Shiva

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

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.

Film