Awesome Toddlers 14(IO) Eye for an EYE.

Comedy is an essential part of a horror film. Strange as it may sound, it has become an imperative element of Telugu films.

Telugu audience is so hooked to comedy that even a horror thriller is not accepted without a funny face or a funny line. Horror movies sprang a surprise.

A small budget Premakatha Chitram with Sudheer Babu and Nandita in the lead and directed by Prabhakar Reddy became a surprise hit in 2013, collecting around Rs.18 crores.

That year, a dubbed version of Tamil film Pizza set the ball rolling. While in Tamil Nadu 2014 ended with Pisaasu, in the Telugu speaking states, a small budget film Geetanjali set the cash registers ringing and collected approximately ten crore, despite mixed reviewsin mid-2014.

In both Premakatha Chitram and Geetanjali comedians played an important role, in the former it was Saptagiri and the latter had the comedian Srinivas Reddy himself as a hero and a group of small time comedians to complement him.

The writer of a horror film in Telugu has to weave in a situational comedy that gels with the plot perfectly, the dialogues for the comedian have to be hilarious and often, loud. He need not have a sophisticated approach but must meet the demand to maintain a balance between both horror and comedy.

Apart from these successful horror-comedies, there have been serious films too that stuck to the tone and were loyal to the genre. Be it Bhoo or the recent The End and the last film Chandrakala, they managed to get noticed and fetched immense publicity by social media.

Chandrakala, a dubbed film is doing well at the B and C centres and The End starring newcomers even made some profit.

Now Premakatha Chitram is being remade as Darling with Tamil music director G V Prakash in the lead. In 2015 we will see the sequel of Geetanjali by the same director Raaj Kiran, Premakatha Chitram's sequel is likely to strike us a Pelli Katha Chitram.

We haven't forgotten the amount of patronage Lawrence's Muni (Kanchana in Telugu), got in united Andhra. Inspired by the success, came in Muni 2 and now set to release is Muni3. Writer Gopimohan says, "Generally fear has a connection with comedy. Ramgopal Verma attempted this genre long back with Ratri, Deyyam, Kaun, Bhootam, Marri Chettu, Darling and Icecream. Most of them failed because the subject was too heavy.

The other films like Mantra, Boochamma Boochodu are successful because of the comic relief they provide .

Hindi films can work with just horror because they have good songs backed by strong technicians and an element of voyeurism and exposing by the heroines."

While success of a horror film lies in making the audience anticipate horror i.e what you can imagine is always worse than what you see, a horror comedy allows the viewers to laugh at their fears.

Following the success of the horror comedy genre, in all probability we could see another half a dozen horror comedies release next year.

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