IF FOOTMEN TIRE YOU, WHAT WILL HORSES DO? (1971)

I’ve gotten e-mails asking that I review this movie but I already did in 2010. It’s been on my Bad Movie page here: https://glitternight.com/bad-movies/

IF FOOTMEN TIRE YOU, WHAT WILL HORSES DO? (1971) – Category: A neglected bad movie classic that deserves a Plan 9-sized cult following.    

No, it’s not about Quentin Tarantino and pre-Castro Havana nightclubs (Thank you, I’m here all week!) it’s really a Cold War-era warning about what would happen if Communists took over the United States. It’s from Ron Ormond, best known for the bad movie classic Mesa Of Lost Women before he found religion and hooked up with the Reverend Estus W Pirkle for films like this one.

Pirkle serves as the narrator of this quirky little mess, ranting on and on in his over-the-top way about how the USA has turned away from the Bible and will suffer the consequences. He’s like a combination of Criswell in Plan 9 From Outer Space and the sermonizing narrator from Blood Freak (qv).

In one of his enjoyably bizarre tangents before he gets to the Soviet conquest of America he also speaks out on the “evils” of dancing, which he calls ”The front door to adultery! What starts on the dance floor is expected to be finished later.” He even says dancing is “as immoral as it has always been”.

In the main part of our story we get treated to awkwardly-staged scenes of atrocities perpetrated by the invading Communist army. These scenes are transcendently violent and are accompanied by so many amateur gore effects it’s like you’re watching “If Herschell Gordon Lewis had directed Red Dawn“.

Lines of people are mowed down by machine guns (the film’s favorite method of extermination), eardrums are pierced with sharp sticks,  inducing vomiting (talk about an extreme version of an emetic … but I kid) and children are taught to pray to Fidel Castro (I swear!). 

Plus Ormond recycles his nauseatingly repetitious sound track from Mesa Of Lost Women which adds to the outrageously campy feel, especially in the “overly amorous Commie and the housewife” scene. That same soundtrack was cadged by Ed Wood for his movie Jail Bait. 

Think of this film as a right-wing version of one-percenter and bloated capitalist Michael Moore’s laughably propagandistic films that he pretends are documentaries.  

And oh, yeah, the odd title comes from a Bible passage. This film provides a lot of fun for bad movie fans and is less than 70 minutes long so what’s the harm?   

FOR MY LOOK AT BLAXPLOITATION HORROR FILMS: https://glitternight.com/2011/10/26/a-very-blaxploitation-halloween/

FOR MY LIST OF THE TOP ELEVEN BAD MOVIES FOR HALLOWEEN: https://glitternight.com/2011/10/24/the-eleven-most-neglected-bad-movie-classics-for-halloween/

FOR MY LOOK AT MEXICAN HORROR FILMS CLICK HERE: https://glitternight.com/2011/10/31/a-halloween-mexi-monster-bestiary/