Chengodan of Soorakadu lusts after Mangamma, the wife of the chieftain of Vengaimalai. When the woman cuts off her unwelcome suitor’s leg, he takes revenge by enslaving all the women of Vengaimalai and beheading all the men. However, Mangamma’s son Vengaiyyan (MGR), kept in a cell since childhood, escapes the slaughter and grows up to become an illiterate hunchback who, with the help of a slave woman, eventually reconquers his ancestral domain and kills the tyrant.