It may not be the classic definition of a Hubrisween movie, but If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? is a prime example of a conservative horror story. Of course, Stephen King has already posited that all horror stories are ultimately conservative, but this is a horror movie designed to strike fear in a certain demographic.
This is the title of a sermon delivered by Mississippi Baptist minister Estus Pirkle, and it’s all about how evil Commies will take over the US of A unless its thoughtless sex-education-class-attending masses come to Jesus. This takes the form of vignettes gleefully showing the atrocities that will take place after such a takeover, including massacres, drunken soldiers invading homes, and in a crowning moment, puncturing the eardrums of children who were attending a clandestine prayer meeting. That is punctuated by the child actor vomiting, which rumor has it was not supposed to happen.
My God, they pithed him like a frog.
Probably the worst thing to its Baptist audiences is the scene where Comrade Teacher (Wes Saunders) demonstrates to a class of inexpressive children that prayer to God will not get them candy, but Comrade Castro is happy to give them all the candy they want.
“Comrade Castro will give you all the crap Halloween candy you wish!”
The atrocity footage is brought to us courtesy of exploitation legend Ron Ormond, who had earlier brought us such worthy entertainment as Mesa of Lost Women, Please Don’t Touch Me, and Girl from Tobacco Road. Ormond crashed his single-engine plane into a field and survived, though seriously injured. This was what could be termed a come-to-Jesus moment, and from that day forth, Ormond was a Christian, eventually teaming up with Pirkle for a trilogy of films – following was The Burning Hell (which also deserves a Hubrisween slot) and The Believer’s Heaven.
Also in the mix is Judy (Judy Greer), a young lady who is attending church just to keep up appearances (we know Judy is a unbeliever because she’s dating the Sex Education teacher). Pirkle’s tale of forthcoming doom and getting covered with red paint provides Judy with her own Ron Ormond moment, and Pirkle brings her down to the altar of save her soul.
SINFUL!
Footmen was meant to be shown at prayer meetings and revivals, and this is the moment when the lights went up and people would march up to their own altars and accept Jesus. It never played actual theaters, so there are no end credits; in fact this why Pirkle never released it on video or DVD – he felt that there should always be someone at the altar after the movie’s end, waiting to receive the lost lambs for their salvation.
All good, I suppose. Pirkle is especially good in the scenes with Judy, projecting care and empathy. What gives me pause is the statistics he claims with absolute authority are true, such as the exact number of Americans the Commies intend to kill when they take over, which is a tactic used by far too many pundits and idiots in the present day.
Pirkle’s message of salvation is undercut by pronouncements like that, and by members of his non-acting flock, all things that have made it fodder for latter-day sampling and bad movie watchers. But there is a rawness to Ormond’s conservative nightmare passages that give it some power even in these Pirkle-less times.
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