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Indicator’s expansive Blu-ray box set “From Hollywood to Heaven: The Lost and Saved Films of the Ormond Family,” released in conjunction with Nicolas Winding Refn‘s “byNWR” project, collects a remarkable 13 films produced by the incredible Ormond family, split about halfway between their secular and their Christian exploitation films. When I first learned of the existence of this set, I wished that the late 366 collaborator Alfred Eaker had lived to see it. After all, he had endured at least one of Ormond’s proselytizing scare films projected on the wall of a basement of a Pentecostal church as an impressionable child in the 1980s; the experience scarred him emotionally, and was part of an abusive evangelical upbringing that led him to a lifelong crusade against Christian fundamentalism. Alfred reviewed several of Ron Ormond‘s films for this site, a job absolutely no one else volunteered for, and clearly relished trashing this godly man’s reputation (not that Ormond had much of a reputation as a filmmaker to tarnish). I can’t help but believe that Alfred would be tickled by this hi-def testament to his old nemesis’ film legacy, and would have been the first to volunteer to cover it in all its icky, gooey, sanctimonious glory. I imagine he would have been far more gleefully savage in his assessment than my level-headed remarks, but that was always his role as the 366 gadfly.

Historically speaking, the Ormond empire rightfully begins with June Carr, a lovely and talented vaudevillian comic foil who appeared onscreen with Bob Hope, among other luminaries, and who even headlined at the London Palladium for a short time. For some reason, June was smitten with a handsome but unsuccessful stage magician named Ron Ormond. Per June, they tied the knot two weeks after she first laid eyes on him onstage in 1935 and declared she would marry him one day. Thus began a dynasty. It’s difficult to watch June Carr’s early performances without concluding that she married beneath her Hollywood standing, but the couple remained hitched for four decades, through better and (usually) worse films, and richer and (usually) poorer receipts. By all accounts, it was a happy union.

The first stage in the Ormond film saga consists of the eleven B-westerns Ron directed (with June handling the distribution) starring bullwhip expert Lash Larue. To anyone who’s not a fan of the Lash, these are generally considered competent and uninteresting pictures, and are not included in the set before us. Also not appearing in this collection is one early “classic” bad movie co-directed by Ormond, Mesa of Lost Women (1952), about a mad scientist seeking to create a race of superwomen by injecting them with spider venom.

Ron and June continued to make undistinguished exploitation movies. But let us fast-forward to 1955, when the Ormonds set out on their own as independent producers, and where this set begins its comprehensive coverage. Our journey begins with Untamed Mistress. Three men travel into the jungle on a “safairy” (as they insist on calling their safari), accompanied by a woman raised by gorillas; when they get into gorilla country, the apes want her back—carnally. It’s a badly stitched together story with some padded narrative added to flesh out stock footage and parts of a Sabu movie Ron had directed-for-hire. “National Geographic”-style nudity in the form of home movie footage (taken by Mickey Rooney’s doctor!) of topless African women performing authentic tribal dances, alongside newly-shot scenes of half-naked “native” dancers entertaining men wearing gorilla suits, explains why this was made. Despite the salacious material, rife with bestiality and racism, the film crawls at a snail’s pace, but it is more tolerable than some of the Ormond’s hicksploitation programmers to follow. It made money, and the Ormond’s homegrown business (eventually dubbed “the Ormond Organization”) was off.

After this, Ron did about four other (now lost?) low budget movies before the box set picks up again in 1963 with the unusual Please Don’t Touch Me, starring one Vicki Caron, a pneumatic redhead who would have immediately been the headliner at any burlesque joint she walked into. Caron was never seen or heard from again, but her frequent lingerie changes and a brief glimpse of side boob gave grindhouse and drive-in audiences of 1963 what they came for. The story itself is daring, addressing the taboo topic of a married woman who’s frigid because of trauma from an earlier rape (referred to simply as “the attack”), and also possibly because of the influence of her overbearing mother. Old pal Larue (billed as “Al” rather than “Lash”) stretches his range as a psychiatrist. While clearly exploitative, the Ormonds treat Vicki’s case sympathetically, and actually deserve some credit for broaching this sensitive topic, even if they lack the resources to give it the dignity it deserves. The fact that a subject like Please Don’t Touch Me would be left in the hands of the Ormonds is more of an indictment of Hollywood than it is of our intrepid heroes. Unfortunately, this forbidden melodrama is an exercise in padding, pseudoscience, and shoehorned mondo-style footage of surgery. But if it no longer titillates as it once did, it still raised interest as a relic of the conflicted sexual mores of an earlier time.

