This is a 1990 Telugu film which was a super duper hit and catapulted Venkatesh into the league of Telugu super stars. The movie was a typical Telugu masala fare with logic tossed out of the room while discussing the screenplay. My guess is the director would have said this while starting this film – I am making a film that will have a few scenes of slap stick comedy, a few romance scenes, some fight scenes and a couple of sentiment scenes. I don’t worry about how they all tie together. The movie will be shot inside a jungle – the novelty factor – and lavish, colorful sets for the songs.

Oh the songs!! That is the trump card. I have Ilaiyaraja’s call sheet. I will ask him to come up with catchy foot tapping numbers. This is all I need to ensure that the movie is a super duper hit.

And a super duper hit it was. The film was a raging hit even in Tamil film dominated Madras. I remember my own classmates humming the songs from this film and going crazy when a song from this film is telecast on the weekly Telugu film songs program (Chitraranjini? or Tarangini?)

The songs I liked most from this film are the following:

Kanya Kumari – SPB and Janaki sing this song and only they can sing such a song. The song requires the hero and the heroine to be intoxicated and dancing in a dream land. They comepete to enact in front of microphone. I am not sure how well the on-screen pair brought all that out on the screen. This song also features some horrible animation techniques – quite similar to those seen in Rajinikanth’s Raja Chinna Roja.

Balapam Patti Baama – this song starts like a tribal song with the beats very similar to what you hear in Meenkodi Theril or Aasaiya Kaathula songs. But SPB and Chitra sing a wonderful song. The beat is foot tapping, the singing mellifluous and the picturization grand.

Happy listening…