A big film with A-listers flopping at the box office and the audiences' reaction to a particular scene in one of their movies inspired Ramsay Brothers to come up with their brand of horror films in India, says a new book.
The horror empire of Indian cinema that gave films like "Puraani Haveli" and "Tahkhaana" traces its origins to a modest radio shop in Karachi in undivided India, according to "In A Cult of Their Own: Bollywood Beyond Box Office", by Amborish Roychoudhury.
The shop's proprietor, Fatehchand U Ramsinghani, had relocated to Mumbai after the Partition and decided to sink his teeth into the film production business, like several other small businessmen of the day.
Ramsinghani, who had adopted the last name 'Ramsay', made "Shaheed-E-Azam Bhagat Singh" (1954) and "Rustom Sohrab" (1963), the latter starring Prithviraj Kapoor and Suraiya.
The films clicked and Ramsinghani roped in all seven of his sons one-by-one -- Kumar, Tulsi, Shyam, Keshu, Kiran, Ganguly and Arjun: the 'Ramsay Brothers', according to the book.
They suffered losses when "Ek Nanhi Munni Si Ladki" (1970), starring Kapoor and Shatrughan Sinha flopped at the box office.
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The book says that Tulsi and Shyam Ramsay watched the film in the theatre with the audience and realised that they reacted most strongly to a particular scene.
In the scene, Kapoor's character, wearing a mask and a grotesque costume, enters a museum to steal something.
"The Ramsays realised that many people actually came in to watch that particular scene and left. It was then that the truth finally dawned on them. The audience loved to be terrified. It was horror that gave them a high more than anything else," Roychoudhury writes in the book, a tongue-in-cheek ode to cult Hindi films.
"Back from the theatres, the brothers had to now convince their father to start making horror films. Fatehchand U Ramsay was disillusioned with the movie business and wanted to bid adieu to filmmaking for good. But the boys were successful in persuading him to try their hand at this genre."