The Hindi horror films of the Ramsay brothers
The Hindi horror films of the Ramsay brothers
This chapter offers the first academic account of one of Indian cinemas’ largest cult phenomena: the horror films of the Ramsay brothers. The Ramsay brothers were most prolific and popular between the late 1970s and the late 1980s, when India experienced the rise of Hindu fundamentalism. During this decade, as before, the Indian state sought to maintain strict control of the economy – a strategy which has historically enabled the film industry to function as a parallel (and not always legitimate) channel for the circulation of money. In this context, small, short-term speculative capital thrived, and the Ramsay brothers were one instance of it. The second part of the chapter examines the ways in which the Ramsay brothers’ horror films capitalised on ingredients that, while borrowed largely from the Hindu and Christian religions, staged new, secular and forward-looking dimensions of Indian subjectivity.
Keywords: Tulsi / Shyam Ramsay, religion, female sexuality, subjectivity, frontality, syncretism, looking
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