Shhh! (film)

2021-08-24T05:01:58Z

117.213.161.55: /* Plot */

{{Use Indian English|date=June 2015}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=June 2015}}
{{Infobox film
| name = Shhh!
| image = Shh_movie_poster.jpg
| caption = DVD Cover
| director = [[Upendra (actor)|Upendra]]
| producer = [[Kumar Govind]]
| story = Upendra
| screenplay = Upendra
| starring = Kumar Govind<br />[[Kashinath (actor)|Kashinath]]
| music = [[Sadhu Kokila]]
| cinematography = Ashok Kashyap
| editing = R. Janardhan
| studio = SK Films
| distributor =
| released = {{Film date|df=yes|1993|12|3}}
| country = India
| language = [[Kannada language|Kannada]]
| runtime = 135 minutes
| budget =
| gross =
}}

'''''Shhh!''''' is a 1993 Indian [[Kannada language|Kannada]] [[Horror film|horror]] [[suspense]] [[Thriller (genre)|thriller]] film written and directed by [[Upendra (actor)|Upendra]]. It stars [[Kumar Govind]], [[Kashinath (actor)|Kashinath]], [[Suresh Heblikar]] in the lead roles, N.B. Jayaprakash, Baby Rashmi, Megha and others in support roles. This [[suspense thriller]] also starred [[Kashinath (actor)|Kashinath]] and introduced [[Kumar Govind]] as mainstream hero. It has a small cameo by [[Upendra (actor)|Upendra]] as a wannabe actor in police costume. This film went on to be a major commercial success. It created a new trend of suspense thriller movies in [[Kannada cinema]]. It was also the debut movie of [[Sadhu Kokila]] as an actor and music director.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20040605003250/http://www.ourkarnataka.com/kannada/movie/uppi_updown.htm]</ref>
<ref>http://www.newindianexpress.com/entertainment/kannada/Upendra-Hit-Shhh-Gears-Up-For-a-Second-Release/2015/07/21/article2930871.ece</ref>
The central part has striking similarities with Vidhu Vinod Chopra's Khamosh 1986, where series of murders start occurring on the film set which is set in Pahalgam Hotel Kashmir and here it is in Onti Mane Estate.

==Plot==
The movie opens with a young boy that comes out of his house at midnight to relieve himself. He hears some leaves rustling in the distance, and he looks up to see what it is. His face suddenly bears an expression of horror, and he screams at the top of his lungs.

A few days later, a shooting crew led by veteran Kannada director [[Kashinath (actor)|Kashinath]] is on their way to start filming their newly approved film. For shooting, they have selected Onti Mane Estate, a lonely estate feared in the vicinity. (Onti literally means "lonely" in Kannada). As they try to find their way, they encounter a series of mishaps (like tires deflating and locals warning the crew not to film there. Nevertheless, they reach Onti Mane Estate and meet Nagaraj Rao (the owner) and his family. Though Mr.Rao seemed cordial, his second wife and her disabled brother aren't happy about the visitors & express their discontent openly. However, Nagraj's daughter Bharathi keeps the crew engaged by playing hilarious pranks on Kashinath and the protagonist Kumar ([[Kumar Govind]]). Kumar is instantly attracted to Bharathi due to her outgoing and charming personality and falls in love with her.

Before shooting commences, Kashinath reveals that the movie is a suspense horror thriller with a disfigured ghost that haunts a couple. He also reveals its horrific costume. As shooting progresses, strange events start taking place. The demon ghost's costume starts smoking in the middle of the night, and Kumar witnesses a hooded figure leaving Mr. Rao's home. When he tries to follow the figure, Rao's brother-in-law stops him and warns him not to roam around the estate at night. Then, he stands waiting for his sister. A few hours later, a demoniac figure (wearing the film's ghost costume) nabs him from behind. We next see the figure carrying him at the top of the estate hill. He shouts for help, but his screams get muffled, as the ghostly figure carries him into the dilapidated estate house.

