Jaganmohini

Jaganmohini is a 1978 Telugu film produced and directed by B. Vittalacharya, a remake of the 1951 Kannada film of the same name. Narasimha Raju, Prabha and Jayamalini star, with Savitri and Dhulipala Seetharama Sastry as the hero’s parents. According to Firstpost, it was a major hit that outperformed films with far bigger stars, and its visual effects were considered the best by Indian standards of the time.

What the story is about

In a previous life, Raja was a king who, out hunting in the forest, seduced Mohini, an orphan who sold firewood for a living, and abandoned her with a false promise to return and make her his queen. Betrayed, Mohini took her own life, vowing to claim him in his next birth. Reborn, Raja happens upon the same forest, where Mohini, now the ghost Jaganmohini, appears and tries to lure him with her beauty. But Raja is married to a deeply pious woman, and the film becomes a contest between the ghost’s seductions and his wife’s devotion to her goddess.

Cast

• Jayamalini as Jaganmohini
• Narasimha Raju as Raja
• Prabha as Raja’s wife
• Savitri as Raja’s mother and Dhulipala Seetharama Sastry as his father
• Sarathi as Raja’s friend
• Mukkamala, Balakrishna and Vijayalakshmi

Box office and reception

Looking back in 2015, Firstpost described Jaganmohini as a major hit that did better than the films of big stars of the day, and credited it with the best visual effects in Indian cinema at the time. The Indian Express was harsher: it found it “utterly confusing” compared with Vittalacharya’s earlier, clearer stories, and criticised the incoherent narration, poor dubbing, unappealing songs and weak acting. Wikipedia does not give a collection figure, and our record has only the year of release, 1978.

Where to watch Jaganmohini

We do not have a confirmed streaming platform for Jaganmohini on file. The OTT details on this page will be updated when a platform’s own listing confirms it.

Sources: the Wikipedia article on Jaganmohini and the article it cites, linked above; Wikidata; our own cast and crew records.