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Apocryphally Weird

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

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“I see strange people coming to churches across the land.”–Reverend Estus W. Pirkle, “If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?”

“Many pastors have destroyed my vineyard,
they have trodden my portion under foot,
they have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness.”–Jeremiah 12:10

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Estus W. Pirkle, Judy Creech, Cecil Scaiffe

PLOT: The Reverend Estus W. Pirkle gives a sermon on the dangers of the imminent Communist takeover of America, dramatized by actors who demonstrate the coming persecution of Christians. Young Judy arrives at church late, telling her boyfriend she’s only going to keep up appearances. Initially, she’s bored by Pirkle’s sermon, but at the end she becomes moved enough to approach the altar and give her soul to Jesus.

Still from if footmen tire you, what will horses do? (1971)

BACKGROUND:

  • “If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?” began as a sermon Estus Prikle preached, beginning in 1968, in evangelical revivals across the southern U.S. The preacher became so fond of it that he published the sermon as a pamphlet. When Pirkle met former exploitation filmmaker turned born-again-Christian Ron Ormond, he conceived the idea of turning “Footmen” into a movie to reach a wider audience. It would prove to be the first of three collaborations between Pirkle and Ormond.
  • Samples from If Footmen Tire You… were used in Negativland’s provocative 1987 single “Christianity is Stupid“; it was the first exposure for many people outside of evangelical circles to Pirkle’s work.
  • For many years Pirkle would not allow the film to be released on VHS or DVD, insisting it only to be screened in person on 16mm film in a church so that there would be a pastor there to lead people to Christ after the movie concluded. This led to the film being largely unseen for many years, especially after 16mm projectors became rare; it circulated in the underground through bootleg editions, keeping its legend alive.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Though many will fixate on the unexpected gore, the most significant recurring image is the leering face of pseudo-Cuban commissar Cecil Scaiffe, whose bushy sideburns remind you more of the rockabilly promoter he actually was than of a diehard Commie. Ormond loves to focus on a tight closeup of Scaiffe’s grinning, greasy face as he and his flunkies commit the most unspeakable atrocities against Christians.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Candy-throwing Commie; bamboo ear torture makes kid vomit

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Completely sincere, completely wrong, and completely bonkers: this attempt to use exploitation filmmaking techniques to preach the Gospel is pure hallucinatory propaganda.

Short clip from If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?

COMMENTS: Let’s not be cunning and subtle about this: the main Continue reading 53*. IF FOOTMEN TIRE YOU, WHAT WILL HORSES DO? (1971) →

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CAPSULE: STREET TRASH (2024)

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DIRECTED BY: Ryan Kruger

FEATURING: , Donna Cormack-Thomson, Joe Vaz, Warrick Grier,

PLOT: The year is 2050, in the city of Cape Town, and it’s up to Ronald and his posse of paupers to thwart the mayor’s evil plan to liquidate the homeless.

Still from Street Trash (2024)
Street Trash (2024)

COMMENTS: You can’t choose your own dystopian-bum name, but I reckon I’d go by “Cardigan.” I might rub elbows with the likes of Chef, Wors, Pap, or Two-Bit, and meet up with Society whenever I wanted to score some designer drugs. Yessir, a whimsical existence of survival interspersed with skirmishes with police and memorial services for fallen comrades goo-ified by a deadly chemical administered by government drones.

So goes this re-imagining of 1987’s Street Trash, wherein our casually-charismatic heroes do their best amidst poverty and the threat of annihilation, preserving through brotherhood and cunning japes against the well-heeled. In the movie’s world, the middle classes (and, indeed, the working classes) have been eliminated—economically, mind you. You’ve either got more money than you could possibly know what to do with ( I’ve heard good things about “SoyCoin”, the first vegan cryptocurrency), or no money at all. The message sent, again, and again, is that wealth disparity is a grim and growing issue.

Commendably, though, Street Trash doesn’t come across as sermonizing despite its inherent preachiness. The characters are fun—particularly Chef, with his dissections of age-old children’s classics as creepy sex parables. For those hungry for practical effects, they burst from nearly every pore. Some dozen or more characters ooze DayGlo™ liquids, slough skin from hands and head, grow pustulant goiters which pop, and much more. Also to Street Trash ’24’s credit is the presence of Gary Green, unearthly star from Kruger’s feature debut Fried Barry. Green is a fascination in every shot, coming across as half a wavelength removed from his surroundings. Appropriately, Green’s character has an imaginary friend (voiced by Kruger) who is altogether blue and bizarre.