Frightened by his disappearance, Nagaraj Rao's wife lodges a complaint. SI Kalappa ([[Bank Janardhan]]) and his perennially drowsy constable ([[Vaijanath Biradar]]) take charge of the investigation. A few days later, it is revealed that Nagaraj's wife was the hooded figure shown earlier. Her brother was looking out for her as she had an affair with a local sanyasi Dayananda Swamiji ([[Mimicry Dayanand]]). The same night, as she goes out to meet her lover, she is trailed by the same demon costume figure that nabbed her brother. The sanyasi and Nagraj Rao's wife make love. As the sanyasi steps out of to fetch water, the demon knocks him out, kidnaps Nagaraj's wife, and then takes her also to the haunted estate house.

On seeing his family members disappearing one by one, Nagaraj Rao is distraught. Surprisingly, his son Krishna and Bharati least bothered with all these. Comic relief is provided by [[Upendra (actor)|Upendra]], who appears as a police officer accusing Kashinath to be responsible for all these. It's later revealed that he was just an aspiring actor trying to impress Kashinath by his acting skills.

Meanwhile, the police superintendent ([[Suresh Heblikar]]) takes SI Kalappa to task, warns him and issues orders to intensify investigations. Tragedy strikes the film crew, when the assistant director is found brutally murdered by having his head smashed by a rock. It's found out that he had tracked someone to the haunted house and met his demise. The demon's play intensifies with many supernatural occurrences, making the people believe that a ghost indeed haunted the estate. As Kumar and Kashinath try to demystify the deaths, they find holes and trenches dug in sporadic parts of the estate, leaving them confounded

The film cuts to a scene where the film producer and the production manager Srikantu start scouting the estate at night with excavation tools, and they split to optimize the results. Soon the film producer finds the bloody body of Srikantu and sees a severely disfigured person[Not the hooded costume] standing above the hill. He scrambles, running and then screams for help. The film crew gets hold of him, calms him down, and then heads over to the place where the producer found Srikanth's bloody body. But they don't see a body, only bloody stains on the ground. Later the producer reveals why he and the production manager choose the estate, and it was to find a hidden treasure allegedly buried in the estate at night.

As the days pass, tragedy strikes Nagaraj Rao's family again when his son is brutally murdered. Kashinath finds a vital artifact, a golden token of Lord Hanuman, which he believes holds to solve this murder mystery. However, Kashinath is thrown into a tizzy when he sees the same artifact with Kumar Govind, and the specter of doubt soon looms large on Kumar's involvement with the murders.One night, Kumar escorts Bharathi into the forest in the middle of the night and abandons her. Just as he leaves, the demon attacks her. Hearing her cries for help, Kumar jumps in and fights the demon. After a grueling fight, the demon escapes upon seeing Kashinath and his crew. Soon, Kashinath accuses Kumar of having another copy of the artifact he found at the scene where the brother was murdered. Kumar tells him that it was handed to him by Bharathi, who had, in turn, received it from her father. Kashinath realizes that Nagaraj Rao is the one behind all this, and they rush to his house, only to find him hanging from the ceiling with a suicide note made out to someone named Rammapa, pleading him to spare the lives of children in turn for his.

The family's maid reveals that Nagaraj Rao's greedy second wife and her brother manipulated him to murder the ground worker Ramappa to steal a pot filled with golden artifacts, which they discovered. Rao and his brother-in-law set the house on top of the hill on fire, and then when they try to dig up the treasure, it was gone. Kumar and Kashinath, after hearing the story, decided to investigate further the burnt-down house. Kumar sees a burnt man holding a corpse and the doctor from the neighboring estate reprimanding him by showing him fire. Kumar interferes and grabs the doctor hostage under a knife, who then reveals that the burnt man is the son of Ramappa, who survived the fire but he suffered psychological trauma because of the injuries. The doctor tried his best to help him, but he would just dig up female corpses, thinking that it was his long-lost wife. The doctor tells Kumar that Ramappa had another son seeking revenge and is a member of the film crew. As Kumar asks him who the person was, he is knocked out by the demon.

Now that the vengeful goal of eliminating Mr. Rao's family is complete, the brother in the demon costume kills his brother by making him drink cyanide forcefully. He commits suicide by drinking cyanide from the same bottle in front of the doctor. Kumar wakes up and then goes back to the burnt-down house to find them dead. Demon is unmasked. The doctor reveals that the brother is the production manager who faked his death and his brother, who was an accomplice in his crimes of brutally murdering Rao's family. Kashinath, Bharati, and others rush to see it, and Bharthi is relieved that the killer is dead. But to everyone's surprise, suddenly, the manager springs up and tries to strangle Bharthi. Before he can do anything serious, the Superintendent kills him by shooting him in the back. The film ends with Kashinath wishing Kumar and Bharthi a happy and peaceful married life as they leave the estate wrapping their shooting.

