to her, Anil himself is the drummer Rocky and this secret is known to only Ruby ([[Helen (actress)|Helen]]), a dancer at The Park Hotel and also Anil's lover. Eavesdropping on Sunita and Meena's conversations in the hotel, Anil manages to find out Sunita's real intentions and misleads her by making another co-worker ([[Salim Khan]]) impersonate Rocky, while he continues to pursue her as Anil. He even lies about his personality that he is the nephew and heir of a wealthy landlord who resides in a local mansion in Dehradun.  

While Sunita initially rebukes him and rebuffs his advances, she eventually falls in love with Anil after she realises his clean and gentle nature during an unexpected overnight trip, and even confides in him about her sister's death and her hatred towards Rocky. Anil reluctantly keeps up his charade and ends up having to entertain Sunita and her friends at the mansion of his "uncle". His lie is almost caught when Kunwarsahab Mahendar Singh ([[Prem Nath|Premnath]]), the real owner of the mansion, shows up and is surprised to see Anil having brought Sunita and her friends to his mansion. Owing to his kind-hearted nature, he playfully agrees to pretend to be Anil's uncle and the two soon become good friends.  

Sunita invites Anil and his "uncle" to meet with her father (Raj Mehra) so that they can begin planning the wedding. Anil requests Kunwarsahab to explain the truth to Sunita and her father not only that he is Rocky, but that he is also the cause of her sister's death. Although Kunwarsahab instead keeps up the pretense and agrees on the alliance, Anil reveals to him that during her holidays, Rupa came to Dehradun and fell in love with him after meeting him at The Park Hotel. Despite Anil's disinterest and her engagement with Ramesh, Rupa aggressively pursued Anil, which made Ramesh furious and he threatened to kill Rupa in front of Anil. On the night of her death, Rupa had told Anil over a phone call that she desperately wants to meet with him. However, he had refused and did not open the door of his room when Rupa banged on it at midnight, pleading with him to let her in. The next moment, Anil was shocked to hear Rupa's deadly fall from the third floor.  

With no other option, Anil writes a letter to Sunita explaining that he is none other than her enemy Rocky, but he never seduced her sister and had no idea that she would commit suicide over him. Sunita is aghast when she reads the letter and breaks up with Anil, criticising him for inflicting the death of her sister. Meanwhile, throughout the film, a mysterious man ([[Iftekhar]]) is shown to be constantly keeping a watch on Anil for unknown reasons. As he tries to unsuccessfully pursue and convince Sunita, Anil is approached by the mysterious man who introduces himself as Police Inspector Das, a detective investigating Rupa's death. Anil tells him his and Rupa's story and tries to explain his position, but the inspector, although believing his innocence, shockingly reveals to him that the cause of Rupa's death was not suicide, but murder, as she was deliberately thrown off the third floor.  

Upon learning this, Anil suspects Ruby to be Rupa's murderer as she had intercepted Anil and Rupa's phone call and was always jealous of any other woman who came close to Anil. However, during a confrontation, Ruby is mysteriously shot dead by an unknown assailant who had climbed up to the third floor of The Park Hotel. Thus, the inspector takes Anil into police custody and warns him that the shooter was aiming for him, not Ruby, as the shooter believes that Anil is getting closer to discovering the real killer. Also, he shows Anil an expensive coat button discovered in Rupa's hand as evidence, which he believes she tore off the killer's coat during her murder. Anil then suspects Ramesh to be Rupa and Ruby's murderer as he had threatened to kill Rupa on the night of her fall. On interrogation, Ramesh denies the accusation, although he was present at the hotel on the night Rupa died, and is also seen secretly bribing someone dressed as Ruby's killer with a bottle of whisky, but is let off by the inspector without any evidence.

As Anil returns to the hotel room, he is visited by a mysterious woman, who instructs him to take her car to a restaurant at the bottom of the hill, where he will find the conspirators. Anil does so, but finds out while driving that the car has been sabotaged and leaps out as the car plummets down a cliff. Presumed dead by everyone, he secretly visits Sunita and is convinced that Ramesh killed both Rupa and Ruby and is now trying to kill him by sending the mysterious woman with the sabotaged car. Anil enlists Sunita's help, who now believes his innocence and takes him to meet Ramesh at The Park Hotel. While there, Anil spots the same mysterious woman who had set him up with the sabotaged car and chases her. He is shocked to see her drive into the mansion of Kunwarsahab, who then reunites with Anil at the place and insists that he is not safe anywhere and must stay with him in the night. Kunwarsahab forces Anil into an old room in his mansion and instructs him to stay there till morning. After Kunwarsahab exits the room, as he begrudgingly goes through a closet in the room, looking for clothes to change into, Anil is shocked to come across an expensive coat of Kunwarsahab with the exact same buttons that the inspector had shown him and also the coat is missing a button in the buttonhole.  

Realising that both Rupa and Ruby's killer is none other than Kunwarsahab, Anil forges an escape through the window, just as Kunwarsahab and the mysterious woman, a widow with two children and his mistress by the name of Sabina, enter the room to kill Anil in his sleep. While Kunwarsahab leaves to look for him, Anil gets hold of Sabina and forces her to confess the truth to the police. Over a phone call, Sabina finally confesses to the inspector that one year ago, Kunwarsahab had an extramarital affair with her that his wife discovered and tried to shoot Sabina. However, Kunwarsahab tackled his wife by shooting her fatally in the crossfire. While they were burying her corpse in the jungle, Rupa witnessed them as she was on her way to meet Anil. She gave herself away and escaped to The Park Hotel with Kunwarsahab in pursuit. She banged on the door of the room of Anil, pleading with him to let her in, but Anil did not open the door for her, unaware of her predicament. Seizing this opportunity, Kunwarsahab picked up Rupa and threw her off the third floor to her death.

 

Moreover, Sabina also reveals to the inspector that Kunwarsahab came to know about Anil getting closer to discovering the real killer, so he climbed up to the third floor of The Park Hotel and tried to shoot Anil, but the bullet accidentally hit Ruby to her death. At the very moment, Kunwarsahab returns to his mansion and overhears Sabina's telephonic conversation with the inspector, shooting her fatally. He then tries to kill Anil and chases him up to the roof of his mansion, but ends up going over the ledge in the struggle. Anil holds onto him, asking him to surrender himself to the police, who have just arrived at the scene along with Sunita and her father. Kunwarsahab, however, prefers to die in guilt and remorse, and lets go of Anil's hand, falling to his death from the third floor of his mansion. The film ends with Anil and Sunita returning to [[Delhi]] from the same train where they met the first time, and run into the same laughing passenger ([[Ram Avtar]]) there whom they had encountered during their previous journey.