Things are going to get even worse in the near future, however, as the Ormonds shift focus from sexploitation to rural dramas with three forgettable features set in the South: White Lightnin’ Road, Forty Acre Feud, and Girl from Tobacco Row. White Lightnin’ is set in at the intersection of crime and stock car racing, and stars hatchet-faced rockabilly musician Earl Sinks. It is most notable for marking the onscreen debut of scion Tim Ormond, about fourteen at the time of shooting, who would appear onscreen in just about every future Ormond production and eventually take over directing duties from his father. Tobacco Row, also with Sinks and Tim, is utterly forgettable. The one halfway decent film in this trio is Feud, which is essentially a country music variety show. A framing plot about the titular feud in the hamlet of Shagbottom, Tennesee serves as an excuse to stage a jamboree in a barn. It’s the cast that stands out here: hick comedians Ferlin Husky (whose Gooberesque antics don’t amuse me, but admittedly shows far more talent than the usual Ormond player) and an early appearance by Minnie Pearl, plus a bucketful of musical performances from country musicians including George Jones, Ray Price, and an up-and-comer named Loretta Lynn. It plays like a pilot for “Hee-Haw” with the ratio of comedy-to-music reversed. Feud may be the most competently assembled Ormond feature—which admittedly isn’t saying much—but the performances do make it noteworthy for fans of country music.

The Ormonds final exploitation film before their conversion, The Exotic Ones, is another effort that has captured the interest of deep-diving bad movie fans. The plot? A New Orleans strip club manager decides a swamp monster (actually a tall shirtless guy with a bad haircut) would make a good attraction for raincoaters. Ron appears as the gangster club owner, hulking rockabilly star Sleepy LaBeef (in his only acting performance) plays the mute “monster,” and Tim is his hillbilly caretaker. We see numerous burlesque-type striptease performances, including a fan dance from the aging June (playing the dancers’ house mom) which ends with her in bloomers with a sign reading “LSD” taped to her behind. We also get the Ormond’s first attempt at introducing gore into their features, as Sleepy rips a man’s arm off and beats him to death with it. With all this dementia, the flick still manages to be slow-paced and talky, but that’s part of the territory for Z-grade exploitation of the era. Cinema masochists with a taste for this brand of torture will find this campy sleaze (re-released on VHS as The Stripper and the Monster) an exotic one indeed.

If the Ormonds had stayed on this path, they likely would have faded into irrelevance, as Herschell Gordon Lewis and Russ Meyer were taking gore and sex, respectively, into more interesting and extreme directions. The Ormonds’ older, roadshow-style of huckster exploitation was becoming old fashioned. Instead, the Ormonds “miraculously” survived a 1967 plane crash (piloted by Ron, en route to a drive-in double bill of their films). Ron prayed to God that if He spared them a grisly death, he would dedicate his life to spreading the Gospel. Survive they did, and spread the Word the Ormonds would, aided by firebrand preacher Estus Pirkle. Pirkle, a living stereotype of the gray-haired, straight-laced, fire-and-damnation Southern Baptist preacher, lent his fearmongering sermonizing to the three amazing features that followed: If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? (1971), The Burning Hell (1974), and The Believer’s Heaven (1977). (He skipped 1976’s The Grim Reaper, though his spirit hangs over the proceedings). These films used the drive-in techniques the Ormonds had honed over the years—including surprising amounts of violence and gore—but were designed to be screened not in grindhouses, but in churches.  The “best,” and most deranged, of the lot is the brilliantly titled Footmen, which warns of the dangers of a takeover of the USA by godless Communists. Burning Hell, Grim Reaper, and Believer’s Heaven all focus on the afterlife (Reaper also has June dressed up as a Halloween store witch to re-enact 1 Samuel 28). Each features Biblical re-enactments with amateur parishioners playing Hebrews who speak with thick Tennessee drawls, and each sports a sinner protagonist who’s persuaded by Pirkle’s preaching to accept Christ at the film’s climax. (At one point, Pirkle’s son made the hard-to-swallow claim that watching The Burning Hell alone had led some six million souls to Christ—all despite its 3.7 IMDb rating!)

Alfred Eaker savaged a trio of these Christian scare films in detail in separate articles throughout the years, which I encourage every reader to check out. Of Footmen, he remarks that “for viewers who are eternally blessed to have never been raised in a fundie environment, Ormond’s zigzagging from Russkies on horseback to rubbernecking and slaughtered hicks and lots and lots and lots of blood splattering may prove a tad disconcerting, but Footman authentically captures the unique brand of homegrown naive surrealism inherent in Midwestern and Southern evangelical circles of the period.” He describes Burning Hell as “a kind of live action Chick Tract/ Kabuki theater for Protestant fundamentalists” with “pancake makeup demons (with plastic vampire teeth) and wonder bread types a-crying and a-screaming as they burn forever and ever and ever and ever (while covered in really thick orange syrup).” The Grim Reaper brings more of the same: “a vision of Vern burning in hell (bring on the orange syrup), befriended (sort of) by a demon in pancake makeup with a weird thingamajig on his head who introduces various occupants of Hades, including a Bela Lugosi-as-Dracula lookalike, a pillar of salt (Lot’s wife), and Judas, who drops silver coins for all eternity only to have them bounce back into his hand.” I can add little to these impassioned attacks, except to say: Footmen‘s Communists were right about the candy. (IYKYK).

