Have you ever wondered what the Ramsays are doing? We find out

For the longest time in Indian cinema, the Ramsays ruled the horror genre. If the rest of Bollywood wasn’t exactly sure of what to make of the Ramsay films, their audiences were lapping it up. 

“We were bindaas back then – bold,” reminisces Tulsi Ramsay, 1/7th of the Ramsay family, who along with brother Shyam Ramsay, directed all the films under the Ramsay brothers banner. 

In his posh 6 BHK in Mumbai’s Lokhandwala area, Tulsi sits quite uncomfortably on a chair in his recreation room. “I have a back problem,” he says admittedly, almost apologetic. But the director is quick to narrate their journey from Karachi to then-Bombay.

The Ramsays, with their heads in clouds of horror and feet firmly on the ground, dreamed big. Maybe that is what Tulsi means by bindaas – the brothers’ unit, armed with the vision of their father, were perhaps the first risk-takers in the industry. Never before had anyone dabbled in horror, especially with productions that were made on a small budget. “We knew what the audiences wanted,” he says confidently. Even so, decades later, Tulsi believes that there are four elements to make a horror film: “sex, drama, good-looking girls and fear.” 

As B-grade projects, the films did exceptionally well in smaller cities and towns. “Arrey log toh pagal hotey the hamare films ke liye (People used to get mad over our films)!” recalls Tulsi. He knows very well where his audiences lay and what they wanted. In these small cities and towns, the Ramsays made a lasting impression with films that mirrored their beliefs by writing characters of chudail (witches), rakshas (monsters) and haunted havelis (mansions).

These ideas, which could today be deemed banal, made them (loads of) money. In 1984, when Purana Mandir released alongside the Amitabh Bachchan-starrer Lawaris, it beat the latter’s box office collections to become the second biggest hit of the year. For `2.5 lakhs that Kanta Ramsay [Tulsi’s wife] produced the film, they made `2.5 crores. Fame followed the brothers closely through their work on the big screen and the small screen with the Zee Horror Show (ZHS) (1993-97).

(Clockwise) 1. A close-up of the ‘horrid’ faces the Ramsays were popular for; 2. Anirudh Agarwal plays Nevla in Bandh Darwaza (1990); 3. Satish Shah as Sanga the woodcutter in Purana Mandir (1984); 4. A still from Purana Mandir; 5. Tulsi Ramsay; (inset) Saasha Ramsay in action; (top) Posters of Ramsays most popular projects

THE ENTRY OF NEW GENERATION 

It was on ZHS itself that the third generation Ramsays made their foray into horror. With Tulsi’s son Deepak directing close to 200 episodes for the show, Shyam Ramsay’s daughter Saasha was assisting the show since her school days. “I spent most of my school days on the sets of ZHS. I was always fascinated by my family’s work,” she says over the phone. 

In 2017, Saasha channelled all her inspiration from the Ramsays into a five-part horror web series with 101 India. The web series was a part of 101’s show Remake, which recreated things from the past with a modern twist. “For the launch of this, we were looking for loud, interesting options. Young people today don’t know about things that defined the ’70s and ’80s. The idea with Remake is to combine the old with new, make retro modern again and give a platform to old classics. We launched the property with Ramsay on Halloween a couple of years ago and tried to keep it as close to the originals as possible while giving it a contemporary flavour,” says Founder and MD of 101 India, Cyrus Oshidar. 

For one part, Saasha is aware that the Ramsay’s style will seek lesser popularity than the ’70s and ’80s. “That is why I was looking at the web series as ‘Ramsay Reloaded’, looking at it in a contemporary manner.” Her father Shyam had a big role to play in her series. In an earlier interview with leading national daily, he shares the inspiration for the series. “In the ’70s and ’80s we used to make films for the single-screen audiences, B and C-centres, and villages. I would get inspired by stories of witches walking with their feet turned backwards in rural India. Today, I get ideas from newspapers,” he was reported saying.

NEW AGE HORROR

For Tulsi, The Exorcist (1973) is still his favourite horror film. He watches horror these days but tells us it is only for research purpose. “Online streaming has so many options! Earlier, we would get desperate to find a single VCR for a film, but today it’s all at the push of a button. I watch everything horror, but I marvel at how I can tell how a scene is directed with pause-play,” he says. “I’m preparing.”

At the same time, Saasha isn’t a big fan of contemporary horror. “I see it as just commercial films – they are rarely made with the intent of scaring people,” she says. Apart from the web series, Saasha has more things lined up for herself. “I am in the process of finishing the script for a remake of the 1988 hit Veerana. Another thing we are working on is a horror comedy, which we are currently discussing with digital channels.”

WHAT NEXT?

Tulsi saves his share of the good news for the end. “Netflix is making a biopic on us,” he says proudly. “The life and struggle of Fatehchand U. Ramsay – how we made the horror genre.” He tells us the agreements will be signed in “bas aaj-kal” and then filming commences. 

Fans of the Ramsay classics have an exciting time to look forward to!

RAMSAY TALES TRIVIA

The first-ever film that the Ramsays produced was Shaeheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh (1954). The film didn’t do well at the box office. It was only after another failed production nine years later, that the brothers decided to try their hand at horror finally making the Prithviraj Kapoor-starrer Ek Nanhi Munni Ladki Thi in 1970.