Original image I made featuring Ron Ormond.

If you want to watch the whole movie before or after my review, you can do so here:

The Grim Reaper is a film by the ‘Christploitation’ director Ron Ormond. Christploitation is a sub-genre of exploitation film that uses shock, gore, or horror-elements to promote Christianity. Ron Ormond is basically the king of this genre, and if you want to learn more about him, you can read my article here.

This is Ormond’s third Christploitation film, and does not feature the crazy, fire-and-brimstone preacher, Estus Pirkle. Thus, rather than the movie’s flow being carried by Pirkle’s fearmongering, we are given a more ‘conventional’ (I use this term lightly) narrative, written by Ormond himself, who also directed and produced the film.

Plot Summary

The movie follows the Pierce family, who have recently lost their son Frankie in a car racing accident. We open upon the church’s funeral service for Frankie, where the congregation wonders why the pastor won’t perform the ceremony. Cut to the Pierce family, who is arguing with the pastor about why he is refusing to do the eulogy. Evidently, the pastor is certain that Frankie is in Hell, so he cannot give a ‘proper’ eulogy about the deceased being in Heaven. Eventually, the pastor does take the stage. But rather than giving a eulogy celebrating Frankie’s life or mourning the loss of a loved one, the pastor uses this as an opportunity to warn the congregation about the dangers of Hell (where Frankie definitely is being tortured right now). This sets up the dichotomy for the rest of the film: Are you going to Heaven or are you going to Hell?

Through some flashbacks, we see that Frankie was much more concerned with car racing and watching football while drinking beer with his non-Christian dad instead of going to church (ironically, I was drinking beer while watching this scene — oops!).

The rest of the film completes the Pierce family narrative. The mother experiences dream-visions of her son in Hell. The father tries to use a spirit-medium to contact his deceased son through seance, but unfortunately, this practice turns out to be demonic.

Their other son, Tim, challenges the spiritualist with the Bible, and gets his family to go to church instead. At church, the family learns — with the help of none other than Jerry Falwell! — that spiritualism and the occult are all demonic. Insert some flashbacks to poorly-reenacted stories from the Bible. Finally, during the preacher’s sermon, the father realizes his need to accept Jesus in order to avoid Hell. We end with him at the altar as the hymn “Just as I Am” plays.

Top 7 Things

As always, this ‘top #’ list is not necessarily comprised of things I that thought were objectively ‘good filmmaking’. These are just 7 memorable aspects of the film. They can be ridiculous, humorous, or campy.

1. The Movie Poster





Let’s start on a positive note. I absolutely love this movie’s poster. It looks like the cover of a horror comic book from the 50s. The illustrations for the grim reaper character are amazing, and appear similar to the Crypt Keeper of Tales from the Crypt. Unfortunately, no such character is actually in this film.

This movie was shown in churches as a type of ‘evangelism,’ so I like to imagine that these posters were hanging on the walls of a church lobby. The types of churches keen on showing these movies were probably never the kind of people to interact with horror culture. Thus, horror posters hanging in those churches is a unique possible moment in history that needs to be appreciated.

2. Frankie

Frankie is undoubtedly one of the coolest characters of all time. His edgy antics include drinking beer, skipping church to watch football, racing cars, and only doing things that his dad does.

He also is involved in some of the film’s ‘best’ moments. When his younger brother Tim (played by Ron Ormond’s son) invites him to hear a sermon, Frankie responds with an amazing speech only someone like Ron Ormond could write: “Look… Look… This religion thing is your scene not mine. This dude is gonna be where it’s happenin’. Big engines. Big cars. Big tracks. And biiiiig money. Religion? Not for this dude. Noooo way.” Such mellifluous rhythm and deep symbolism. During the line’s delivery, the audio messed up, so his mouth doesn’t always match the words, which only makes it better.

Furthermore, Frankie’s death scene is ridiculous. We are at a race track and cars are zooming along when, suddenly, it’s as if every car independently spins out of control at the same time. It’s like something from a Final Destination movie. And of course, Frankie dies when his car crashes (the logic of Christian scare-cinema demands it). During the crash, we are treated to many great ‘Star Wars cockpit’ camera shakes. Then, in his last moments, when Tim tries to urge him to accept Jesus into his heart, Frankie utters the coolest thing possible: “I’ll accept him when dad does.” Legendary.

Like me, you’re probably thinking, “There’s no way Frankie could do anything to top his already amazing performance.” But that’s where we’re wrong. During a dream, the mother sees a vision of Frankie suffering in hell. When Frankie walks through her bedroom wall, it looks similar to the ghost villain in Scooby Doo‘s “Hassle in the Castle” episode — the one where the guy uses a camera projector to make it look like he’s walking through walls. Now, if I’m being honest and not sarcastic, for an exploitation/B-Movie, the special effects at this point were actually kind of fun. This is one of the main reasons why we watch psychotronic films.





The best part of this scene, however, is when Frankie is supposed to be screaming in torment and fear. But as we’ve come to learn, our boy Frankie doesn’t take the predictable path. Instead, he faintly moans “ahhh,” which sounds like Carl Wheezer’s famous “ah” from The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.

3. Dr. Qumran the Spirit-Medium

This character made the movie significantly more enjoyable. By introducing spiritualism, occult, and the demonic into the equation, the product is a Christploitation film with more horror elements rather than only Baptist propaganda.

Frankie and Tim’s father, being distraught over his son’s death, forms a relationship with this medium who promises a type of spiritual enlightenment and the opportunity to contact Frankie from beyond the grave. This leads to a confrontation with Tim — who is an aspiring preacher — about the inspiration of the Bible which is over-the-top and nearly absurd. Somehow, this ends up changing his father’s heart.

However, Dr. Qumran’s best moment is during the seance scene. Qumran summons the spirits of various departed individuals, and we are treated to an eerie display of ghostly figures appearing in the room while reality itself seems distorted and surreal. This is actually a wonderful display of B-Movie film-making, and one of my favorite scene from the movie (if you can even have favorite scenes with this).









We also learn during his ritual that Qumran is possessed by a demon. This is why he is able to summon these spirits. They show this by occasionally cutting for just a half-second to a red-faced devil and then back to Qumran. It looks like a dollar-store Halloween costume version of the demon in Insidious.





4. Jerry Falwell!

For those of you who do not know, Jerry Falwell was a televangelist and political activist. He is best known for starting the “Moral Majority” movement, which basically wanted to make America a Christian nation by encouraging Christians to take political power and vote in ways that will ‘Christianize’ American law and society. As one of the most influential leaders of the hyper-conservative ‘Religious Right,’ he bears much responsibility for evangelicalism’s current close ties to the Republican Party, and consequently why evangelicals love Trump so much. (He’s dead now).

So what is the man who blamed 9-11 on homosexuals and abortionists doing in The Grim Reaper? To warn us about Satan (obviously).

Let’s just take a moment to soak this into our consciousness. The fundamentalist leader of the Moral Majority had a cameo in a B-movie, grindhouse-esque Christploitation film. You can’t make this kind of stuff up, and I’m so glad we had this experience together. I suppose it ultimately makes sense, though, because Falwell was a master of fearmongering and manipulation.

What’s interesting to me is that all of this warning about Satan and the occult pre-dates the ‘Satanic panic’ of the 80s and 90s. In the years to come, churches, news stations, and secular talk shows would flood the media space with warnings about Dungeons and Dragons, heavy metal music, and ritualistic human sacrifice. It’s the most recent instance of mass hysteria. Thus, in a sense, Ron Ormond’s film is ahead of its time. I wonder if he had any direct influence on the later pseudo-documentaries and satanic warning films to follow.

5. Reenactment of Biblical Stories

Ormond’s movies are notorious for having ridiculously cheesy and unrealistic reenactments of stories from the Bible.

For starters, they usually get the cheapest costumes and wigs possible. A grandmother with a sewing kit could probably do better. Secondly, all of the (typically Jewish) characters are played by white people. Whitewashing is not something new, and we are basically accustomed to it in Hollywood. But Ormond’s movies rise above this mediocre trope and almost makes whitewashing into an art form. I don’t know how he does it, but the films typically feature the whitest Baptists you could possibly imagine playing Jewish characters like St Paul, Moses, or Abraham.

The Grim Reaper features three reenactments. The first recounts the story of Saul and Silas in prison from Acts 16:16-40. However, the superior reenactment is the retelling of King Saul seeking a spirit-medium from 1 Samuel 28. You can watch the whole scene here:

This takes place several hundred years before the Common Era, and yet this woman is dressed in a witch costume from the discount aisle at Party City. You can even tell where her makeup didn’t fit correct. She goes on to conduct the ritual, and if I was Saul at this point, I’d have serious doubts because it looks like she has no idea what she is doing.

The scene culminates when the ritual works and — lo and behold — she summons Gandalf from the grave (who is supposed to be the biblical prophet Samuel).

6. The Return of Santa Moses

Watch Santa Moses part 1 here:

Santa Moses first blessed us with his existence in The Burning Hell. But now he’s back to kill off more people complaining about living in the desert. Rather than opening up the ground to literally swallow people into the mouth of Hell (like he does in the above video), he miraculously releases snakes to poison the disobedient grumblers. I love how the camera spends a long time cutting from the snakes to actors contorting in some of the most absurd facial expressions I’ve seen. Watch the whole thing here:

7. Ron Ormond’s Psychotronic Hellscape

You can watch the whole scene here:

Of course, when it comes to depicting Hell, Ormond’s previous film The Burning Hell is the greatest (campiest) depiction in cinematic history. However, even though this movie is not solely about the topic of Hell, Ormond’s grindhouse roots do not fail to deliver.

During the church sermon, the father has a vision of what torment in Hell would be like. The guiding ‘Virgil’ of this trip to Hell is a zombie-like corpse who looks kinda like Marv in the electrocution scene from Home Alone 2.





The characters shown in this Hell world are crazy — specifically the costumes. It’s exactly what you’d expect if you took the mind of an exploitation film director and merged it with Halloween costumes from a thrift store. I’m 99% certain that there is even someone just wearing an un-altered Dracula costume.

However, he most unsettling character looks like the offspring of Pennywise and Legolas. It’s as if someone gave her a paper-mache forehead and elf ears without ever painting them.

The Hell vision ends with the father’s ghostly spirit spiraling over an erupting volcano. (And I’m filled with joy that I had the opportunity to actually type out that sentence.)

Concluding Thoughts

I’ve read some other reviews of this movie, and many think that the absence of Estus Pirkle hurt the film. However, I actually enjoyed his absence. Of course, Pirkle’s maniacal ragings about Hell and communists can be humorous in their extremity. But I found them to be a bit overbearing when I watched Ormond’s previous Christploitation films. The elimination of constant preaching allowed for more scenes such as Frankie’s ghostly visit or the seance with Dr. Qumran. Those scenes pulled from Ormond’s experience as horror/exploitation director. In my opinion, those are better uses of Ormond’s unique ‘skills'(?) than filming a man preaching from behind a pulpit. Preaching was still featured, but it took less of a role than when Pirkle was at the reigns.

If one can get past moral objections to the religious manipulation and fearmongering, I think this can actually be a film that one can ironically enjoy (if you are into psychotronic movies). Alfred Eager described Ormond’s films as “naive surrealism” which I think is an apt description. The term describes a certain kind of campy aesthetic in which the film is enjoyed despite being a ‘bad movie.’ We could also refer to this as ‘accidental surrealism’ because the creators never intended to make ‘high art.’ In essence, a movie is so poorly constructed that it becomes surreal, and the audience enjoys it for possessing a near ‘otherworldly’ quality. It’s a type of transcendent nature that emerges from the terrible constituent parts of the film.

More about naive surrealism: https://ghotfish.wordpress.com/2012/07/11/naive-surrealism/

What do you think? Is there anything else you’d want to add to my list? If you’ve seen Ormond’s other movies, do you like The Grim Reaper better or worse? Are you aware of other ‘Christploitation’ directors? What’s your favorite psychotronic movie? Let me know in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you.