| | 4 | 1989 145’ col Telugu d/s Ram Gopal Varma pc Annapurna Cine Studios p Venkat Akkineni, Y. Surendra dial T. Bharani lyr Veturi Sundara Ramamurthy, Seetharama Sastry c S. Gopal Reddy m Ilaiyaraja lp Nagarjuna, Amala, Raghuvaran, T. Bharani, Murali Mohan, Chinna, Chakravarthy, Kota Srinivasa Rao |
| | 7 | Varma’s Telugu hit telling the story of a young college student who gets involved with gang rivalry and eventually becomes a crusader for justice. Shiva (Nagarjuna) gets the better of college bully J.D. (Chakravarthy) and has to confront the villainies of the dreaded gangster Bhavani (Raghuvaran). In a spectacular finale Shiva kills Bhavani. The cult movie, emphasising expressionist lighting and camerawork, also proved successful in its Hindi version, which departed in one detail from the original: the hero’s wife, played by Amala, is killed, rather than his niece. The hit was sometimes seen as an autobiographical account of the director’s experiences in engineering college in Vijaywada. |