390-393 From Hollywood to Heaven: The Lost and Saved Films of the Ormond Family

[MichaelB]

FROM HOLLYWOOD TO HEAVEN: THE LOST AND SAVED FILMS OF THE ORMOND FAMILY
Release date: 29 May 2023
Limited Edition Blu-ray Box Set (World Blu-ray premieres)
Pre-order here.

Presented by Nicolas Winding Refn, From Hollywood to Heaven tells the extraordinary story of a truly unique American filmmaking family.

For almost half a century, June, Ron and Tim Ormond, a Nashville mother-father-son trio, cranked out a wild bunch of movies, from Lash LaRue westerns to the stripper-gore-musical outrage The Exotic Ones, and plunged into every area of showbiz. What’s more, they did it all on a shoestring, totally independently, with no studio to back them.

At the height of their frenzied career, Ron and June experienced a spiritual awakening when their private plane crashed on the way to a premiere. From then on, they turned their back on secular show business to produce a series of shocking, surreal religious pictures, including an unbelievable trio of films for Mississippi Baptist preacher Estus Pirkle – films such as The Burning Hell, which made millions, despite never being shown in an actual movie theatre.

Produced by Powerhouse Films in association with byNWR, and released to coincide with FAB Press’ publication of forensic biographer Jimmy McDonough’s awe-inspiring tome on the extraordinary life and work of the Ormond Family, this strictly limited, individually numbered Blu-ray box set contains thirteen feature films, a host of new and archival extra features – including five new audio commentaries and a collection of rarely seen short films – as well as a set of art cards and a fully illustrated 100-page book, newly written by McDonough.

INDICATOR LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY BOX SET SPECIAL FEATURES

• New 2K restorations of If Footmen Tire You What Will Horses Do?, The Burning Hell, and The Believer’s Heaven from original duplicate negatives
• New 2K restoration of 39 Stripes from the only known surviving 16mm print
• New 2K restorations of It’s About The Second Coming from best-quality, surviving 16mm print elements
• Newly remastered presentations of Untamed Mistress, Please Don’t Touch Me, White Lightnin’ Road, The Girl from Tobacco Row, Forty Acre Feud, and The Exotic Ones from rare surviving Standard Definition master tapes
• Standard Definition presentations of The Grim Reaper and The Sacred Symbol, mastered from best-available sources
• Original mono audio
• Audio commentary with author and Ormond biographer Jimmy McDonough on Please Don’t Touch Me (2023)
• Audio commentary with McDonough and actress, exotic dancer, fire eater, and carny queen Georgette Dante on The Exotic Ones (2023)
• Audio commentary with documentarian Brian Rosenquist and Greg Pirkle, son of Baptist minister and Ormond collaborator Estus Pirkle, on If Footmen Tire You What Will Horses Do? (2023)
• Audio commentary with McDonough, filmmaker Tim Ormond, and film restorationist Peter Conheim on The Burning Hell (2023)
• Audio commentary with McDonough and Ormond on It’s About The Second Coming (2023)
• Estus W Pirkle Sermon (1970, 64 mins): rare and previously unreleased archival audio recording
• Edge of Tomorrow (1961, 50 mins): June and Ron Ormond’s lost portrait of UFO huckster Reinhold O Schmidt, presented from a rare VHS source
• A Tribute to Houdini (1987, 60 mins): directed by Tim Ormond, and featuring John Calvert performing an array of tricks inspired by celebrated escape artist and magician Harry Houdini
• Lash LaRue: A Man and His Memories (1992, 70 mins): Tim Ormond’s rarely seen documentary in which the beloved western star reflects upon his life and work
• June Carr: The Virtual Vaudevillian (1997, 30 mins): Tim Ormond’s loving portrait of his mother and collaborator, June Carr Ormond
• Forgotten Memories (1997, 20 mins): Tim Ormond’s short drama starring June Ormond in which two women meet under extraordinary circumstances
• Original theatrical trailer for White Lightnin’ Road
• Radio spots
• New English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Limited Edition exclusive 100-page book with an extended essay by Jimmy McDonough, Peter Conheim on the restorations, and full film credits
• Limited Edition exclusive art cards
• World premieres on Blu-ray
• Limited edition box set of 6,000 numbered units for the UK and US

All extras subject to change

#PHILE390B
BBFC cert: 15 TBC
REGION FREE
EAN: 5060697923476

[JPJ]

Wow,I was actually listening to rockabilly giant Sleepy LaBeef the other day and thinking that somebody should finally release The Exotic Ones!Sleepy plays "swamp monster" in the film.

