Zee Horror Show is a TV series presented by Ramsay Brothers on Zee TV in the period 1993-1998. Ramsay Brothers were famous in Bollywood for churning out low budget horror films in the 70s and 80s. In 1993, they turned their interest towards Indian Television. Zee Horror Show was a very popular program in the 90s. It featured short stories in the form of 4 to 5 episodes, each one based on suspense and horror. The first episode was titled "Dastak" which was telecast in 1993 & featured Pankaj Dheer and Archana Puran Singh in the lead.
One of the episodes, "Jeevan Mrityu", based on female infanticide (featuring Pallavi Joshi) gained so much popularity that it was re-telecast on popular public demand. Another episode called "Raat" with Javed Khan as the lead, is till date remembered for its performances. Its story was adapted from the hollywood classic 'Dr.jekyll and Mr. hyde'. One other episode called "chehre pe chehra" again with Javed Khan as the lead on popular demand was telecasted many times over on Zee Cafe. Some other episodes were also inspired (or remade) from cult Hollywood films like Tehkhana from Evil Dead,Dehshat from Fright Night & Gudiya from Child's Play.
Some of the episodes that gained popularity were:
- "Raat"- Javed Khan, Sripradha
- "Raaz"- Javed Khan, Prajakta Kulkarni
- "Chehre pe Chehra"- Javed Khan, Prithvi, Amita Nangia
- "Anhonee"- Javed Khan, Poonamdas Gupta, Nishigandha Wad
- "Shraap"- Javed Khan, Sheela Sharma
- "Siskiyaan"- Rishabh Shukla, Channa Ruparel
- "Gehrayee"- Harsha Mehra, Siraj Mustafa, Shiva
- "Dehshat"- Siraj Mustafa, Resham Tipnis, Raju Shrestha
- "Jeevan Mrityu"- Pallavi Joshi, Tina Ghai,Mayur
- "Gudiya"- Neelam Mehra, Sudhir, Baby Sana
- "Taveez " Vijay Arora, Prabha Sinha, Anirudh Agarwal
- "Dastak"-Pankaj Dheer, Archana Puran Singh, Shagufta Ali
- "Saaya"-Balbinder Dhami, Surendra Pal, Prabha Sinha, Gajendra Chauhan
Zee Horror Show's popularity is proved by the various communities created in its memory on social networking communities like Facebook & Orkut by its fans.
Famous quotes containing the words horror and/or show:
“I think of horror films as art, as films of confrontation. Films that make you confront aspects of your own life that are difficult to face. Just because you’re making a horror film doesn’t mean you can’t make an artful film.”
—David Cronenberg (b. 1943)
“Myths, as compared with folk tales, are usually in a special category of seriousness: they are believed to have “really happened,” or to have some exceptional significance in explaining certain features of life, such as ritual. Again, whereas folk tales simply interchange motifs and develop variants, myths show an odd tendency to stick together and build up bigger structures. We have creation myths, fall and flood myths, metamorphose and dying-god myths.”
—Northrop Frye (1912–1991)