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…  THE HEART AND SOUL OF HORROR MOVIE REVIEWS |
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