The RK Selvamani directorial, featuring Vijayakanth, Sarathkumar and Rubini, was released on the occasion of Pongal, 1990.
The film ran for more than 150 days and it was declared as a blockbuster and was considered to be one of the best crime thrillers of its time.
The character of the antagonist Dharma (played by Anandaraj) is loosely based on the serial killer Auto Shankar.
RK Selvamani, an erstwhile assistant of Manivannan wanted to originally make the film with Sathyaraj as the lead.
But Sathyaraj was not interested to act under the direction of a newcomer, but he promised that he would act in Selvamani's next film.
Selvamani decided to narrate a storyline to Vijayakanth. Vijayakanth insisted to narrate the story to his friend, producer Ibrahim Rowther, but Rowther said that Vijayakanth was booked for 2 years.
Selvamani with the help of his friend Jothi then narrated the story to Vijayakanth and Rowther through drawn pictures (story-board) by having Hollywood films as reference.
The shooting recommenced after Manivannan's intervention.
The shooting recommenced after Manivannan's intervention.
Sarathkumar portrayed the antagonist character after he was recommended to the film's team by Vijayakanth's personal make-up man Raju.
The film became one of Vijayakanth's most successful films, despite tough competition with Rajinikanth's Polladhavan and Karthik's Idhaya Thamarai.
Success of the film led G. Venkateswaran to give chance to Selvamani for another project.
Selvamani rejected the project as he expressed his gratitude to Rowther by making another film for him.
The same team again collaborated for Captain Prabhakaran, which also became a blockbuster at the box-office.
The film score and the soundtrack were composed by film composer Ilaiyaraaja. The soundtrack, in one of the firsts, featured just 3 tracks with lyrics written by Gangai Amaran.
Pulan Visaranai was remade in Hindi as Ravan Raaj: A True Story in 1995, starring Mithun Chakraborty and Aditya Pancholi.
The Telugu dubbed version, titled Police Adhikari, which released in 1990, was also successful.
Here's a rare picture of Vijayakanth and Selvamani with Rajinikanth that was clicking during the launch function of Pulan Visaranai.
Selvamani began working on a sequel in 2005 and cast Prashanth as the cop. He revealed that the idea had come to him in the early 2000s and Vijayakanth's unavailability made him choose Prashanth.
Prashanth underwent strength training for the venture, while beauty pageant winner Medha Raghunathan was briefly signed on to play the lead female role, before opting out.
The film, whose shoot was delayed a lot because of Prashanth's marital issues, began production in 2006 and was in development hell before releasing on 30 January 2015.