As remakes go, this isn’t quite one. Kruger’s sophomore feature belongs to a genre I’m stumbling across more often these days, in perhaps a sign of the times: a hybrid of post-apocalyptic and cutesy playfulness, taking the edges off the grim reality descending upon humanity like a sack of awful. Or, maybe a sack of offal—considering the vast quantities of sludge to be found in Street Trash.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY: “

“It’s a cacophony of fever-dream nonsense that comes together without reason beyond Mayor Mostert’s hatred of the underprivileged. Kruger’s illustrating Cape Town as Tromaville, but even then, obscenities and oddball goofiness are scattershot head-scratchers… It wants to be a pure midnight movie like Mutant Blast, a government-dragging mutation comedy where anything can and does happen, but lacks consistency and command.”–Matt Donato, Daily Dead

List Candidates

FANTASIA 2024: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: CHAINSAWS WERE SINGING (2024)

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Mootorsaed laulsid

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DIRECTED BY: Sander Maran

FEATURING: Karl Ilves, Laura Niils, Martin Ruus, Janno Puusepp,
Rita Rätsepp

PLOT: Tom and Maria meet and fall in love after each has had the worst day of their lives, not knowing events are going to turn for the even worse when they cross paths with a chainsaw-wielding cannibal.

Still from The Chainsaws Were Singing (2024)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: Oof, feeling lazy here, so from this wide menu I’ll proffer, “refrigerator-bound bukkake god” and “throat-piercing lesbo-hedgehog.”

COMMENTS: One-hundred and eighty hours of footage, then a three-hour first draft, and then landing just shy of the two-hour mark: Sander Maran obviously has a song to sing, inspired by his love of pleasantly idiotic comedy musicals. This story of two lost souls coming together is more than reminiscent of Cannibal! the Musical, but is also very much its own thing. At its Fantasia screening, the hoots, hollers, and theater-wide laughs in response to the odd touches and permeating sense of eccentric madcap made its qualities as entertainment clear.

I would like to start by telling you about Jaan, a gaunt goof who meets the hero whilst passing by in his car. Stopping for this hitchhiker, he laments that his love of the act (of hitchhiking, of course) is thwarted by his being too ugly to be picked up by passersby. Jaan has something to say at every situation, rambling from one topic to another at times with a speed matched only by his ever changing costume. This quirk is on decreasingly subtle display, as somewhere around the mid-way point the audience can delight in his “dextrous” changing of the duds mid-conversation with other characters. He has a string of bad luck, too: just about every vehicle he exits during Chainsaws Were Singing ends up exploding violently, always hucking a flaming tire at his feet. Supernatural, or not, Jaan’s presence on camera guarantees something silly, strange, and usually both.

Chainsaws Were Singing also manages a number of unexpected tonal shifts. When the heroine is trapped in the basement of a sinister family, Maran shifts the film’s gears on a dime, and for some fifteen minutes showcases some real, menacing, straight-up horror when introducing the evil matriarch. Horror lampoonery veers into broader lampoonery, such as when Maran introduces the mysterious man, Cobra, whose absurd tale about the wartime death of his fifteen year old brother (in some conflict between Portugal and Sweden) could pass for a monologue.

Returning to my earlier laziness, I’ll wrap up here with a, “C’mon, everyone” coda. There is gore galore, silly comedy, ill-fated lovers, Quixotic questing, finger-food, dark pasts, gore galore, your friendly Wandering Gun Man, breezy musical numbers (“Tapa Tapa Tapa!”), tension, massacres, more gore galore, and, as I’ve already mentioned, a very helpful lesbo-hedgehog. In his cross between The Sound of Music and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Maran offers everything you could want in a wacky and weird genre frolick.

[Cue Orchestra.]

Wait, stop.

Down your instruments; I forgot to mention the bukkake.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“While there will be an audience for this type of exaggerated surrealism, the film’s quirky scenarios, parody-type approach to storytelling, and crude humor won’t be for everyone.” – Emma Vine, Loud and Clear Reviews (festival screening)

Capsules

CAPSULE: HANKY PANKY (2023)

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DIRECTED BY: , Nick Roth

FEATURING: Jacob DeMonte-Finn, Lindsey Haun, Ashley Holliday Tavares, Christina Laskay,  Clare Grant, Nick Roth, voice of

PLOT: Sam is mistakenly invited to a remote weekend reunion and people begin dying off.

COMMENTS: Hanging out in the dark basement, with fan full blast, empty soda cans piling up, and a low light pulsing from the 17″ cathode-ray television, Cannibal! the Musical hangs out with “The Mighty Boosh“. Hanky Panky enters, and Boosh gives Musical the old, Oooh boy, it’s the new guy-look. “Hey, HP, it’s… uh, great to see you!” (End scene on awkward silence.)

