Moondrezhuthu is a romantic crime drama, directed by T.R. Ramanna (brother of actress T. R. Rajakumari). It was produced under Sri Vinayaga Pictures’ banner by T.K. Ramarajan and was written by T.N. Balu.
The film revolves around a big box filled with cash and jewellery and a bunch of people vying for it. One of them is a greedy old man with a long tuft (S.A. Asokan), whose daughter is the heroine Jayalalithaa. A manager (Major Sundararajan) is trusted with the box which needs to be handed over to its legitimate claimants (Sriranjani Jr and her suffering family). In his efforts to deliver the box to the rightful owners he is forced to kill and is sent to jail. His son, the film’s hero Ravichandran, to whom he narrates the events, buries the treasure in a village, and writes down the clues to find it in three different pieces of paper, with three different Tamil alphabets, Thi... Mu... Ka.
After many twists and turns, the three villains decipher that the Tamil letters are a clue to the name of the village where the box is buried — Kamuthi — and go there. Now, the land is in the possession of a factory coming up in its place, and another villain (Manohar) also goes after the treasure by killing the others with earth-moving equipment. How the hero assisted by Nagesh deals with this forms the rest of the story.
At the end, the villains are exposed and the box is handed over to its rightful owners. The lovers, Jayalalithaa and Ravichandran, are united too. .
This film was shot by M.A. Rehman and edited by M. S. Mani. Music was composed by T.K. Ramamurthy (of the legendary Viswanathan-Ramamurthy duo) and it was a major reason for its success.
There were six songs in the movie. The lyrics were by Kannadasan and sung off-screen by P. Susheela, T.M. Soundararajan, L.R. Easwari and S.V. Ponnusamy.
There were quite a few duets filmed on Ravichandran and Jayalalithaa. One particular song is filmed on a sequence in which the two stars are locked inside a small box in the back of a lorry. The two begin to sing and dance to a duet ‘Pettiyilae Pottadaitha…..’, which became a hit too.
The film was a success at the box office and was dubbed in Telugu and in Hindi. The performance of the two stars is outstanding and so is the comical performance of Ashokan and Nagesh.
Remembered For : The melodious music, the fine photography and outstanding performance of Ravichandran, Jayalalithaa, Nagesh and Ashokan.
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