390-393 From Hollywood to Heaven: The Lost and Saved Films of the Ormond Family

[MichaelB]

From Hollywood To Beaven:

Some may find a connection to Herschell Gordon Lewis but I enjoyed this set much more with the wide swing in genres from flaming stripper tassels and oversized harmonicas to religious and anti-communist rhetoric. I love the tidbits like rockabilly musician Thomas Paulsley 'Sleepy' LaBeef as a 'Swamp Thing' in The Exotic Ones. This Blu-ray set represents one of the truly fascinating stories of ambitious Independent filmmaking stacked with rare finds, commentaries, documentaries and a booklet. Indicator does it again with a strong labor-of-love commitment to extraordinary, lesser-seen, cinema. Wow! Absolutely recommended!

[CSM126]

This arrived yesterday and it’s gorgeous. Really shows you how bad some labels are with digipaks when these are so lovely and sturdy (and the spines are straight!). Very excited to start digging in, although it’ll have to wait til the weekend.

[therewillbeblus]

Is this a safe-ish blind buy for those of us who have been enjoying the Michael J Murphy set? Or is there little overlap in their respective low budget pleasures?

[CSM126]

Fair warning to anyone watching this: turn your volume WAY down before listening to Jimmy McDonagh’s commentary on Please Don’t Touch Me. It’s mixed absurdly loud.

[Peacock]

As I mentioned in another thread, Indicator (among other labels) don’t have a standard dB across their features, so when a commentator supplies a commentary they mix it to whatever level they like and Indicator then chuck it on the disk without normalising it to the level of the feature film. MichaelB implied this himself, that there is no standard dB levels when editing special features.

A bizarre oversight on the labels’ parts, and a horrible experience for the viewer at home when the menu/commentary/introduction blows out your speakers/headphones!

[ChunkyLover]

It's not surprising since it's a Fidelity-in-Motion authored set. The audio on their discs have tended, but not always, skew towards being mastered at "loud" volumes.

[CSM126]

Some thoughts on disc one:

Untamed Mistress: The best you can say is that this one is woefully inadequate in every regard. Just four drunk people walking through a park and occasionally pretending to interact with stock footage of Africa. Well, ok, sometimes they walk through a tiny soundstage and pretend to interact with stock footage of Africa. Nothing really happens… like ever. Like Tom Servo watching Batwoman I just wanted it to END. END!

Please, Don’t Touch Me!: This is more like it. Basically an old educational film, but awful and bizarre in all the ways you would hope. We start with a girl being raped and then transition into real surgical footage, a portrait of a swami type who sleeps on nails and broken glass, and then we come back to old rapey magoo a few years later, married and totally averse to sex. And with a futt bugly husband like hers, who could blame her? Ah, but only the power of hypnosis can unlock the secrets of her frigidity!

Most of this movie takes place in a lame doctor’s office set, but the doctor is Lash La Rue so it’s crazy enough to rope you in. There’s a lot of gum bumping, but there’s also a hypnotron (or whatever you call a magic box with seductive disco lights), and our heroine has the weirdest fashion sense - will she wear the space age silver spa suit or the sexy Lucy Arnaz cosplay? Keep watching to find out! - so it has its own sort of compulsion. I treated this one MST3K style and had a good time. Mr. MacDonagh seems to consider it transcendent, but I wouldn’t go that far.

White Lightnin’ Road: My favorite so far, easily. This is utterly charming no-budget drive-in fare filmed in a nowhere hick town. A couple of guys feud over car racing, one of them is sort-of maybe involved in moonshine running and for some reason there’s a middle aged cop hanging around with a shady… uh… mafia guy? I think? Lots of things are poorly explained here but, I dunno, I don’t care. This film is so goofy it made me smile and that’s all I really ask of this type of flick. We got buxom babes, we got fast cars, we got liquor, we got a ten year old boy who is cursed to look like little Ernest Borgnine - we got it all, man. This is the kind of movie where a guy named Snake strikes a match on his teeth to light a cigarette. You need more than that? I didn’t think so.

Edge of Tomorrow: a dreadful bore. Weird old man stumbles over his lines, another weird old man blatantly holds the script in his hands and STILL stumbles over his lines, and a few aliens wear business suits. Not funny, not charming. I almost wish it hadn’t survived the flood.