==Cast==
* [[Kumar Govind]] as Kumar
* [[Kashinath (actor)|Kashinath]] as Kashinath
* [[Suresh Heblikar]] as Superintendent of Police
* Megha as Bharathi
* [[K. Praveen Nayak]] as Krishna, Bharathi's brother
* [[Goturi]] as Nagaraja Rao
* N.B. Jayaprakash (JP) as low budget film producer
* [[Bank Janardhan]] as Inspector Kalappa
* [[Vaijanath Biradar]] as The drowsy constable
* [[Upendra (actor)|Upendra]] as dummy inspector(Special appearance)
* [[Sadhu Kokila]] as KungFu Kannan (Special appearance)
* [[Thriller Manju]] as Kungfu Master (Special appearance)
* [[Mimicry Dayanand]] as Dayananda Theertha Swamiji
* Shankar Bhat as production manager Srikantu
* Dr. Venkat Janardhan as Dr. Kurien
* Ajay as Nagaraj Rao wife's brother
* Suma as Devi, Nagaraj Rao's wife
* S.Murali Mohan as assistant director murali
* Micheal Madhu as cameraman Micheal
* Kantha Purushottam as Sundaramma, house servant of Nagaraj Rao
* Susheel Raj as assistant director Susheel
* Latha as Cotton Kapalakshi, film heroine
* Sriraj Kothari as film crew member
* Balu Murugaraj as Balu, technician of the film crew
*Uma as assistant director of the film crew
*Ravi Pandu as makeup man
*Kumar as dummy poojary
*Basava as heroine's assistant
*Rocket Vikram as cinema fighter
*Guru Murthy as cinema fighter

==Production==
In an episode in ''[[Weekend with Ramesh]]'', it was revealed that Upendra and his friends started working on a story during college holidays called ''Nigooda Neralugalu'' which eventually took different forms and finally took the shape of this movie story.<ref>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0kCYzGPnoY</ref>

==Soundtrack==
* "Avanalli Ivalilli" - [[L. N. Shastry]], [[Chandrika Gururaj]]
* "Dava Dava Nadukava" - [[S. P. Balasubramanyam]], [[Manjula Gururaj]]

The audio has 2 more songs which were not found in the movie.

* " One day sunday ninna kandenu" - [[S. P. Balasubramanyam]], [[Manjula Gururaj]]
* " Ee bhayadalleno thrill ide" - [[L. N. Shastry]] , [[Upendra (actor)|Upendra]] , Shivaji Rao

==Critical reception==

The film was summarily praised by critics and fans. Upendra as a director was hailed for his ability to maintain the suspense element of the movie till the end.<ref>https://www.filmcompanion.in/features/kannada-features/best-kannada-movies-thriller-on-amazon-prime-video-youtube-zee5-mx-player-dr-rajkumar-lucia-accident-kavaludaari/amp/</ref> It also became a benchmark movie for [[Sadhu Kokila]] who is now a very well acclaimed and respected musician and actor. The music was very well received and the songs "Avanalli Ivalilli" and "Dava Dava" are hummed to this day.

==Box office==
This film went on to be a major commercial success. It created a new trend of suspense thriller movies in [[Kannada cinema]]. It established [[Upendra (actor)|Upendra]] as a well-known director. It completed 100 days in 26 centres.

==Awards==
'''[[Karnataka State Film Awards]]''' 1993-94

• [[Karnataka State Film Award for Best Film|Third Best Film]]

• [[Karnataka State Film Award for Best Editor|Best Editor]] - R. Janardhan

==References==
{{Reflist}}

{{Upendra}}

[[Category:Films set in Bangalore]]
[[Category:1990s Kannada-language films]]
[[Category:Indian films]]
[[Category:1990s horror thriller films]]
[[Category:1993 films]]
[[Category:1993 horror films]]
[[Category:Films directed by Upendra]]
[[Category:Indian horror thriller films]]
[[Category:Films scored by Sadhu Kokila]]

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Shhh! (film)