Uruvam

In the early 90's, Tamil cinema was going through a phase where a number of films dealt with themes of College Romance/Teenage love stories. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Director G.M.Kumar (Aruvadai Naal, PickPocket, Irumbu Pookal fame) came with a movie that was totally against this tide. A gory horror film laced with clumsily executed soft porn acts. This movie was seen as a comeback vehicle not just for the director who had 2 flop films prior to this, also for 2 somewhat popular Tamil actors of 80's ('Mic' Mohan and Pallavi). This was one of the few movies where Mohan lent his own voice for his on screen persona instead of getting it dubbed by the dubbing artist S.N.Surendhar.

Coming to the story, Uruvam (means "Shape" in Tamil) in a nutshell is about how good overcomes the evil. Story centers on a House that is cursed with black magic by its previous tenant (who has lost a court case on the proprietorship of the house) against its new residents. How this innocent family escapes from the cursed house forms the crux of the story. This Film has got plenty of plot holes, inconsistent pace, and ham acting. This was also a box office disaster that made sure the director will not direct any more feature film in his career (ended up incurring heavy debts).

Despite all these shortcomings, it still got two very strong points that makes it a kind of cult classic among the fans of Tamil Horror genre. They are, haunting synth centric background score of Ilaiyaraja and Goosebumps raising camera work of Velu Prabhakaran. IMHO, Uruvam's original score is still among one of the best I've ever listened to (reminded me a lot of Cannibal Holocaust's terrorizing synth scores which was way ahead of its time). Whereas, cinematography of Velu Prabhakaran looks clearly inspired heavily from the works of Sam Raimi (Evil Dead series) is pretty intense and inventive for that time (remember, this film came in 1991 when the technology in film making were still at nascent from Indian film maker's point of view).

This combination makes this otherwise poorly written/acted movie to a must watch film for horror film buffs. Watch this film for its fantastic score and visualization, you won't be disappointed.

This is an interesting and generally well made south Indian horror movie that doesn't have the comedy and musical numbers that are common in Bombay productions.

Without giving too much away, the plot concerns a curse placed on a family who come to live in a new house by the sea.

There are some very effective scenes and the camera work is well above par for Indian horror movies of this era.

Interestingly, this was dubbed into Hindi and released as Khooni Hawas with a considerable number of alterations. A whole sub plot involving a police inspector seems to have been cut from the Hindi version and I recall that a musical number was added near the beginning. From memory I can't tell if the film was remade or simply re-dubbed; but I'm pretty sure it was just a dubbing job.

Well worth seeking out in either version if you have an interest in horror films from India.