[CSM126]

Disc Two:

Forty Acre Feud: Part of me just wants to say “it’s like an early, bad episode of Hee-Haw” and be done with it, but another part of me wants to wax rhapsodic about how transcendentally terrible and wonderful FORTY ACRE FEUD is. This movie is fucken bizarre, y’all. I’m not talking about the paper thin plot or the cornpone acting, or the litany of musical talents that seem too famous to even be here (George Jones, Loretta Lynn(!), Skeeter Davis, The Willis Brothers, Ray Price, etc), although that *is* bizarre. What I’m talking about is the stuff like the weird editing where the movie cuts to inappropriate reactions in the middle of songs - clips of people awkwardly looking around the room as if they don’t know the camera is on, or just looking bored; stuff like how the actors have an apparent aversion to making eye contact with each other and look in random directions like blind people having a conversation; stuff like Foxey Culpepper’s bright yellow hair and gray eyebrows, which leads me to suspect he’s the father of Connie Marble from PINK FLAMINGOS.

FORTY ACRE FEUD is full of weird details like that, and they have this cumulative effect that leaves me feeling as though I just spent ninety minutes staring into the abyss while it horse-laughed back at me with Simon Crumb’s voice. There was a point in this film, right about the time the Willis Brothers took the stage, that I reached a zenith that could have been pure joy or a total emotional breakdown, and I was content not to know which it was. My soul left my body.

This movie is absolutely AWFUL. You hear me? It’s fucken HORRENDOUS. It lacks the qualities one hopes for in a film. But it also sent my soul to another plane of existence where I became one with Ron Ormond’s demented, money-grubbing huckster ghost. And in that moment, I got it. I am Dave. And this is my monolith. And now I’m in the hotel room. Ron Ormond is guiding me to the next level of cinematic evolution that no mere human can understand.

My god, it’s full of shit.

Girl from Tobacco Row: Unless Snake “Earl” Richards is a girl, that title is pure nonsense.

Really dreary drive-in crap about a fugitive from a chain gang who tries to fly straight after being taken in by a preacher and his family, only to be tracked down by mafia types who want his hidden money and blah. This movie is a whole lot of nothing punctuated by Tex Ritter reading sermons and the Mulcays playing giant novelty harmonicas. It’s not quite as boring as UNTAMED MISTRESS but it’s also not, you know, entertaining. Well, it is kind of funny if you imagine that Snake and Little Timmy are a couple (why else would Snake have Timmy’s clothes in his closet? I DEFY you!).

The Exotic Ones: If FORTY ACRE FEUD was a thin skeleton of a plot on which to hang country music acts, THE EXOTIC ONES is a thin skeleton of a plot on which to hang strip club acts, only it’s the kind of strip club that features balloon animals and the Mulcays playing “Hello Mudda, Hello Fadda” on their giant novelty harmonicas. Oh, and also an eight foot tall swamp man who eats raw chicken while a lady lip synchs a crappy pop song.

Ron Ormond not only wrote and directed this one but also stars in it as a shady crook who uses the club as a front for something or other. The club is suspicious because it has few customers but always stays afloat and has lots of employees. So they set out to capture a fabled swamp man and turn him into a big attraction to, I guess, throw the cops off the scent. Or something.

This is another pretty boring and cheap Ormond flick that is obviously meant to trick people into the local drive-in with a classic bait and switch. Thankfully (?) this wound up being their last exploitation flick before the plane crash that turned them to Jesus and a series of bizarre films about the rise of Satan and the second coming of the Lord. Believe me, at this point I cannot wait to watch preacher Estus Pirkle’s insane sermons coming to life on the screen.

The commentary on Exotic is really just Georgette Dante talking about how many times she allegedly bedded Bob Hope, and other carny stories and I really couldn’t bring myself to listen to the whole thing.

[MichaelB]

I'm thoroughly enjoying these - do please keep going!

[CSM126]

I'm thoroughly enjoying these - do please keep going!

Why thank you!

I started disc three today - and boy howdy is Footmen something else. Even having seen choice clips before did not prepare me. But I’ll have more after finishing the disc.

[Rayon Vert]

I was going to say the same thing as Michael after your first series of reviews. They're hysterical and a great read!

