From Friday June 30th to Sunday 2nd July, Matchbox Cine and Trasho Biblio present Jimmy McDonough: In Conversation alongside Nicolas Winding Refn’s new restoration of If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?
This exclusive, online-only double bill marks the release of The Exotic Ones, McDonough’s epic new biography of The Ormond Family, 40 years in the making.
Exploitation film-makers Ron and June Ormond experienced a spiritual awakening after their private plane crashed on the way to a premiere. Turning their back on secular show business, they made a series of shocking, surreal religious pictures which made millions without ever being shown in an actual movie theatre. Their story has never been told – until now.
If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? is the first of three “Baptist scare pictures” which director Ron Ormond made with firebrand preacher, Estus W Pirkle, and surely the most unsettling and outrageous. A feverish nightmare prediction of what “will” happen when Communism infects an American small town (in this case, Pirkle’s church setting of New Albany, Mississippi), it was never intended to be screened outside of churches and community centres. It has been restored from the only surviving master elements by Nicolas Winding Refn’s byNWR and Cinema Preservation Alliance’s Peter Conheim, so that it may finally reach a wider viewing audience.
Jimmy McDonough is the legendary author of The Ghastly One: The 42nd Street Netherworld of Director Andy Milligan and Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: The Biography of Russ Meyer as well as celebrated biographies of Neil Young, Tammy Wynette and Al Green. John Waters frequently cites Time Magazine-certified “masterpiece” The Ghastly One as one of his all-time favourites.
This will be the last book I write on exploitation film. Buy it. Or go to Hell!
Jimmy McDonough
June. Ron. Tim. Together they were the Ormond Organization, a Nashville mother-father-son trio who cranked out a wild bunch of movies, from Lash LaRue westerns to the stripper-gore-musical outrage The Exotic Ones, then finally… Baptist extravaganzas. The Ormonds plunged into every area of showbiz, from vaudeville to drive-in movies to Christian filmmaking. They did it all on a shoestring – by themselves, with no studio to back them.
Theirs was a glittery world like no other. Populated by inebriated cowboys … spook-show mentalists … non-acting country stars … UFO testifiers … men in gorilla suits … egocentric magicians … fire-breathing, mud-wrestling ex-strippers … sweaty preachers … rockabilly monsters … pint-sized evangelists. Not to mention a con artist or ten.
Forensic biographer Jimmy McDonough interviewed June Ormond extensively and she revealed things she told no other soul. June was the guiding force of the family, a woman who held her own in the cutthroat male-dominated world of low-budget independent film. Her commentary is hilarious, brutally honest and at times heartbreaking.
Our career-spanning conversation, hosted by Trasho Biblio’s Tommy McCormick, will be pre-recorded on 24th June, 2023. If you would like to pose a question to Jimmy, contact Trasho or Matchbox directly, or leave it in the comments.
The entire programme is presented with optional brand-new descriptive subtitles. If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? will also be presented for the first time anywhere with optional brand-new audio description, created by Matchbox Cinesub.
The exclusive, time-limited programme will be available on Matchbox Cine’s Eventive platform from Friday 30th June to Sunday 2nd July. Buy tickets/watch here.
Tickets, which include both film and In Conversation, are sold on a sliding scale, from 0 to £8. You decide what to pay, according to our sliding scale guide (here)
The Exotic Ones is available now from FAB Press, here.
From Hollywood To Heaven: The Lost And Saved Films Of The Ormond Family is available now from Powerhouse / Indicator here.