Bairavi

Bairavi is a 1978 Tamillanguage Indian feature film directed by M Baskar, starring Rajinikanth in lead role. It was Rajinikanths first movie as a solo hero in Tamil cinema. He was also given the Superstar title through this film. The film stars Sripriya as the female lead and Geetha playing the title role as Rajinis sister. Geetha was introduced in this film. Sreekanth played the role of the main villain. Malayalam actor Sudheer played Bairavis step brother, while Manorama and Suruli Rajan played other major roles.

Kalaignanam who was impressed with Rajinis dedication in Aarupushpangal, went straight ahead casting Rajini in lead role for Bhairavi. Director Oscar Movies M Baskar, having faith in Rajini to pull the crowds as hero. Initially, Devar agreed to give financial support for Bhairavi but when he heard Rajini is the lead actor, he withdrew the support and advised Kalaignanam to stop the movie or change the actor and questioned him for choosing a villain in the lead role and hero as villain Srikanth was acting as hero those days and he assured that it will be a huge loss. Kalaignanam approached Muthuraman to play negative role but he refused to portray a negative character, Srikanth was finally selected for the role. M. Bhaskar, former assistant of C. V. Sridhar was chosen to direct the film. When the film was released, Devar watched the film in Rajakumari theatre. He was quite shocked to see the response for Rajini and during the interval itself the film was declared as Super Hit. Devar withdrew all his words and asked Kalaignanam to book Rajini for their banner. It was the idea of S. Thanu to give Rajinikanth the Super Star tag, which is still used by many people to refer to him. A cutout of Rajinikanth with the height offeet was built in Plaza Theatre. The film was dubbed into Telugu and released as Bhairavi. ........

Source: Wikipedia