The house that horror built : The Tribune India

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Books Review : Don’t Disturb the Dead by Shamya Dasgupta.

The house that horror built

Everyone knows the Ramsay brothers.

The house that horror built

Zombie-land: Bikini-clad starlets, a dollop of sex, stormy dark nights, creaking doors and high-pitched screams were an intrinsic part of any Ramsay film



Aradhika Sharma

Everyone knows the Ramsay brothers. Generations of cine-goers, and aficionados of horror are familiar with the particular brand of horror that the Ramsays introduced into the Indian film industry. It essentially included blood, sleaze, gore, weird costumes, over-the-top makeup, graves and burial grounds, interspersed with weird screeches and wails designed to make the audience jump out of its skin. Usually, all elements were indiscriminately shaken and stirred together and made for a pretty complete experience of unearthly experiences. 

The first of these desi Hitchcock movies, a Ramsay Brothers’ classic, Do Gaz Zameen ke Neeche (1972), was billed as ‘India’s first horror movie’. Made at a budget of just Rs 3.5 lakh, it made a profit of approximately Rs 50 lakh. The film found many takers despite the fact that it was given an ‘A’ certificate and had been released only in a few theatres in Bombay and Delhi.

The Ramsays challenged the existing genres of films with their miscellany of horror that borrowed freely from Alfred Hitchcock-type crime, Edgar Allan Poe-type horror and used zombies, Dracula and Frankenstein-like monsters in happy juxtaposition with indigenous tantriks, dayans, bhoots and chudails who, predictably, had backward-facing feet. Bikini-clad starlets, some skin show, a dollop of sex, stormy dark nights, creaking doors, horrible high-pitched screams and unexplained people who skulked around added to the completeness of the experience of watching a Ramsay film, resulting in movies like Veerana, Bandh Darwaza, Do Gaz Zameen Ke Neeche, Purani Haveli, Dak Bangla, Purana Mandir, etc. Incidentally, Purana Mandir was the second-highest grosser of 1984. 

The movies were usually low budget and ruled a sub-culture in the 1970s and the 1980s. Since these films were never accepted as mainstream cinema, the brothers generally released their films in smaller towns and on the outskirts of Bombay. Though their films were denied respectability, their oeuvre stemmed from widespread myth and culture and made them a lot of money. 

“Pushy businessmen they certainly were but they believed in the formula they wanted to sell, and that’s probably the one thing that clinched it for them in the end,” says Dasgupta, explaining the Ramsays’ success story.

When private entertainment TV channels started in India, the Ramsay brothers shifted their brand of horror to television in the series called Zee Horror Show which became quite popular in the 1990s. The formula was much the same as their cult movies — with some stories extending from four to five episodes. 

As the world has moved online now, the Gen-Next of Ramsays, too, has repackaged the old family formula into a digital package have launched a web-based series called 101 Phir Se Ramsay.

The first generation of seven Ramsay brothers, along with their father, formed the original production and the filming unit, looking after the entire process of movie making in-house —from direction, editing, cinematography, costume designing, script writing to set designing — all experts were from within the family. 

Shamya Dasgupta’s book does a good job of describing the family enterprise and interaction among the Ramsays. There are plenty of interviews with the brothers and people associated with their production house, including the actors who provide insights into what went behind the scenes. Dasgupta is able to bring out the fact that while the Ramsay brothers had always remained peripheral to the mainstream Hindi film industry and their films not held in high esteem, yet their movies have sustained till date and are a genre unto themselves!

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