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Ammoru [1995] An Indian mythological movie, with a notional present-day setting and a plot that seems purest Victorian melodrama. Our heroine Bhavani [Soundarya] is an orphan who happens to be deeply dedicated to the goddess Ammoru, the only mother she knows, and she is loved by a decent doctor who is supposedly more rational than everyone else around. It seems to rush through a plot within the first half-hour as the doctor's evil sister schemes to marry him to her dim daughter so she can get control of the family fortune and pay off an enormously moustachioed crooked judge, while the sister's hulking son, a devotee of the evil god Chenda, plots to sacrifice a virgin who has come to him to help her cheat on her exams. Bhavani alerts the authorities just as the villain has buried the girl alive and the wicked sister vows revenge, paying off a wise woman to insist that the whole village will be possessed unless an unmarried girl [ie: Bhavani] is sacrificed. The doctor steps in to marry the girl and thus save her from sacrifice, which would be happy enough an ending for any other film, but there's another 90 minutes to go as the doctor departs to study in America and the villainness plots to drive the pregnant heroine mad. Ammoru manifests as a child and helps out, protecting the heroine, but the Chenda devotee gets out of jail in honour of Gandhi's anniversary [!] and pretends to be reformed to get back in the house, whereupon he arranges for the girl goddess to be expelled, and fixes it so the heroine watches her baby daughter fall in a well and drown. The god possesses the doctor and takes him close to suicide and the heroine volunteers to be killed by him in Ammoru's temple in order to save her man, but feels so abandoned by her patron she won't anoint the odd-looking idol in the shrine to save herself – but CGI blood from a wound flies across the room and splatters on the idol, who turns into a many-armed apparition and gorily does away with the baddie, hacking off his rotten head. And this synopsis doesn't even include the pig-like hired rapist the
villainness wants to dishonour the heroine but who ruts with her own
daughter instead or the brother who switches allegiance half-way through
and becomes an Ammoru fan when she emerges on a huge hand of water from
the pool he has thrown her into. It has the look of a typical rough
Indian picture, but aspires to CGI effects which are themselves aptly
ropey. Out of context, it's a bit much on the suffering as the heroine
goes through more miseries than any five other abused women but still
doesn't throw her rotten in-laws out of the house. The chubby little
girl goddess, who sings and dances, is vaguely disturbing, and appears
in several blue-faced incarnations with varying face ornaments. Directed
by Rodi Ramakrishna. First published in this form here. Visit Kim's Official Website at www.johnnyalucard.com
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