At a time when Bollywood was dominated by romantic and social dramas, and very few filmmakers dared to explore horror after films like Mahal and Bees Saal Baad, it was the Ramsay Brothers in the 1970s who took the box office by storm by tapping into a genre that was largely untouched. Films like Do Gaz Zameen Ke Neeche, Purana Mandir, Veerana, Purani Haveli and Bandh Darwaza became massive hits. Despite their success, the industry often mocked them and reduced them to “C-grade filmmakers.”
Now, Deepak Ramsay, son of director Tulsi Ramsay, has opened up about those years when people within the industry laughed at the Ramsays despite their films consistently succeeding at the box office.
‘Movies made on shoestring budget was a joke to the Kapoors’
Speaking to Hindi Rush, Deepak said, “Our movies were made on a very shoestring budget. It was experimental cinema at that time. You were gathering new artists, introducing creatures, taking the team to Mahabaleshwar, and then making the entire film there — it was like a joke for them. Here, filmmakers would work with hundreds of people, have vanity vans, huge budgets and massive expenses, and despite all that, the films wouldn’t always work. Meanwhile, the Ramsays’ low-budget films would consistently make money. Many distributors earned so much from our movies that they eventually became established distributors.”
‘Only Ramsay brothers released films against superstar releases’
He further revealed that the Ramsay Brothers were among the very few filmmakers who dared to release films alongside superstar-led projects at the box office.
Deepak shared, “Whenever an A-list film, especially one starring Amitabh Bachchan, would release, nobody would dare to release their films alongside it. If your film clashed with Big B’s film, it was considered welcoming losses. The film would either do zero business or go into the negatives. The Ramsays were the only filmmakers who released films alongside movies starring Amitabh Bachchan, Rajesh Khanna or Dharmendra. We believed in our films.”
He added that Tulsi Ramsay often recalled how people mocked them for making “small films” instead of mounting larger productions. “People would say, ‘Make something bigger, think big, play a big game.’ But even people playing big games would flop sometimes, while the Ramsays rarely did. They always created magic at the box office,” he said.
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‘No comparison between the Kapoors and Ramsays’
Speaking about comparisons with the Kapoor family, Deepak Ramsay said, “The Kapoors are a very big family. We shared an amicable relationship. Raj Kapoor’s style of filmmaking and genre were completely different, so there’s no comparison between Kapoor and Ramsay films. We have been working since the time of Prithviraj Kapoor. But in no way were the Ramsays lesser filmmakers. The entire family functioned like a film factory. They would complete a film from start to finish and ensure that it became a hit.”
The Ramsay Brothers ruled the horror space in Bollywood for nearly two decades before shifting to television in the 1990s. In the years that followed, filmmakers like Ram Gopal Varma and Vikram Bhatt revived mainstream horror with films like Raat, Bhooth and Raaz.
It was Prithviraj Kapoor who inspired the Ramsays to make horror films
Interestingly, it was a film starring Prithviraj Kapoor that inspired F.U. Ramsay, father of Tulsi and Shyam Ramsay, to venture into full-fledged horror filmmaking. After settling in Mumbai with his family, F.U. Ramsay started an electronics business. However, financial struggles pushed him towards film production. He invested in a series of films, but most of them failed at the box office. In 1970, he once again took a major risk by backing Ek Nanhi Munni Ladki Thi, starring Mumtaz, Shatrughan Sinha and Prithviraj Kapoor.
Although the film flopped commercially, F.U. Ramsay noticed something unusual while watching it in theatres. During a night-time heist sequence, Prithviraj Kapoor’s character appeared in heavy prosthetic makeup, shocking audiences and triggering screams inside the cinema hall. Tulsi Ramsay, who was also present, was struck by the audience’s reaction. That moment sparked the idea of creating a full-fledged horror film.
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While the Ramsay Brothers did not initially receive much recognition from the film industry during the 1970s, things changed after the success of Purana Mandir. It was then that even Bollywood’s biggest film families, including the Kapoors, began taking notice of them. Speaking to Motherland Magazine, Tulsi Ramsay once said, “They would keep laughing at us and wonder what we brothers were doing. But they would still watch our movies.”
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