For dirt-cheap, you can fill your awkward silence right now for 86 minutes of “Umm…”, “Heh, uh.”, and “Bwah! What the—?”, among other remarks elicited by this, er, horror-science-fiction thingy. Sam (an awkward, civil, moustachioed Jacob DeMonte-Finn) has been mistakenly invited to a remote cabin for the weekend by Rebecca, who for reasons revealed earlier has assembled her sisters and their hangers-on. But unbeknownst to Rebecca, Sam comes with a secret—and powerful—friend in the form of a talking handkerchief named “Woody” who loves lapping up liquids.

Those of you who have read this far and gone, “Oh-ho, really?,” be well advised herewith: returning to the “basement” symbolism, the foley, practical effects, and much else in Hanky Panky are bargain-basement level. But what bargains! What mystery! What fascinating chunks of offal! And where did this melange of unpleasant and sympathetic characters come from? The directors do us the favor of killing them off in order from most annoying to least (which helps a good deal), with the final victim performing with such eccentric, jerky hamminess that I can’t help but respect the actress in question for the sheer force of her chutzpah.

The script must have seemed good enough to rope in Seth Green—as villainous alien, Harry the Hat—but while that actor fills me with the warmest of indifference, Hanky Panky is, happily, one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen. I could Recommend(ed)! it, but my boss would fire me for journalistic malpractice; I could tag it Weirdest, but my fellow reviewers would punch me in the mouth for raising their hopes. This is a paean to DIY daftness—or to phrase it as Woody might prefer, it is a moronic, masterful mess.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a stoner lo-fi sci-fi slasher comedy that starts off weird, gets a little off-putting, and then just blasts off into insanity from there.”–Douglas Davidson, Elements of Madness (contemporaneous)

Hanky Panky [DVD]

Hanky Panky [DVD]
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Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: POULTRYGEIST: NIGHT OF THE CHICKEN DEAD (2006)

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DIRECTED BY: Lloyd Kaufman

FEATURING: Jason Yachanin, Kate Graham, Allyson Sereboff, Joshua Olatunde, Robin L. Watkins

PLOT: When a ravenously capitalist fast-food chain builds a franchise on an old Indian burial ground in the fair burg of Tromaville, the spirits of dead Native Americans and dead chickens conspire to turn the poultry-eating populace into fluid-spewing zombies.

Still from Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (2006)

COMMENTS: What are you doing out there on the front porch? Get in here, darn ya! Sit, sit, we’re just about ready to serve. The stuffing is on the table, the onions on the green bean casserole are crisp, I’ve got a spoon for the cranberry sauce… oh, and here’s the bird. Would you like to carve? Just be careful with the knife, because once you cut into that crispy seasoned flesh, you’re liable to be sprayed with an unholy onslaught of blood, bile, vomit, feces, and any number of disgusting fluids. Go on, dig in!

Yes, it’s a Thanksgiving here at 366 Weird Movies headquarters, and even though it’s chicken and not turkey on the menu in Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead, the film is suffused with the spirits of the two oppressed populations who have made our modern American Thanksgiving possible: Native Americans and domesticated fowl. If Troma Entertainment has taught us anything, it’s that failure to pay the proper respects will result in terror of the most disgusting and ridiculous nature imaginable, so choose your words carefully when you say grace.

What can one say when reviewing the most review-proof organization in show business? A rave would be an endorsement, while a pan is a badge of honor. I will suggest, then, that Poultrygeist is, in Troma terms, an almost perfect object. It’s got everything you expect, by the bucketload: deep stupidity, rampant nudity, crude insults that punch up and down in equal measure, and so much fluid being sprayed like a fire hose. Consider that a character named after a certain submarine sandwich pitchman/convicted sex criminal isn’t merely fat in defiance of his processed food diet; he’s morbidly obese, and we’re treated to an in-toilet POV shot of his unfortunate encounter with a haunted meal, a sight so appalling that even the Troma braintrust has seen fit to slap “CENSORED” bars across the screen. If you have even a passing familiarity with the Troma House of Moviemaking and that’s your bag, you will not be disappointed.

Liquids aside, Poultrygeist is a satire, but of the everyone’s-a-target variety. Voracious capitalism comes under fire, but so do self-righteous protesters and mawkish bleeding hearts. The cynical people who make fast food are hardly worse than the mindless hordes who eat it. Ridicule is ladled out in copious amounts at women, gay Continue reading IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: POULTRYGEIST: NIGHT OF THE CHICKEN DEAD (2006) →