The Redneck Apocalypse of Ron Ormond: IF FOOTMEN TIRE YOU, WHAT WILL HORSES DO? (1971)

After Rev. Phantom was generous enough to post the entirety of Cannibal Mercenary in installments, and Nigel Wales posted the early shockumentary Beyond Bengal on I Spit On Your Taste, it only seemed fair for me to offer something to the movieblogging public. It just so happens that the work of an American visionary is available on Google Video.

It is a film I first saw about ten years ago, when a neighbor was giving me an intensive education in cult cinema. It's both unintentionally funny and, for all that it intended to horrify, almost unintentionally horrifying. It was made by Ron Ormond, a veteran exploitation producer whose works ranged from Mesa of Lost Women to The Monster and the Stripper. It's said that Ron found religion after surviving a plane crash. He found it in the form of Rev. Estus Pirkle, a modern-day prophet who warned of America's vulnerability to takeover by Communists on horseback if there wasn't a revival in short order. However Ormond felt about his earlier work, now he was pursuing an inspired vision of red doom descending on the sports-jacketed America of 1971. In the first of three films he made with Pirkle, Ormond concentrated his faith and anxiety into less than an hour of terror rendered more brutal by his guileless ineptitude of execution.

So take an hour this weekend to see Americans shot down like clay pigeons(6:15), shot down like flies, as the Commies take over our nation with "jet age speed." See the hordes of Fidel Castro brainwash our youth by plagiarizing James Clavell's Children's Story(19:00). Learn about the mortal perils of dancing and TV cartoons. Watch as "we puncture your ears so you cannot hear the word of God.(23:30)" Observe authentic Communist brainwashing methods and learn that "Communism is good...Christianity is stupid." (34:25)Witness the machine gunning of whole congregations (43:50)and the decapitation of a child(45:50). "Do these things seem farfetched to you?" "Does this turn your stomach?" If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?