[HitchcockLang]

Oh wow! I missed this when it was announced but this is a must buy for me. For years in my childhood, my father always referred to If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? as the worst movie he had ever seen (shown at a church he was visiting in the 1970s). For the longest time, the film was merely a part of family apocrypha with Dad regaling us with his memories of scenes and impressions of the actors. When I was in college, on a whim, I managed to find a rough copy on the old Google Video page. A 2K restoration on blu-ray loaded with extras and a commentary? Yes, please! And if the other films are as hilariously bad and entertaining as that one, I'm in for a real treat of discovery.

I love that Indicator puts such love and care into presenting films like these.

[CSM126]

Disc Three: The Greatest Blu-ray Ever Produced:

If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?: Absolutely insane. Estus Pirkle rants about hordes of communists gunning down 67 million (!) American Christians, beheading their children, raping their wives, and generally burning the country to the ground. All of this led by a commissar who has a hilarious Cuban accent and glued on sideburns. It’s hard to properly convey this fever dream in words; you really have to see it to believe it and even then you probably won’t. What person could possibly think that any of this is true?

The bizarre sermon, combined with the over-the-top dramatic re-enactments and the strange editing (oh but how I love those closeups of the commissar’s face drifting in a black void as he grimaces and cackles) add up to a surrealistic effect. You’d almost think that this was a parody, but the fact that it isn’t makes it even better.

There’s even a subplot, if you can believe it. Judy is a teenage girl who enjoys such devious and sinful activities as… dancing, fashion and riding in cars! *gasp* Judy’s momma (who looks old enough to be her grandma) begs Judy to become a proper Christian and go to church, but Judy doesn’t honor the request until momma dies, and by golly Judy winds up in church on this of all days. Poor girl sits there all along, squirming in her seat and having flashbacks to her mistakes and imagining the things Pirkle describes, until the thought of der commissar ripping a boy’s head off his shoulders convinces her to literally come to Jesus.

Oh man, this part.

So Judy approaches the altar and has a vision of momma’s open casket sitting there. Apparently, the “actress” playing momma refused to take off her hairnet, so you see momma lying in state looking for all the world like she’s destined to be heaven’s cafeteria lunch lady. Do people bury their momma in her house cleaning outfit regularly? Is that a thing? Well, it’s enough to give poor Judy a complete breakdown as Pirkle commands her to accept Jesus. This whole section is equal parts hilarious and awkward and uncomfortable - you have to see it to believe it.

And then The Reverend Pirkle looks directly into the camera and asks us “won’t you please come?” I’ll let you decide if I spelled that right.

This movie is nuts.

The Burning Hell: Estus Pirkle and the Ormonds meant to make a filmed sermon that would scare people into believing the Bible but what they actually made was an unbelievably entertaining little gore flick. There’s no two ways about it: THE BURNING HELL is fucken awesome. The hell scenes are delightfully creative with makeup effects and layers of superimposed fire and lava, people falling down a literal bottomless pit, all overseen by the goddamn Brain Guy from MST3K (they had to have ripped that character off from this movie, it’s too spot-on to be anything else).

And we get Timmy Ormond as a hippie-dippie new age religion missionary who travels around on motorcycles with his pal who dies in a crash that apparently knocked his head off like a rock-em sock-em robot, spinal cord and everything. Rather than calling the authorities to report this incident, Timmy just heads to Pirkle’s church because, you see, he had unknowingly called on the reverend earlier that day and had been intrigued when Pirkle shooed him away so he could work on his sermon about hell (as one does). As such, Timmy gets to be this film’s Judy from FOOTMEN, sitting in the pew feeling bad and envisioning the terrible things Pirkle describes. This also means that the ending is identical to FOOTMEN with all the come to Jesus stuff but who cares? The preceding hour is a total blast of apocalyptic nightmare fuel filmed by madmen. I want to watch this again, but baked out of my mind.

The Grim Reaper: While nowhere near as delirious as THE BURNING HELL, this is still a pretty darn loopy little Christian scare flick. Right off the bat you know it’s gonna be good because the credits promise so many of the stars of this weird little universe: Cecil Scaife (der commissar from IF FOOTMEN TIRE YOU…), Tim and June Ormond, Ed Moates, Eddie King, Greg Pirkle! Sadly no Estus Pirkle or Snake “Earl” Richards, but how would you like Jack van Impe and Jerry Falwell? Yeah man, it’s on!

