The film, which was released on August 15, 1975, opened to lukewarm response but soon the word of mouth spread and the rest was history. Sholay was Ramesh Sippy’s third film and the most ambitious to date as it included a galaxy of stars.

Dharmendra and Hema Malini were one of the leading pairs of the 70s, Sanjeev Kumar was a versatile actor, Amitabh Bachchan was a rising star who had proved himself in Anand and Zanjeer and Jaya Bahaduri was an established actress.

Also, there was the biggest sensation of all, Amjad Khan as Gabbar Singh, the ferocious dacoit. The audiences lapped up Gabbar, imitating him, loving him and completely ignoring his mean streak once they stepped out of the cinema hall.

An entire generation of youth which has grown along with the film cannot help but recall the mesmerising effect the movie had cast on them during their growing years.

The main plot is simple... a police officer loses his entire family and has his hands chopped off after he arrests a dreaded dacoit. He then hires two mercenaries to carry out his revenge, which they achieve but one of them dies in the process.

But, Sholay’s mastery lay in its sub plots and minor characters, all of which were etched out with the greatest of detail and completeness, says Mahesh Sarang, a 35-year-old computer engineer who has lost count of the number of time he watched the movie in theatres when he was young and now too on television.

Incidentally, superstar Rajnikanth spoke about the film yesterday when the music of his latest film Robot was launched in Mumbai. He said Sholay’s success did not lie with the fact that it was a multi-starrer, it was well received because of the story, characters and the human emotions and sentiments attached to them.

The eccentric jailer Asrani (Hum angrezon ke zamane ke jailor hain), the boastful iron smith Jagdeep (Humara naam soorma Bhopali aise hi nahee hai), the garrulous Hema Malini (chal ree dhanno, aaj basanti ki izzat ka sawal hai), the upright Hangal (koi mujhe masjid tak pahucha de-just after he realises that his son has been killed), Kaalia (Sardar, maine aapka namak khaya hai), the villager during the ’soocide’ scene (yeh soocide kya hota hai bhaiyya and yeh angrez log marte kyun hai) and of course all of Gabbar’s dialogues are remembered till date, Sarang said.

MacMohan who played Samba of "poore pachashazar" fame died earlier this year.

Suresh Avchat, 33, says he loves the action sequences-the famed train battle where horses race alongside a train where a wonderfully executed gun battle takes place, the Gabbar and Thakur fights and towards the end of the film with nail-studded heel.

The film was one of the rare combinations of technical wizardry and popular themes of friendship, loyalty, love, revenge, the lights, sound, acting, screenplay, dialogues and direction are excellent and the action is fast paced and economical.