If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? is a 1971 Christian propaganda film directed by Ron Ormond. 
Initial release: 1972
Director: Ron Ormond
Cast: Estus Pirkle, Cecil Scaiffe, Gene McFall, Wes Saunders, MORE
Screenplay: Estus Pirkle, Ron Ormond

I’ll say up front before I start – this is not going to strictly be a review per se. You might want to consider it the start of a couple of special features on these very unusual curios of exploitation cinema, kicking off today with If Footmen Tire You… and continuing next time around with The Burning Hell. I’ve fancied watching these two short features for a while, going back many years to the fabulous reviews of these films by The Cinema Snob – a favourite Youtuber of mine, and someone who so often wanders similar ground to us here at Film Gutter.

So, let’s get into the background of this one, and tell you what drew me to it. Both films are effectively extended sermons from one Estus Pirkle, a Baptist minister from Mississippi who was an author, speaker and film producer. Pirkle is a real ‘fire and brimstone’ type and the sermons featured here are certainly impassioned if nothing else. I’m not much of a religious type, so I don’t have much of a frame of reference, but Estus is doubtless giving everything to get his point across.

But If Footmen Tire You… is no ordinary sermon, oh no. What we have here is effectively a communist scare film, and the title here is a bible quote (if there was any doubt that would be the case). What makes this and its follow-up notable for Film Gutter viewers is that they are directed by Ron Ormond, a legend of exploitation cinema of the 50s and 60s and renowned for movies such as Untamed Mistress, Please Don’t Touch Me and The Exotic Ones. Later in his life Ormond became a born-again Christian, and his last few offerings were all expression of his new religious beliefs.

The story of If Footmen Tire You… concerns young Judy, who’s never been much persuaded by church but goes to keep her ill mother quiet and happy. As Pirkle delivers his fiercely anti-Communist sermon – basically claiming that if religious faith doesn’t grow then Communists will invariably take America over – Judy is finally swayed to Christianity and accepts God into her heart. The exploitation angle comes in because the sermon numerous times cuts away to shots of Communists (with awful Russian accents) taking over the US of A, worshipping Fidel Castro rather than Jesus and insisting that the whole of America gives up its Christian faith. To be fair, it doesn’t mince its words, and we see whole groups of believers simply gunned down, men, women and children alike. The blood there isn’t entirely convincing, but in watching this I found myself thinking that this probably would absolutely frighten the pants off anyone not familiar with this sort of thing, especially in the early 1970s. There’s a totally overdone scene towards the end in which a child says right to camera ‘Jesus was willing to die for me, and I’m willing to die for him’ before being decapitated by his Soviet tormentor, his head rolling off and away on the ground. To say my jaw was on the floor is no understatement – I’ve seen much better known and far more notorious films not go down that particular road.

Obviously time made rather a fool of Estus Pirkle, who vociferously insisted that within a mere two years the US would fall to communism – we’re still waiting for that one to happen, of course. But him and Ormond sure as hell meant business in shaking their audience up, and if you just want to freak people out enough to bring them to religion this probably isn’t a bad effort in that regard. This was just a total oddball of a movie offering, and the good news for us is that Ormond directed another Pirkle sermon by the name of The Burning Hell. I should mention here is a third, The Believer’s Heaven, but that looks far too nice and comfy for us to take a look at. I suppose that they felt they had to deliver some sort of good news by the time they came to the end of the trilogy…

If you can find a copy of this one, it’s certainly a fascinating little watch as a time capsule, and also if you ever wondered what would happen when a hard-line minster and an exploitation movie director got together. Then again, you wonder if there are some questions you never really needed answered…

IMPRINT (2006)
"Imprint" is the thirteenth episode of the first season of Masters of Horror. Directed by Takashi Miike, the episode was scheduled to premiere on January 27, 2006—but was shelved by Showtime over concerns about its extremely graphic and disturbing content. It was later released to DVD on September 26, 2006.
Release date: 7 April 2006 (United Kingdom)
Director: Takashi Miike
Featured music: Kōji Endō
Episode no: Season 1; Episode 13

Hands up who remembers Masters of Horror? I always thought this was a fun series, although of course like any anthology show did have the capacity to be hit or miss. But it often had some great directors involved and is one I do find myself coming back to now and then, even if only to watch selective episodes. However, there was one episode that rather went astray, and that was the proposed final episode of series 1 – Takashi Miike’s Imprint. While Miike felt he had pushed only up to the limit of what was allowed on US television, the studio obviously felt differently and prevented this one from airing, although it would thankfully be included in the DVD boxset when that was released. A good thing too – having a director with the cache of Miike involved in the series is no small matter, and Imprint was a fascinating – if not flawless – entry into this collection of shorter one-hour  horror films.

Our story here follows Billy Drago as Christopher, a man arriving to a brothel island in Japan during the Victorian era where he seeks a lost lover in the form of Komomo, whom he left behind with a promise that he would bring her back to America with him in time. But when he arrives at the island, Komomo is not there, and he strikes up a conversation with an unnamed, badly disfigured woman who promises to tell him the whole tale of why Komomo isn’t there. She works her way through the deeply disturbing story of Komomo’s disappearance, as well as her own nightmarish childhood, before we come to a truly shocking conclusion…

Masters of Horror was always interesting, as it was a chance to see how directors would cope in this fresh context and give them the opportunity to make things that the cinema industry might not want to touch. Given Miike’s history with cinema in Japan he probably could have got this made as a feature, but it does feel like something better suited to this concise runtime – much more and this one would have started to feel drawn-out. As it is it keeps a taut pace and delivers a whole host of unpleasant scenes that would probably not have flown too well with a TV audience, and definitely have the biggest shock value of the whole series. I squirmed severely during a couple of moments, though I won’t spoil which they were. The acting from the Japanese contingent is generally strong, though for me Drago is pretty overblown in the lead, which did lessen this one in my opinion. Visually this one looks great – both in its darkest and only somewhat dark moments – and it has that distinctly Takashi Miike style that I don’t think anyone else could pull off adequately. It’s a setting and milieu that works well too, and I don’t think I’ve seen a movie set during this period and place before. This might not be the easiest one to get hold of these days but does remain a worthwhile addition into the horror canon of Miike’s work.

RATING: 8/10. As always, this director produces something very intriguing, and this one is also well shot in my mind, loaded with atmosphere and having strong effects too. Everything feels believable visually, and this shorter span feels a better fit for this particular storyline. It’s held back a little by some elements of the plot in the middle (I don’t want to explore that too much here in the interest of not giving too much away) and a distinctly overdone lead performance that just jolted me out of things here and there. Besides that, there are a lot of strong elements here, and while it might not scale the heights of some of the previous work from these quarters it is still worth checking out – if you can find it, and especially if you’re a fan of what has come before. All the hallmarks are there to be seen from a unique talent.

That brings to a close our look at just some of the disturbing, strange and extreme horror for this cinematic legend – I hope everyone has a very Happy Hallowe’en!