THE GRIM REAPER (1976) ** ½

 

A preacher (Greg Pirkle, son of Estus Pirkle, star of Ron Ormond’s Christian Scare movies) refuses to give a sermon at a funeral for a man who has not accepted Jesus as his Lord and savior because he believes he went to Hell.  The family puts pressure on him, and he eventually relents.  While he’s preaching, the dead guy’s mother flashes back to all the warning signs that her son was a sinning heathen.  Months pass, and the man’s parents have a feeling their son’s soul is restless.  They then turn to a spiritualist who holds a séance to contact their dead son’s soul.  

The Grim Reaper contains a little bit of everything Ron Ormond was known for.  There’s stock car race footage in the spirit of White Lightnin’ Road, spiritualism like in Please Don’t Touch Me, and of course, that old time religion.  Although Estus Pirkle sat out this time around, his son looks enough like him to get the job done.  Not leaving anything to chance, Ormond called in some heavy hitters such as Jack Van Impe and Jerry Falwell as guest preachers. 

There are a few moments of pure Ormond nuttiness here.  The séance scenes and nightmare sequences run the gamut of simply effective to overly corny to laugh-out-loud funny.  The shots of the devil's face superimposed over the medium work well enough, but the shots of him dragging the guy’s soul back to Hell are good for a chuckle. 

While the set-up is promising, the film flounders in the second act when it begins to heavily rely on biblical reenactments.  At least one of the scenes features June Ormond as a witch whose costume looks like it came off the Halloween sale rack.  With her heavily made-up wrinkles and cliched cackling, her scene is the sole bright spot in the otherwise dreary biblical sequences. 

As with The Burning Hell and The Believer’s Heaven, the film concludes with the usual fiery images of Hell.  They are reasonably effective too.  I'm sure they were enough to scare their intended audience. 

Compared to Ormond’s previous religious films, The Grim Reaper is the most straightforward.  While it is consistently entertaining/weird, it noticeably lacks the highs that made If Footmen Tire You What Will Horses Do? and The Burning Hell so bonkers.  Still, the séance scenes and Hell sequences are wacky enough for me to give this a marginal recommendation.

THE BELIEVER’S HEAVEN (1977) **

Ron Ormond and Estus Pirkle return to ask the question, “If The Burning Hell tire you what will The Believer’s Heaven do”?

The second Ormond/Pirkle collaboration, The Burning Hell showed unbelieving heathens refusing to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and savior, and as a consequence, they burned in Hell for all eternity.  It was only fitting that their next film would show the flipside of that equation.  The Believer’s Heaven depicts what happens if you live a good Christian life.  That is to say, your body turns into a transparent image via cheap optical effect, then it floats upwards offscreen until you and a bunch of other transparent people like you dressed in white robes mill around, poorly superimposed in the clouds. 

Sometimes though, Heaven is depicted as a mansion.  Other times, it’s somebody’s backyard.  There’s also a couple of times where it looks like the set of the Lawrence Welk Show during the Christmas episode.  I guess the good Lord is flexible when it comes to Heaven.

If you thought it was all nice and cheery stuff, don’t worry, because Ormond and Pirkle still enjoy showing the audience what’ll happen if they live a sinning life.  In fact, there’s an earthquake scene five minutes into the movie where papier Mache boulders crush unsuspecting sinners in their sleep.  We also see a bulldozer moving earth over a mass grave of children.  Unfortunately, this is about as close the film gets to flirting with the lunacy of If Footmen Tire You What Will Horses Do?

Once again, we have to sit through a lot of cheap-ass biblical recreations.  This time, there are even more of them, which is a shame.  The stories of Abraham, Jacob, and John are trotted out, and even though they only last a few minutes of screen time, they feel like the eternity that Pirkle described Hell as. 

As a fan of Ormond, it pains me to say The Believer’s Heaven is seriously lacking the oomph his previous religious pictures had.  It’s also not nearly as nutty.  The special effects are shitty, like when Jerusalem comes down from Heaven, and are good for a laugh, but moments like these are few and far between.  While there are some exploitative moments here, quite honestly, there’s not nearly as many as I was expecting.  Even the climactic Hell scenes just feel like outtakes from The Burning Hell.  Oh, and because it’s an Ormond movie, you know it’s going to be loaded with padding.  Unfortunately, the padding this time includes gospel songs (including one enthusiastic number by a little person in a wheelchair) and brief sermons from other guest preachers. 

