Bhadrakali (film)

Bhadrakali English Kali in Fury is a 1976 Tamil film starring Sivakumar and Rani Chandra in the lead roles. Produced and directed by A. C. Tirulokchandar, it is an adaptation of a Tamil novel written by Maharishi. The soundtrack and film score were composed by Ilaiyaraaja. The film was remade in Telugu as same name by same director.

Tirulokchandar decided to produced and direct a film based on a novel by Maharishi. The story is set in a Brahmin household. Tirulokchandar produced the film under his home production Cine Bharath, and Harur Dass was recruited as the dialog writer. The director chose Sivakumar as the male lead and while looking for a new face to cast as the female lead, they chose Rani Chandra, a Malayali actress, and planned to introduce her to the Tamil audience under the name Gayathri. Prior to acting in this film, Rani Chandra had acted in about 60 films in Malayalam apart from Porchilai 1969 and Then Sindhudhe Vaanam 1975 in Tamil. Bhadrakali was considered her first major role in Tamil as she played minor roles in her earlier films in the language.During the final stages of filming, Rani Chandra along with her mother and sisters went to Dubai to take part in a cultural programme. When they were on a return from Bombay to Madras onOctober 1976, their plane caught fire and crashed near the airport, killing all the passengers. As a result of her death, a few unfinished portions of her were shot using a lookalike, named Pushpa, a group dancer. Apart from a few scenes involving the female lead, the climax portions were fully shot using Pushpa. Though Tirulokchandar was not fully convinced with the idea to shoot with a lookalike as Pushpa slightly resembled Rani. However, Viswanath Rai, the cinematographer encouraged him to go with the idea of lookalike and used different camera angles and used long shots for scenes involving Pushpa, Ranis duplicate. ........

Source: Wikipedia