[Orlac]

What a pity they couldn't include Ormond's MESA OF LOST WOMEN (a project he inherited from Herbert Tevos) - I adore that movie!

[What A Disgrace]

I was worried that I would run out of weird shitty movies to watch, but now my fears have been assuaged. Can't wait.

[cdobbs]

Refn certainly didn’t restrain himself in slapping his name all over every aspect of this. Love to see a “presented by…” credit on a book.

[MichaelB]

Refn certainly didn’t restrain himself in slapping his name all over every aspect of this. Love to see a “presented by…” credit on a book.

Entirely justifiably, as this project wouldn't have been possible without his input.

(Or rather, if someone else had provided equivalent input, their name would have been displayed equally prominently.)

[colinr0380]

If anyone wants a taster of these films, Brad Jones as the Cinema Snob has done videos on each film in the Estus W. Pirkle Trilogy: If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?, The Burning Hell and The Believer's Heaven.

Plus The Grim Reaper. These videos all show the quality these films seemingly existed in before this, so restorations may prove to be a Revelation!

[soundchaser]

I was worried that I would run out of weird shitty movies to watch, but now my fears have been assuaged. Can't wait.

I’ve only seen If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?, but yes, “weird” and “shitty” is definitely how I’d describe it. It’s essentially a McCarthyite fire-and-brimstone preacher’s most unhinged sermon turned into a film. I didn’t care for it. Hell of a title, though.

[exidor]

Mubi have The Believer's Heaven and The Burning Hell too if you want to try before you buy. Part of their ByNWR strand so I assume the same prints that Indicator are using.

[agnamaracs]

"Fun" fact: If Footmen is infamous for providing the sample for Negativland's "Christianity Is Stupid" in 1987; Peter Conheim, the head of byNWR's restoration team, became a member of Negativland in 1996.

[Grand Wazoo]

"Fun" fact: If Footmen is infamous for providing the sample for Negativland's "Christianity Is Stupid" in 1987; Peter Conheim, the head of byNWR's restoration team, became a member of Negativland in 1996.

Maybe NWR can help facilitate a restored release of Sonic Outlaws.

[Pavel]

About a week ago I was reading up on Ron Ormond and thinking of watching some of his films, so the timing couldn’t be better on this release. I’ll still probably check out at least one of his films before buying though

[brundlefly]

The FAB Press/McDonough tie-in is pretty much all the convincing I needed. Maybe it's good that Criterion seems to be scaling back ambitions; between these two Indicator boxes and MoC's Zulawski and Radiance's Damiani sets this is turning into a Take All My Money Please spring.

[knives]

What a pity they couldn't include Ormond's MESA OF LOST WOMEN (a project he inherited from Herbert Tevos) - I adore that movie!

Mesa is so brilliant and perfect. Knowing that has some of the same talent suddenly makes me excited for this.

[pistolwink]

what a world we live in!

btw wasn't Pirkle eventually revealed to be a serial child abuser?

[ryannichols7]

Refn certainly didn’t restrain himself in slapping his name all over every aspect of this. Love to see a “presented by…” credit on a book.

I'm genuinely okay with it, because Refn otherwise doesn't really insert himself into these releases - which I wouldn't mind either. I find the stuff he restores genuinely fascinating, and he seems to really be into American regional filmmaking and genuine oddities, and there's a legitimate sense of curation that I don't necessarily see from other directors who are involved with big restoration projects. so his input in the extras would be pretty neat, but he has yet to show up on any of these releases that I can see. either way, despite being at odds with his actual films, I find his contributions for Indicator (and Flicker Alley) extremely essential.

The FAB Press/McDonough tie-in is pretty much all the convincing I needed. Maybe it's good that Criterion seems to be scaling back ambitions; between these two Indicator boxes and MoC's Zulawski and Radiance's Damiani sets this is turning into a Take All My Money Please spring.

but yeah, no kidding. Picnic at Hanging Rock is May too, and I do aim to get 3/5 of Criterion's lineup that month. I'll admit my bias since it's my birthday month, but what a stacked lineup of releases coming

as for this specific set, I love the fact that I've read multiple things about the Ormonds since its announcement and still have genuinely no idea what I'm going to be witnessing here. I think this is going to be for me what the Michael J. Murphy set is for the others - that goes too far down an avenue that doesn't appeal to my personal tastes, but this sounds genuinely very entertaining. the entire boxset itself feels like a fiction novel that someone somehow cooked up and it sounds like a genuinely great ride. as always, I totally trust the Indicator crew on bringing out something very fascinating.

