Between 1990 and 1995, the Meridian Kiss Of The Beast -1990- Tamil Dubbed VHS was a prized possession. It was never screened in theaters but circulated in the grey market of video parlours. For ₹10, you could rent it for a night. Stories abound of families watching it mistaking it for a regular romance, only to be shocked by the gothic horror and mild eroticism (which the Tamil dub amplified with suggestive dialogue).

Shot on location in Italy, the film features hauntingly beautiful gothic castles and a real-life park of stone monsters.

To understand the Tamil dubbed version, one must first look at the original. Meridian (also known as Meridian: Kiss of the Beast ) is a 1990 American-Italian gothic horror film directed by Charles Band—the maestro behind Puppet Master and Trancers . Produced by the legendary (and often schlocky) Full Moon Entertainment, the film starred Sherilyn Fenn ( Twin Peaks ) and Malcolm Jamieson.

Two American art history students, Catherine (Sherilyn Fenn) and Gina (Hilary Mason), inherit a medieval castle in Italy. Upon arrival, they are greeted not by a standard lawyer but by two mysterious brothers: the handsome and seductive Lawrence (Malcolm Jamieson) and the brutish, scarred Oliver (also played by Jamieson via clever makeup and doubling).

Lawrence wants to use Catherine to break his own shackles and gain ultimate power. He doesn't care who he hurts. But Catherine feels a strange, magnetic pull toward the Beast. She realizes that the "Beast" is more human than the man standing before her.