The Burning Hell

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.

I just had to watch and review this movie after seeing the first Ormond/Pirkle flick "If Footmen Tire You What Will Horses Do?" which warned us that the evil commies would take over the United States unless we as a nation had a major Christian revival. That one was bad enough but this one was just plain tedious.

"The Burning Hell" follows the same tedious formula that "Footmen" followed, with an hour-long sermon by Estus W. Pirkle with cutaway scenes to illustrate what he's talking about. At least with "Footmen," the cutaway shots with the evil commies were entertaining in that they were hilariously over the top in a not-meant-to-be-funny way. The cutaway scenes in this movie were still funny in the same way, only not as funny as "Footmen." What you get are a bunch of scenes of Middle Easterners in biblical times with Southern American accents and a bunch of shots of people in Hell with flames in front of their faces. That's pretty much it.

Of course one thing that's pretty funny is that when one of the characters has a fatal accident on his motorcycle, instead of going to notify the police his friend returns to the church and sits through an hour long sermon. Nor does anyone at the church think it necessary to get help. Not funny, not cool: When the guy, obviously upset and distraught after witnessing the death of his friend asks Rev. Pirkle if his friend is in Hell, instead of offering words of comfort Pirkle says, "Yes, I'm afraid so." What an A-hole. Then he uses the man's emotional state to win another convert for Jesus. Nice.

Only watch this if you like sitting through hour-long sermons at fundamentalist Christian churches, because that's basically what this whole movie is. It's not entertaining, not really even in a so-bad-it's-funny way. It's just an hour of Estus Pirkle saying that Hell exists because the bible says so. As proof he cuts to a couple of other preachers who also say that Hell exists because the bible says so. Pirkle also makes a bunch of claims which shows that he's reading his own ideas into bible stories, such as saying that the bible doesn't say how Cain killed Abel (true, it doesn't) but then goes on to claim that he strangled him with his bare hands. Other embellishments are giving a name to the rich man and claiming that he knew so many other important people in Jerusalem at that time. He then later states that the rich man is still suffering in Hell to this day. Uh, excuse me Rev. Pirkle, but the story of Lazarus and the rich man was just a parable that Jesus told. You know what a parable is, don't you? A made up story with a moral? When he talked about the sheep and goats, he didn't literally mean that there would be sheep in Heaven.

I understand that this movie was probably made to preach to the choir in that it was likely made to show to church groups in order to keep the flock from straying, so anyone who's not already a fundamentalist Christian will feel some brain cells dying. I'm not kidding, right now I can't remember where my car keys are. I do like watching and making fun of bad movies, but this one was just terrible. I have a feeling that if there really is a Hell, this is the only movie which is playing 24/7.

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.

I can only assume Ron Ormond made these religious films at the end of his career to atone for all the horrid B-flicks he inflicted upon moviegoers in the '50s. That is understandable. "The Burning Hell" was exhibited mainly in southern Protestant churches, Sunday schools and Christian schools - who then plastered every storefront in town with placards advertising the film ("20,000 Degrees Fahrenheit - and Not a Drop of Water!" One wonders how they came up with that measurement). It was in a "Christian school" that I was subjected to this cinematic Hades, in glorious 16mm. The reaction from our 11th grade class was anything but reverent. There was much for us to titter and chuckle over as we were shushed by the Bob Jones-alumni faculty. The Southern-accented Moses with the fake beard ("Y'all let mah people go") - the pasty-white desert dwellers - - the idiot teen bouncing around on the seat of his motorcycle before crashing it, literally losing his head, and plunging into HAYull - and the silly Satan whose face was painted like the Partridge Family's bus (the tricycle-riding Tom Waits in the "I Don't Wanna Grow Up" video was a more plausible devil) - we couldn't take this seriously at all, despite the teachers acting like this catchpenny film was as much Holy Writ as the leather-bound Bibles they clutched. I'm not about to enter into a theological discussion - I will only say that with the amateur histrionics, Estus Pirkle's incessant preaching, and Ormond's inept-as-ever direction, those who view this film may well enter heaven, for they've already been through "The Burning Hell."

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.