Jimmy McDonough also wrote books about Al Green and Neil Young, something I find worth noting!

[MichaelB]

The best way of conveying what the later Ormond films are like is if you imagine what would have happened if Herschell Gordon Lewis had turned to fundamentalist Christianity partway through his career, but otherwise didn’t change his style even the tiniest iota.

So, for instance, with If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? (1971) we’re talking about a micro-budget gore-drenched version of Red Dawn (albeit made more than a decade earlier) in which scenes from a full-on invasion of the US by vodka-swigging brutes with comedy Slavic accents (whose heartless treatment of decent God-fearing American women and children leaves little to the imagination) are intercut with full-blown hellfire-and-brimstone preaching about the evils of Communism and the importance of shunning any form of entertainment that doesn’t involve reading the Bible 24/7.

It’s, um… quite an experience.

[colinr0380]

It also suggests that if you let the Baptists run things they will be torturing people and decapitating children just as much as any Jihadi!

I do hope that Indicator go further down the rabbit hole of 'Communist paranoia' films! Something like the Claude Rains-starring, It's A Wonderful Life-anticipating "I went on a fishing trip and while I was gone the Communists invaded" movie Strange Holiday. Or 1952's gonzo sci-fi Red Planet Mars, maybe in a double bill with the Soviet silent classic Aelita, Queen of Mars!

[Thornycroft]

The religious films had an absurdly long shelf life in evangelical communities. I recently post a clip from If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? in a discord server and somebody immediately recognised it, having been shown the film in church as a child during the early '00s!

[colinr0380]

I suppose that is similar approach to way that my class of 15 year olds at school all got trooped into our school's lecture theatre one morning in late 1995 to get a talk from an ex-con that ended with being shown a clip of the cue ball in a sock beating scene from Scum to illustrate his point about how even the most benign seeming object can be used as a weapon! There's only so much material out there that fits the bill as something useful to scare the kids straight with!

EDIT: I'm also enjoying the work of the "Dr. RIP VHS" YouTube channel, who puts up weird VHS tape finds, and something like the recently uploaded Halloween Prophecy video suggests that as soon as the video era arrived, that's where all this material immediately gravitated to, in order to target their particularly niche audiences.

[pistolwink]

For Ormond-family completists, Gold Ninja Video is releasing a Blu-ray of Ron's early feature, the Lash LaRue-starring Western King of the Bullwhip, transferred from a 35mm print. https://goldninjavideo.com/

Strange that Ormond is now better-represented on Blu-ray than, say, Mizoguchi.

[Telstar]

I posted this in the Mexico Macabre thread too, but I'm wondering if there might be any interest here for a US mini-group buy of just Mexico Macabre and Ormond Family. Powerhouse site only allows you to order 3 copies of each title, but that would be enough to exceed the free shipping threshold, and with the current BUNDLE promo code MM would be roughly $39 and Ormonds $45.50 (plus whatever the cost might be for domestic shipping to group-buyers).

[SeizureMilk]

Strange that Ormond is now better-represented on Blu-ray than, say, Mizoguchi.

Pretty sure the reason why is because 1.) a lot of Mizoguchi's most loved films are already on Blu-Ray and it doesn't really appear that there's any other popular films, not that they aren't great, but from a business standpoint they won't sell and 2.) the Ormond family even if you don't include their already popular films can serve as a draw to cult movie lovers as most labels are doing now, plus it also makes a bit more sense to include some of their more obscure films based off the success of the Magic, Myth and Mutilation set. Thank you for reading.

[Telstar]

I'm wondering if there might be any interest here for a US mini-group buy of just Mexico Macabre and Ormond Family. Powerhouse site only allows you to order 3 copies of each title, but that would be enough to exceed the free shipping threshold, and with the current BUNDLE promo code MM would be roughly $39 and Ormonds $45.50 (plus whatever the cost might be for domestic shipping to group-buyers).

All of the MM sets are now spoken for, but we have one spot left for an Ormond Family set.

[MichaelB]

Final specs:



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Disc Four: