Starring T. R. Rajakumari, M. K. Radha and Ranjan, the film follows two brothers (Veerasimhan and Sasankan) who fight over ruling their father's kingdom and marrying a village dancer, Chandralekha.

Veppathur Kittoo (one of Vasan's storyboard artists) developed a story based on a chapter of George W. M. Reynolds' novel, Robert Macaire: or, The French bandit in England.

Sasankan is pleased to find Chandralekha miraculously cured and apparently ready to accept him as her husband; in return, he agrees to her request for a drum dance at the royal wedding.

After the box office success of Bala Nagamma (1942) and Mangamma Sabatham (1943), producer S. S. Vasan of Gemini Studios wanted his next film to be made on a grand scale, with no budgetary constraints.

The group told the story of Chandralekha, a tough woman who "outwits a vicious bandit, delivers the final insult by slashing off his nose and, as a finishing touch, fills the bloodied gaping hole with hot, red chilli powder".

[31] During the making (of Chandralekha), our studio looked like a small kingdom ... horses, elephants, lions, tigers in one corner, palaces here and there, over there a German lady training nearly a hundred dancers on one studio floor, a shapely Sinhalese lady teaching another group of dancers on real marble steps adjoining a palace, a studio worker making weapons, another making period furniture using expensive rosewood, set props, headgear, and costumes, Ranjan undergoing fencing practice with our fight composer 'Stunt Somu', our music directors composing and rehearsing songs in a building ... there were so many activities going on simultaneously round the clock.

[4] Raghavachari directed more than half the film, but after differences of opinion with Vasan over the shooting of scenes at the Governor's Estate (now Raj Bhavan, Guindy) he left the project.

[42] During post-production, Vasan asked Ramnoth his opinion of the scene when hundreds of Veerasimhan's warriors storm the palace to rescue Chandralekha from Sasankan.

[11] Vasan mortgaged all his property, received financial assistance from The Hindu editor Kasturi Srinivasan and sold his jewellery to complete the film.

[46] According to historian S. Muthiah, with the free-floating exchange rate in effect at the time it was the first film with a budget of over a million dollars made outside the United States.

[7] Garga noted that Chandralekha was also influenced by other Western literary and cinematic works, including the novel Blood and Sand (1908) and the films The Mark of Zorro (1920), Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood (1922), The Thief of Baghdad (1924) and Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925).

"[59] According to Guy, the setting of the song "Naattiya Kuthirai" with Sundari Bai (including her dance and costume) were inspired by the 1943 musical film Coney Island.

The booklet also had layouts for women's pages, a pictorial account of suggested marketing activities (such as "How to drape an Indian sari: Theatre demonstrations have a big draw") and information about the film's costumes.

[45] The film was released in Japan as Shakunetsu-no kettō (灼熱の決闘, Fight Under the Red Heat) in April 1954, where it was distributed by Nippon Cinema Corporation (NCC).

During the 1950s (when foreign currency was scarce in India), barter was a common means of exchange with overseas business partners; Reitaku University's Tamaki Matsuoka believes that this was the case with Chandralekha.

[4][83] Despite the film's positive reviews and good box-office performance, it was unable to recover its large production costs;[15][45] Vasan remade it in Hindi in an attempt to do so.

[11][e] Vasan called Chandralekha "a pageant for our peasants",[90] intended for "the war-weary public that had been forced to watch insipid war propaganda pictures for years.

"[102] In a review published on 10 April, a critic from The Indian Express article termed the film to be "essentially for the young of all ages and even the harassed house-wife will share the pleasure of children treated unexpectedly to a pride of lions, tigers, ponies and elephants showing their paces along with clowns and acrobats.

"[102] In contrast, Kumudam gave the film a lukewarm review: "Though the story is ordinary, the shocking events inserted into the narrative are something new to the Tamil cinema."

"[108] In their 2008 book, Global Bollywood: Travels of Hindi Song and Dance, Sangita Gopal and Sujata Moorti wrote that Chandralekha translated "the aesthetic of Hollywood Orientalism for an indigenous mass audience", while also opining the film's drum-dance scene was "perhaps one of the most spectacular sequences in Indian cinema.

Guy also noted Radha was his "usual impressive self", saying that the film would be "remembered for: the excellent onscreen narration, the magnificent sets and the immortal drum dance sequence.

"[113] Malaysian author D. Devika Bai, writing for the New Straits Times in October 2013, praised its technical aspects: "At almost 68, I have not tired of watching the movie.

[127] Chandralekha's publicity campaign had such an impact that Bombay producers passed a resolution that a limit should be imposed on advertisements for any film in periodicals.

"[137] In December 2008, Muthiah said: "Given how spectacular it was—and the appreciation lavished on it from 1948 till well into the 1950s, which is when I caught up with it—I'm sure that if re-released, it would do better at the box office than most Tamil films today.

"[4] In a 2011 interview with Indo-Asian News Service (IANS), Vyjayanthimala said that although people consider that she "paved the way" for other South Indian actresses in Hindi cinema, "the person who really opened the doors was S. S. Vasan ...

[37][38] Director Singeetam Srinivasa Rao told film critic Baradwaj Rangan that he disliked Chandralekha when he first saw it and recognised it as a classic only after 25 years, "a fact that the audiences realised in just two minutes.

"[140] In April 2012, Rediff included the film on its "A to Z of Tamil Cinema" list and said that Chandralekha "boasted an ensemble cast, great production values and a story that ensured it became a blockbuster all over India, the first of its kind.

[144] It was one of eight Indian films screened at the 28th Italian Il Cinema Ritrovato in 2014 as part of "The Golden 50s: India's Endangered Classics", the festival's first Indian-cinema retrospective.

[145][146][j] In his Times of India review of Baahubali: The Beginning (2015), M. Suganth wrote that director S. S. Rajamouli had "take[n] his cues [for its visuals] from varied sources" (including Chandralekha).

[148] In a November 2015 interview with Sangeetha Devi Dundoo of The Hindu, actor Kamal Haasan said: "Visual appeal has always gone hand-in-hand with content, since the days of Chandralekha and [Mayabazar], not just after Baahubali.