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'People criticise me saying that the ghosts in my films
sometimes wore canvas shoes and were not scary. That is true. In those
days, we were not technically sound.'
'Films were
made on a very low budget, so if there was a small defect, we would let
it pass, and audiences often didn’t catch those defects.'
Shyam Ramsay tells us his 'horror' story.
The pioneers of horror cinema -- the Ramsays -- are making a comeback with yet another horror film, Neighbours.
And it’s themed on the topic of the day -- vampires.
Producer-director Shyam Ramsay talks to Patcy N about his new film, and also looks back at his classic scary movies that have made us associate his name with horror.
He
also tells us just who the Ramsays are, how they got into the
movie-making business and why sex is so important in horror movies.
Early days
My father F U Ramsay and his family came to Mumbai from Pakistan after Partition.
He financed a film called Shaheed-E-Azad Bhagat Singh in 1954. The film did well, and he wanted to make more films.
He made a historical drama called Rustom Sohrab (1963), with Prithviraj Kapoor, Premnath, Mumtaz and Suraiya.
In Prithviraj Kapoor-starrer Ek Nanhi Munni Ladki Thi (1970), all the Ramsay brothers, including me, assisted. I was 22 then.
In a robbery scene in the film, Prithviraj Kapoor steals an antique from a museum. He uses a face mask to disguise himself.
The
mask was imported. It was so horrifying that the film’s publicity was
based entirely on this one mask. Posters of the mask were made and
published everywhere.
Before that, nobody had seen a horrifying
face on the big screen. People went to the theatre just to see
Prithviraj Kapoor in that scary mask.
That’s when we thought that if audiences love to watch such scary faces, why not make a full-fledged horror film?
I directed India’s first horror film, Do Gaz Zameen Ke Neeche (1972).
After that, we made approximately 32 films, and all of them were horror films.
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