The Ramsay Chronicles

Abstract

The 1970s in the Hindi film industry witnessed some significant changes that radically altered the face of Hindi cinema. The chocolate-boy-romantic-hero epitomised by Rajesh Khanna gradually receded into the background as a new generation of angry young man brigade led by Amitabh Bachchan, Vinod Khanna and Sunil Dutt took centre stage. Hindi cinema had its tryst with the middle-class, common-man archetype through the films of Amol Palekar, Sanjeev Kumar and Farooq Sheikh during this period. The decade was also notorious for stringent censorship that the Indian film industry had to face in the wake of the ‘National Emergency’ imposed by Indira Gandhi. At the same time, a small conglomerate of young men in the F. U. Ramsay household were slowly working their way up the success ladder of commercial B-grade Bombay horror films. They were the seven brothers—Kumar Ramsay, Keshu Ramsay, Tulsi Ramsay, Kiran Ramsay, Shyam Ramsay, Gangu Ramsay and Arjun Ramsay—who edited, produced and directed horror films to keep the ‘Ramsay Brothers’ syndicate afloat. The journey which started in the early 1970s and reached its peak in the 1980s still continues, albeit sporadically, in the 21st century. The Ramsay Brothers successfully churned out low-cost productions year after year in the 1970s and 1980s.