We open at a funeral for young Frankie, a race car driver. The preacher won’t come out to deliver the sermon because Frankie wasn’t saved and surely went to hell. But then he changes his mind and does it anyway. Oh well. Frankie’s dad is unsaved and constantly being scolded by other son Tim (Tim Ormond on qualludes and very sleepy here), who is a total nag and, as such, a preacher. And by now you can guess how this one ends up.

But along the way there is so much fun to have that you can’t possibly guess. Dad tries a spiritual medium who looks like he should chant Mekka-lekka hi mekka hiney ho, mom has visions of Frankie’s ghost, biblical re-enactments take place on community theatre sets with the worst actors imaginable, and Cecil Scaife uncontrollably mugs for the camera. You have to see this man cry. It’s bizarre, terrifying and utterly delightful. And then there’s the witch of Endor. I won’t spoil it, but you will never forget the witch of Endor. Something MST3K worthy happens every few minutes and it’s just a riot.

No Estus means it’s not as insane but the entertainment value is still pretty high. And where else will you see Jerry Falwell preach while looking like he’s delivering a message from the Symbionese Liberation Army? This is another one you have to see to believe.

The Believer’s Heaven: Only Estus Pirkle could make a celebration of heaven’s reward sound like a scolding. And yet… he also makes it sound wonderful. Of all the Pirkle films, this one has to be my favorite. Maybe it’s a cumulative effect of watching them in short order. Maybe it’s because I’m drunk. I don’t know. But my goodness do I absolutely adore this movie.

I feel reluctant to describe even a moment of THE BELIEVER’S HEAVEN, because discovering it is such a joy. But, ok. Here’s a little taste. Ol’ Estus rants and raves about the magical city of heaven with it’s foundations of precious gems and it’s walls of crystal and it’s gates of pearl and it’s streets of gold while the chintziest sets are paraded across the screen. The streets of gold are a floor wrapped in tin foil with a yellow light shone on it, the pearl gates are a bedazzled wall in a value village showroom, the gem foundations are a kaleidoscope held up to the camera lens… it’s all so gloriously, beautifully cheap and tacky. The denizens of paradise are draped in white table cloths that still show the pleats from being folded in the packaging. Everyone goes to heaven with their hair did like a JC Penney photo place family portrait from 1968.

Ah! I am in camp heaven, no pun intended.

Of course he finds time to describe hell again. He had so much extra footage left from THE BURNING HELL to use, after all. As if heaven doesn’t sound nice enough, don’t forget all the suffering you get to miss out on!

I think I love Estus Pirkle. He’d hate me for being a godless gay atheist, and that’s fine. Anyone who can create delirious, psychotic, mind altering cinematic magic like these three films is going to have a place in my heart. Holy shit. Estus Pirkle is the Orson Welles of Christian scare flicks.

I beseech you: watch this man’s movies!

[therewillbeblus]

I jumped right in with The Burning Hell to see if it might make my ‘74 list at the last minute, and spoiler: it did. Without context, I thought this was a total joke, but it doesn’t really matter on the intention when the rigidity of ethos inherently provokes an absurd reaction, since it’s trying to persuade without willing to venture from its own exclusive schema to acclimate the dissenter. The Kenneth Anger phantasmagoria is fun, and especially silly in its aggressive sincerity, but I got the biggest kick out of Ormond playing God, planting characters in positions magnetized towards the preacher, without acknowledging the reflexive irony of his and the preacher’s tactics of manipulation and humility being antithetical. Ormond’s imagery is literally needed to convince his artificial heathen of the ‘right’ way - the sermon is not enough.. what is that unintentionally saying about Ormond’s (and Pirkle’s) faith in Pirkle’s strategy? The medium isn’t just helping reach a wider audience, it’s the defining turning point, and it’s fundamentally fantasy and false

[CSM126]

Disc Four:

39 Stripes: Man, it’s hard to come down from the high of Estus Pirkle to this dreary film. Rev. Ed Martin is No Estus Pirkle and his story isn’t bonkers and wild. Martin introduces us to a dramatic reenactment where he’s played by Tim Ormond as a chain gang member who resists his sister’s wishes to find Christ, but listens when her classmate writes him a letter about John 3:16.

Ehhhh… it’s pretty dull. The acting is dreadful and the plot is ten minutes of material stretched to an hour. I assume this was distributed to prison ministries in hopes of converting the convicted but if it worked I’d be stunned. The only entertainment is at the end where a jump cut due to missing film makes it sound like Timmy says “won’t you accept Jesus and regret it?”.