Alfred missed out on The Believer’s Heaven (he only saw a three-minute clip on YouTube), which was a mercy. Having threatened unbelievers with the torments of damnation in his last two films, Estus Pirkle now describes heaven in this sermon interrupted by more questionable amateur Bible reenactments, icky hymns, and Ron trotting out physically disabled people to stress how they’d be cured in the afterlife. The Believer’s Heaven is much duller than The Burning Hell, which is perhaps why the Ormonds take a brief trip to their now-familiar Underworld set at the end to relieve the tedium. The first forty minutes or so are a complete waste of time; the singing female dwarf with the uncanny smile, however, is unforgettable, and really belongs in a David Lynch movie.

Pirkle and the Ormonds had a falling out after Believer’s Heaven. Ron would die in 1981, and the Ormond Organization’s output slowed down and decreased in impact as Tim took over the director’s chair. Ron’s last effort was 39 Stripes, a jailhouse drama based on a true story about a convict who becomes a preacher. The flick is unremarkable, except for the sadistic tortures the guards inflict on the inmates. 1982’s Ron-scripted, Tim-directed It’s About the Second Coming is the last gasp of classic Ormond Christian camp. Various guest preachers explain what will happen during the End Times, and a disco-dancing hedonist with an Eric Estrada haircut imagines himself rejecting the Mark of the Beast. There are a lot of Biblical re-enactments scattered throughout, almost at random. Tim adds Star Wars-inspired special effects: the Antichrist’s minions fire laser guns! And the destruction of Nebuchadnezzar’s statue (from Daniel 2 ) by an explosive asteroid is nearly impressive. All-in-all, it’s the Ormond’s most entertaining effort since Footmen. Nothing good can be said for the Organization’s last official feature, The Sacred Symbol (1984), however. In this one, a lecturer at an “Adventurer’s Club” (stage magician John Calvert) shows footage from around the world–snake charmers, a man on a bed of nails, Filipino flagellants–which for some reason convinces assembled listeners that Christianity is the One True Religion. It’s a lazy and senseless attempt at a Christian “mondo” movie, which blessedly marks the end of the Ormond Organization’s cinematic mission.

Indicator winds up the box set with a quartet of rarities, moistly intended for the VHS market, directed by Tim and presented as bonus features. A Tribute to Houdini (1987) is mostly a filmed stage show of John Calvert’s (The Sacred Symbol, above) magic act, with only a little Houdini inspiration to it. Odds and ends of other performances are tacked on to pad it out to an hour: the best is old footage of Calvert doing a comedy magic bit with Mickey Rooney. “Lash Larue: A Man and His Memories” (1992) rehashes Lash’s greatest hits (at least, the ones the Ormond’s owned the rights to); Lash also testifies for Jesus, but the ending, for some reason, is devoted to an overview of producer June Carr Ormond’s career. Speaking of, “June Carr: The Virtual Vaudevillian” (1997) is Tim’s fond 30-minute tribute to his mother, collecting some of her classic vintage performances and juxtaposing them with new versions of the grandmotherly June performing old vaudeville routines in front of a clumsy green screen. (June still has comic timing and doesn’t mention Jesus once, and it makes you wonder where her career might have gone if she hadn’t fallen for Ron all those years ago). Finally, there’s the 20-minute short film “Forgotten Memories,” with elderly June playing a version of herself and Tim again directing. It has mildly psychedelic effects, sentimental spirituality, and what may have been intended as a “twist” ending (it’s given away fairly early). There’s also behind-the-scenes footage from the short, which shows a professional set and a now graying and rotund Tim, looking little like the handsome leading man of his youth. These bonus features generally leave us with a positive impression of June and Tim, who don’t seem hateful, self-righteous, or particularly incompetent. The blame for all of the foregoing trash, we assume, must fall on patriarch Ron—and of course, on ridiculous and repugnant ally Estus Pirkle.

Most of the Ormond’s original negatives were lost in a flood in 2010, so these Blu-rays were remastered from the best materials available. (They at least look better than the old VHS copies and bootleg DVDs that had previously been the only avenue to watch the Ormond Organization’s output). Numerous promos and an actual Estus Pirkle audio sermon (I didn’t have the courage to listen to it) are scattered throughout the discs. The set is capped off by a 100-page booklet with a (beautifully written) long essay from Ormond family biographer Jimmy Mc Donough, who also wrote a masisve coffee table book on the Ormonds, “The Exotic Ones: That Fabulous Film-Making Family from Music City, USA“.

This box set is not unconditionally recommended—you have to have a real interest in the material, as the dross dominates the few flecks of gold found here. I feel that Alfred would have been first in line to buy it, however. If Pirkle was right, Alfred’s now enjoying the literal Burning Hell firsthand (unless he secretly repented of his Catholicism and spoke the magic words on his deathbed).

P.S. Don’t worry, Pirkle was wrong.

From Hollywood to Heaven: The Lost and Saved Films of the Ormond Family (US Limited Edition) [Blu-ray]

• US Limited Edition Blu-ray

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