All and all, the results are less than heavenly.

THE BURNING HELL (1974) ** ½

Ron Ormond teamed up with Reverend Estus Pirkle for a follow-up to their WTF Christian Scare film, If Footmen Tire You What Will Horses Do?  In that flick, Pirkle showed us what would happen if the Communists took over America.  This time, he’s out to give you a glimpse of what’s waiting for you if you go to Hell.

I don’t think The Burning Hell is quite as entertaining as If Footmen Tire You What Will Horses Do?, but I can easily say this is the only movie I’ve seen that has a credit in the opening title sequence for “Original Story and Preacher”.

That credit belongs to none other than Estus Pirkle.  Not only did Pirkle provide the story and preach, he also stars.  Early in the film, he is visited in his home by two traveling salesmen trying to get him to buy a book promoting a new religion.  He urges them to stop following their phony baloney religion at the risk of going to Hell.  One guy gets in his face and says, “If I do go to Hell, there will be a lot of my friends waiting on me!”  

They then take off on motorcycles and the loudmouth runs his bike off the road and is decapitated!  His pal (Tim Ormond) tearfully goes to church where Pirkle is preaching and asks him if his friend went to Hell, and without missing a beat, he says, “Chances are, he’s likely burning in the flames of Hell right now!” 

What’s great about this scene isn’t the way Pirkle flippantly (and somewhat joyfully) announces to Ormond that his friend is burning in Hell, but the fact that Tim doesn’t go to the police to report the accident… he goes right to church!

Tim basically has the same role as the wayward girl in If Footmen…  He just sits there in church and thinks about all the wrong he did as the preacher preaches away.  It’s not the best use of his talents to be sure.

The biblical dramatizations are probably the exact same thing you’d picture in your head when you think of a Christian Scare film, namely poor production values, shitty costumes, and even worse fake beards.  You know, just like the shit they used to show us in Sunday School. 

The Hell sequences are something else though and help redeem those pokey passages.  The shots of the bloody, screaming faces of the lost souls running around a flaming black void are rather effective, as are the close-ups of maggots crawling on the faces of the damned.  Too bad the preachy scenes and biblical reenactments get in the way of the fun. 

Still, this is pretty good for a Christian Scare film.  It’s a lot more demented than the typical Sunday School fare, that’s for sure.  It just lacks the demented flee of its predecessor. 

PLEASE DON’T TOUCH ME (1963) ***

 

Ron Ormond’s Please Don’t Touch Me is a mix of hypnotism propaganda, roadshow ballyhoo, and frigid wife melodrama. 

Things kick off with the rape of our leading lady, Vicky (Vicki Caron) when she was just a teenager.  From there, we get a lecture on hypnotism.  We see Franz Mesmer (Ormond) perfecting the art of mesmerism as well as a demonstration of a needle being inserted into the arm of a hypnotized person.  The best part though is the artist renderings of people who have been helped by hypnotism, including a guy with a “103-pound scrotal tumor”!  Next, we get Mondo movie-style footage of real-life operation scenes, flagellants, and a guy laying on a bed of nails.  Finally, the movie begins. 

The ensuing drama claims to be a case history of a real woman who used hypnotism to cure her sexual hang-ups.  Vicky is worried that her fear of being touched by her newlywed husband will ruin their marriage.  Her meddling mother (Ruth Blair) insists she see a shrink (Lash La Rue!).  He then turns to a hypnotist (Ormond McGill, a real-life hypnotist) to help unlock her psychosis. 

Please Don’t Touch Me plays sort of like a slightly tawdrier version of roadshow movies from the ‘30s like Mom and Dad.  Despite its exploitative foundation, there are some stretches that are surprisingly sensitive (for the time at least).  Other moments are rather hilarious, like when the hubby has a dream where Vicky is tempting him with a striptease, only to have her mother appear in between them when they’re about to get close.

