April 6, 2024
1579.) The second and last episode about Ron Ormond’s “Estus Pirkle trilogy,” in which I discuss and show clips from the second and third of the movies. Pirkle was a preacher who recruited Ormond (who worked hand in glove with his wife and son on his productions) in the 1970s to make films out of his way-out apocalyptic sermons. The movies discussed here are The Burning Hell (1974) and The Believer’s Heaven (1977), which detail Pirkle’s no-nonsense (or pity) versions of punishment and redemption. Ormond had previously made all kinds of exploitation pictures and so he used his background in no-budget horror for HELL, offering us a glimpse of a dark, fiery realm where the people are covered in oil and constantly tortured in one way or another. The HELL movie, on the other hand, finds Pirkle describing a tacky vision of splendor that bathes the good Xtian in clouds, robes, shiny floors, big doorways, and a mixture of “precious stones” that Pirkle runs through in one truly odd sequence. Among the unusual elements in this duo of flicks is the fact that the cast flew to the Holy Land and Hawaii (?) to shoot certain scenes (featuring Biblical characters speaking with deep Southern accents) and that Pirkle’s sermons throughout contain an incredible number of specific details about Hell and Heaven (population, decorations, durations of torture or pleasure) that he claimed were all true. Given that “Dr.” Pirkle is no longer with us, one assumes he discovered which of his trivia facts was indeed true….