Uh oh, it’s another Ron Ormond evangelical screed! Released in 1974, this hour long Holy Indie followed 1971’s outrageous IF FOOTMEN TIRE YOU WHAT WILL HORSES DO?, which dramatized the anti-communist preachings of Estus W. Pirkle (1930-2005), a Mississippi based Baptist minister, by Ormond (1910-1981), a veteran sleazemeister who in that film and THE BURNING HELL turned his exploitive bent to apparently more enlightened ends.
THE BURNING HELL follows the same format as IF FOOTMEN TIRE YOU…, with Pirkle once again preaching up a storm and Ormond complimenting his sermons with very seventies-centric dramatizations. Here we’re shown precisely what is meant by “fire and brimstone” preaching, as Pirkle’s sole interest is in scaring his audience about Hell, where “there will be no TV programs to watch or movies to go see, there will no cookouts to enjoy or sunsets to watch together…” and that “unless you are saved that’s where you are headed for right now!”
The film consists of Pirkle preaching to a church full of eager congregants, whose ranks include a young biker whose best friend has just been beheaded in an accident. Upon entering the church the biker asks Pirkle if his friend is in Hell. Pirkle’s answer: “Yes, I’m afraid he is.”
What follows is a sermon that incorporates a ridiculously cut-rate depiction of a southern accented Moses sending a bunch of sinners to Hell, depicted via the Earth opening up and the sinners falling in. “Does that shock you?” Pirkle asks, before concluding “Well it should!”
We also see King Herod falling down dead for profaning God, the resurrection of Lazarus—“Oh what a glorious day that was for Lazarus, and what it will be for you, if you’re ready!”—and the fate of the rich man who ignored Lazarus’s earthly suffering. He, needless to add, ended up in Hell, as did Cain, Abel, Ahab and Jezebel, whose misfortunes are all briefly dramatized.
And of course we also get up-close views of the inferno, in which hordes of blood-covered people scream amid foregrounded flames and sinners fall endlessly through a void where “there is no love, only hate, where sister hates sister and brother hates brother.” Eventually the errant biker is moved to repent and offer his soul to Jesus Christ, inspiring Pirkle to address the camera directly: “Wouldn’t you also like to come to Jesus and be saved like that? Won’t you get up from where you are and come to the altar right now? He wants to save you.”
Ormond puts his exploitation movie instincts to good use in scenes like the “tormenting worms” one, in which we get lingering close-ups of a sinner with writhing maggots stuck to his face, and a later one in which a guy is stabbed repeatedly in the belly with a trident, shown once again in extreme close-up. Heaven, by contrast, is portrayed in far less invigorating fashion, by white suited guys ascending into the clouds while “Halleluiah” plays on the soundtrack (further elucidated in THE BELIEVER’S HEAVEN, Pirkle and Ormond’s 1977 follow-up to THE BURNING HELL).
I’d have liked to see Pirkle’s descriptions of demonic donkey-men done justice, but Ormond’s budget was clearly too strapped for that, as what we’re shown of said donkey men is indistinct and altogether unimpressive. As for the actors in the dramatizations, they’re up to the usual levels of Ormond’s performers, such as the guy playing Lazarus who issues his lines in a near whisper (apparently to sound appropriately “holy”).
What is perhaps most striking about THE BURNING HELL is the ultra-simplistic Old Testament viewpoint it espouses, positing that “if you’re not saved there is only one answer: Hell.” And, as Pirkle makes clear, the punishments you’ll suffer there will last for eternity, with a chart utilized to show just how many billions of years that is. Seems a pretty severe punishment for a religion that’s supposed to be based on love and forgiveness. Also, I can’t help but wonder what Estus Pirkle might have made of Donald Trump.
Vital Statistics
THE BURNING HELL
The Ormond Organization
Director: Ron Ormond
Producer: Ron Ormond, June Ormond
Screenplay: Ron Ormond
Cinematography/Editing: Ron Ormond, Tim Ormond
Cast: Estus W. Pirkle, Jimmy Robbins, Tim Ormond, Robert G. Lee, Jack Hyles, Bob Gray, Terence Hendricks, Don Green, Carl Lackey, Vaughn Denton, Mike Fine, Earl Farley, Billy Kent, Buddy Mullinax, Maurice Banks