Vicki Caron gives a great performance.  You really feel for her, and it’s a shame she never made another movie.  She also looks great in a series of sexy outfits, negligees, and low-cut blouses, the latter she wears while lying on the shrink’s couch, spilling her ample cleavage everywhere.  Like Ormond’s Monster and the Stripper, there isn’t any nudity, but it’s a bit more revealing than most films of the era.  (We get a bit of side boob during the wedding night flashback scene.) 

Even if Vicky’s plight has been somewhat sensationalized and exploited, Ormond is clearly on her side.  Topics like rape and sexual inadequacy in the marriage bed were certainly taboo subjects at the time, so it’s kind of shocking that it’s all handled as tastefully as it is.  In fact, Ormond exploits hypnotism more than anything.  Hypnotism was all the rage in the late ‘50s (it was shot in ‘59), and the film is mostly a tribue to Ormond’s mentor, Ormond McGill (whom he took his stage name from). 

The rape angle was really there to put butts in the seats.  I mean, who would come to see a movie about a woman using hypnotism to cure… say… smoking…. or snoring?  So, I guess it really is exploitative after all.  It’s just not as crassly done as you might expect.

The harmonica heavy soundtrack was courtesy of The Mulcays, the pair of harmonica players who later appeared in Ormond’s Girl from Tobacco Row and Monster and the Stripper.

MITCH ON THE DTVC PODCAST!

Hey gang, this week I was a guest on Matt Poirier’s Direct to Video Connoisseur Podcast.  We talked about David DeCoteau’s Christmas flick, Santa’s Summer House starring DTV action stars Gary Daniels, Cynthia Rothrock, Daniel Bernhardt, and Chris Mitchum. You can check out our chat here:  DTVC Podcast 79 Santa's Summer House (talkshoe.com)

IF FOOTMEN TIRE YOU WHAT WILL HORSES DO? (1971) ***

After a long career of making exploitation fare for southern drive-ins, director Ron (Monster and the Stripper) Ormond suffered not one, but two near-fatal experiences in airplanes.  He then turned over his life to Jesus and made a deal with the Lord to only make movies in His name.  While the drive-in lost one of its most unsung directors, the Christian religion gained one heck of a screwy cinematic shepherd. 

Ormond’s first film as a born-again filmmaker was If Footmen Tire You What Will Horses Do?  It’s a mix of “What If?” cinema verité and good old-fashioned fire and brimstone preaching.  It is based on the works of Reverend Estus Pirkle, who delivers a sermon about the dangers of Communism as well as the many sins and vices that populated the early ‘70s (and now). 

It’s funny because the things Pirkle is rallying against (riots, campus protests, society’s loosening moral fiber, etc.) are still happening today.  Because of that, I say it’s high time somebody remake this for modern audiences.  Then again, no one could’ve possibly captured the madcap insanity of Pirkle’s ranting like Ormond.

If Footmen Tire You What Will Horses Do? is a mix of Christian Scare film and Anti-Communist propaganda, and it’s just demented enough to transcend both genres.  The scenes of Communists spreading terror on ordinary God-fearing folks work the best and play out like a Sunday School filmstrip version of Red Dawn directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis.  Soldiers march citizens to their mandated jobs and if they refuse, they are shot dead in the street.  Drunk soldiers also wander into homes and force themselves on innocent housewives. 

That’s nothing compared to what they do to the children.  Kids are herded up and told to renounce God and pray to Fidel Castro in exchange for candy.  When the kids are caught listening to underground sermons, they are tied up and have their eardrums punctured with bamboo so they “can’t hear the word of God”.   Children are also forced to string up their own father and drop him repeatedly into a bed of pitchforks. In the film’s most insane scene, a kid is told to spit on a picture of Jesus and when he refuses, he’s decapitated!

This movie has been on my radar for a while as one of my friends has been after me to see if for some time.  I’m glad I got to see it within the context of the rest of Ormond’s work.  Because of that I definitely have a better appreciation for it. 

Even at a scant 52 minutes, it all feels a bit overlong.  That’s due to the fact that the preaching scenes are well, overly preachy, but also because the stuff with a sinning teenage member of the congregation having second thoughts about her wicked ways during the sermon kind of bog things down.  Although the valleys are as plentiful as the peaks, If Footmen Tire You What Will Horses Do? nevertheless remains a fascinating look into Ormond’s mind.  I mean, you become a born-again Christian, and THIS is the movie you make?  