It’s About the Second Coming: So by now Ron Ormond is dead and son Tim has taken over the director’s chair, and thankfully he’s pretty good at it, which is to say he’s a grindhouse weirdo. In depicting the tribulations, Tim Ormond gives us a delightful sci-fi glimpse of the new world order zapping Christians with laser cannons and stamping 666 on everyone’s hand or face, which is fun enough; but then there’s our mysterious host who looks like Vincent Price with a hopelessly off-center mustache. I don’t know this guy’s name, but he entertained me. He walks through scenes preaching while everyone else pretends to be frozen, and this made me squeal with joy for whatever reason. I guess it’s kind of adorable.

I Can’t Believe it’s Not Erik Estrada is our Judy, a skirt-chasing, liquor drinking fool who skips church and breaks his mother’s heart until a dream of the tribulation sends him running to church to get saved. Personally, I think the years of the beast look like fun, but then again I also think DAWN OF THE DEAD looks like fun, so YMMV. But you can sign me up for mass disappearances, lasers, global chaos and general flapdoodle like what this movie promises.

Watch this as a double feature with Michael Tolkin’s THE RAPTURE and decide which one is crazier. I bet it’s closer than you might think.

The Sacred Symbol: A good Christian lady is upset when her husband forces her to miss a revival service so they can attend an adventurer’s club where an old man pulls coins out of people’s noses and a Vincent Price wannabe hosts stock footage from UNTAMED MISTRESS, PLEASE DON’T TOUCH ME and other Ormond films. The point here is to look at non-Christian folk and decry them for being in league with the devil before a fucken rock convinces the husband to accept Jesus.

It’s fucken boring. What else can I say? It’s static and bland and i can’t believe i didn’t lose consciousness. My god. If you like gawking at fire eaters and Zulu dancers I guess you’re going to love this. Otherwise… ugh.

A Tribute to Houdini: A tribute to John Calvert, the Vincent Price-looken magician from IT’S ABOUT THE SECOND COMING and SACRED SYMBOL. Mr. Calvert performs magic tricks such as levitation, sawing a man in half and Houdini’s underwater metamorphosis in different venues. That’s it. If you like old fashioned magicians doing classic tricks, you’ll like this. I have no idea what this was made for- was it a tv special or a demo reel or a rental video? And how is Jerry “The King” Lawler involved?

Lash LaRue: A Man and His Memories: Fairly dry career retrospective in which Mr. LaRue looks back on his films and occasionally stops to read poetry. I didn’t find it to be too terribly interesting, but if you really wanted to hear the man speak I guess this is for you. I started giving up about the time they replayed his entire part from A TRIBUTE TO HOUDINI. I’m sure it’s only here because they had the footage already but I think I’d rather have seen more clips from his old westerns.

June Carr: The Virtual Vaudevillian: June Carr acts out some bizarre (and not terribly funny) vaudeville skits and gives an overview of some of the legendary entertainers she worked with during her career. The charm here comes from June being a rambunctious old lady with huge Harry Carey glasses getting lost in a sea of early 90s CGI “sets” which are hysterically bad. This is a weird one and at just 30 minutes it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome. Call this a Tim and Eric skit and people would believe you.

Forgotten Memories: Basically an above-average episode of “Are You Afraid of the Dark?”.



And with that, my journey with the Ormonds draws to a close, at least until Indicator decide to do a Lash LaRue westerns box set (I would totally buy that FWIW). This set is a hoot. Every disc has something funny and interesting about it. Absolutely worth the price of admission.

[colinr0380]

Great write ups CSM126! Have you seen that later film in the same idiom S.O.S.? I keep thinking that now they have done these films that Indicator need to move on to that one, if just for the catchy songs about railing against the barcoded mark of the Devil, how abortion and teaching evolution is bad, before making a Lobster-style escape from the tyrants running the local supermarket to join a commune in the woods to wait for the inevitable rapture, all done in the soft focus style of a series of Karaoke videos. Along with that classic moment of Jesus on the cross sailing off into the sky whilst giving a semi-apologetic fourth wall breaking smile to the camera!

[CSM126]

I’ve seen RedLetterMedia’s discussion of SOS. I might watch the darn thing some day.

[reaky]

This is currently going for £37.49 on Amazon UK.