One more film…just one more film… Watching the many movies on the Ormond Family box set has been a fascinating journey, while often being a bit of a slog—especially in the religious half of the set.  If I hadn’t been taking notes during each movie, I would never have been able to remember what happens […]

Having subjected myself to all of Ron Ormond’s religious films, it was time to see if his son Tim is a better filmmaker.  I don’t believe I am being unnecessarily cruel when I say the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree.  To use some biblical phrasing, one nut begat another. Following the template of […]

As the end of the Ormond family box set is in sight, I was desperately hoping one of their religious films would finally break from the pattern of filler worked around a literal sermon.  With 1979’s 39 Stripes, my…um, prayers were answered.  Unfortunately, what I got instead was Ormond demon spawn Tim starring in a […]

Up to 1977, the films the Ormond family made with Estus Pirkle had been focused almost exclusively on what Hell will be like.  Having grown up in a similar church, I wasn’t surprised their focus is predominately on the stick and not the carrot.  But we finally get to see Pirkle’s vision of Heaven in […]

The opening of 1976’s The Grim Reaper opens with a scene of the kind of deep humanity and understanding I have come to expect from the religious films of the Ormond family.  It expresses a sentiment I would have expected from the church I grew up in.  In a moment of awe-inspiring compassion, a preacher […]

I mentioned my Baptist upbringing in my piece on If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?  One of the few times in my life I have tried to cultivate an interest in comic books was at a time when those religious restrictions upon me were at their most extreme.  Secular music was out, so […]

Having survived the first half, the “sleaze” half, of Indicator’s Ormond family box set, we now progress to the faith-based films family patriarch Ron would focus on exclusively for the rest of his life.  For a while after that, his son Tim would take the reins for a few more such features. This abrupt change […]

By this point in the Powerhouse/Indicator’s Ormond Family box set, I had been subjected to somebody’s vacation footage of Africa, real surgery footage, an illustration of a man who has a 100-pound testicular tumor, a bloated and washed-up sexpot, dirt track racing, chain gangs and a husband-and-wife harmonica duo.  I thought I had hit every […]

Another movie from the first half of the Powerhouse/Indicator box set From Hollywood to Heaven: The Lost and Saved films of the Ormond Family.  1966’s Girl from Tobacco is the second-to-last movie in the “sleaze” half of the set.  I am so very tired. A pre-credits sequence gave me false hope.  Well, as much hope […]

When I was growing up, I was marinated in a constant stream of country music my grandparents played.  Their tastes ran largely to the 1960’s and earlier.  It is only now, with the benefit of hindsight that I can see their choices weren’t that bad overall.  That said, I hated the music at the time […]

A slightly deflated blow-up sex doll of Marilyn Monroe covered in a thick layer of Vasoline.  A mentally-challenged toddler in a platinum-blonde fright wig, mouth agape at all times. These are but a couple of the images that came to mind watching Arline Hunter in 1964’s White Lightnin’ Road.  This picture is the deep-fried Twinkie […]

This is yet another movie (to use the term loosely) from the Ormond Family box set issued by Powerhouse/Indicator.  I have noticed patriarch Ron Ormond tends to make what I am starting to think of as “meatloaf movies”.  The idea is, you take something you already have (like the acquired African vacation footage in Untamed […]

There is a bizarre supermarket in Ohio, a sprawling complex with a jungle theme. Jungle Jim’s has a ridiculously artificial scene on the outside, situated between the entrance and exit.  It’s like those sad, set-bound “Africa” sets of so many adventure movies from the 1930’s through the 1960’s.  There’s even a loudspeaker saying inane crap […]