In short, this movie is proof there is a God, and he’s an exploitation fan.

MONSTER AND THE STRIPPER (1968) ****

Monster and the Stripper kicks off with a lot of Mondo movie-style footage of Bourbon Street and Mardi Gras.  It’s edited like a Russ Meyer film, complete with rapid cuts and many Dutch angles.  Even the hard-boiled narration is similar to the Meyer style.  Then the plot begins.

Nemo (Ron Ormond, who also directed) is the owner of a strip joint on Bourbon Street.  He watches a bunch of women doing various striptease numbers as part of an open audition.  Frustrated that none of the girls can compete with his headliner, Titania (Georgette Dante), a babe that uses FLAMING tassels in her act, he decides he needs a new angle.  Nemo then asks his right-hand man to capture a supposed swamp monster that’s been offing the locals so he can put it in one of the stripper’s act.  Thus begins a cinematic journey that will leave your jaw agape for most of the running time.

If you’ve ever seen a Ron Ormond movie, you know he’s a fan of padding.  Girl from Tobacco Row was padded with country music.  (The wacky harmonica duo from that film also appear here.)  In White Lightnin’ Road, it was stock car racing.  Here, it’s striptease numbers.  I’m sure you can guess which film offers the best kind of padding.

Not only does Ron have a sizeable role in this one, but so does his producing partner/wife June.  She plays the stage manager at the club and also does a comedic fan dance!  It truly was a family affair for the Ormonds as their son Tim (who frequently appeared in their films) plays the young jungle guide who takes the hunters to find “The Swamp Thing”.

The early audition scenes feel like an unofficial remake of Horrors of Spider Island.  Heck, even the monster (played by the awesomely named rockabilly singer, Sleepy LaBeef) kind of looks like the monster from Horrors of Spider Island (mixed with a little bit of Eegah! for good measure).  The film also reminded me a bit of Orgy of the Dead too.  It’s not as single-mindedly driven by striptease scenes as Orgy was, but its structure is certainly similar.  It also has an Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies vibe as the numbers almost have the same amount of screen time as the “drama”.  There’s even a King Kong-inspired “Beauty and the Beast” stage act that sets up the final reel.

The scene where the Swamp Thing rips a guy’s arm off and beats him to death with it is as good as anything you’d see in a Herschell Gordon Lewis movie.  We also get a doozy of a reveal when we learn the Swamp Thing has ripped one of the strippers’ tit off.  We probably could’ve done without the real-life cow mutilation and chicken beheading, but that just goes along with the whole “What the Hell will they show us now?” vibe.

Even the plot detours are strongly crafted.  The scene where a bunch of gangsters threaten a goon who’s been stealing from them is expertly done.  The placement of the spittoon shots at first seem random until it becomes apparent they will empty the contents of the spittoon on the traitor’s head if he won’t comply with their wishes.  It’s downright Hitchcockian the way Ormond allows the scene to unfold. 

The cinematography is straight-up gorgeous too.  Nothing quite looks like a sleazy, late ‘60s horror/stripper movie like a sleazy, late ‘60s horror/stripper movie, and this is about as good of a looking one as you’ll see.  The garish colors highlight the luridness of the premise and the full-color process helps to preserve the stripping acts in a cinematic time capsule.

I will say that although the film contains a LOT of stripping, there’s no actual nudity because the dancers all wear pasties or tassels.  Trust me when I say that it doesn’t matter as their performances are truly entertaining.  Titania’s fire dance in particular is really something. 

In short, Monster and the Stripper is incredible.  Any movie that can call to mind the works of Russ Meyer, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Ray Dennis Steckler, Ed Wood, AND Alfred Hitchcock (not to mention King Kong, Horrors of Spider Island, and Eegah!) needs to be seen immediately.  Ron Ormond (who also played the killer in Teen-Age Strangler) needs to be as well-known as all those fine gentlemen.  It is my mission to make that happen, as I will be bringing you many more reviews of Ormond’s work in the coming week. 

AKA:  The Exotic Ones.