The Burning Hell

Ridiculous, but quite hilarious evangelical edification sermon pulls all the usual triggers to scare you from going to hell; full of remarkable gory depictions of hell, amateurish reenactments of Biblical scenes and lots of insincere preachers and bad acting.

Movies don't get much worse than this. Even though I agree somewhat with the point it means to make (there is a real hell, it is horrible, and those who don't trust in Jesus Christ will go there forever), I wouldn't recommend this movie to anyone for any reason. It is inexcusably bad art. It made the rounds in conservative evangelical circles in the late 1970s doing little more than turning hard people into harder ones. Worse yet, two of the featured preachers, Hyles and Gray, were later discovered to have lived secret lives of sexual degeneracy. Both have now passed away and may well know all too well the truth of their words to which they themselves would not listen. If movies could go to hell, this one would spend eternity in its deepest pits.

Ron Ormond's "The Burning Hell" may be one of the strangest films ever seen by the general public. It was never intended for public exhibition but was made by a group of evangelicals for Church members, disappeared and was then rediscovered by Nicolas Winding Refn who remastered the original print. It has a home-movie feel to it and, of course, it's terrible and appallingly 'acted' by its amateur cast, (it's mostly just a load of preachers preaching to us), and yet exploitation director Ormond keeps us watching, perhaps in slack-jawed awe and disbelief at what we're actually seeing, (the scenes in Hell are straight out of the worst Grade-Z horror film). This is trash, more likely aimed at sinners than saints and the best thing about it is that it only lasts an hour.

The Burning Hell is another evangelical laughfest courtesy of Rev. Estus Pirkle and the Ormand family. Having warned the movie going public of communism in their previous outing, they now set out to illustrate the dangers of hell and damnation. Once again mixing badly acted vignettes with scenes of Rev. Pirkle preaching to his congregation, The Burning Hell is just as much of a camp classic as If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horsemen Do.

The film depicts damnation by means of biblical stories and a case study of two liberal Christian bikers, one of whom dies in an accident. Between depictions of people burning in hell, Pirkle expounds on horrible it is to burn in hell, focusing on such edifying themes as the temperature in hell, the presence of worms, and which biblical figures we can expect to meet in hell. Rather than filling us with fear of the Lord, however, the film ultimately produces questions such as "Why does Moses have a southern accent?" and "Who would want to worship something as sadistic as the god Pirkle depicts?"

The depictions of hell are ham-handed and at times downright bizarre. Satan, for example, comes across as a psychedelic version of the Riddler, while the dialogue of the damned is just stilted. A prison guard who thinks everyone is John the Baptist is a particular highlight. An ending which suggests it may all have been a dream lends a particularly corny aspect to the film. Another highlight is the scene where Rev. Pirkle, using a board with numbers on it, confuses a million with a billion.

An utterly bonkers 'scared-straight' tactic by evangelists. For its time, the imagery of the hellscape depicted must have been terrifying for susceptible southerners, but today, this level of fear-mongering is akin to a cult's bombardment of brainwashing. The acting is god-awful and so wooden you could nail someone to it. I understand why this was not intended for public release as this is a production not even the Mother Mary would be proud of. Ironically, this is one of the most unethical films I have ever seen and should only be viewed for comedic purposes, or for a glimpse into the mind of a narcissistic preacher with too much power.