Comedy and horror go hand in hand

The successes of recent horror comedies in Telugu is more proof that comedy rules the box office

Laughter challenge: Horror comedies ruled the roost this year. Photo: special arrangement

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.