History Film / IfFootmenTireYouWhatWillHorsesDo

* {{Irony}}: Unintended, but at one point Pirkle is warning that the Communists will force you to sit on wooden benches and listen to loudspeakers spewing propaganda (see the page quote above) and is saying this to a congregation sitting on wooden pews as he preaches.

* EasyEvangelism: Judy. Although, to be fair, it does take the whole film ''and'' a fictional child beheading to get her to repent. She also had an elderly sickly Mom who constantly preached to and guilt-tripped her, then died, presumably of a "broken heart".

* GodTest: Communist brainwashers use this to teach children that Jesus can't miraculously provide them with candy, but "our glorious leader UsefulNotes/FidelCastro" can. This at least is something [[TruthInTelevision really done]] in communist states. [[note]]However, why a bunch of characters who are supposed to be Soviets (considering their bad 'Russian'/'Dracula' accents) are focused on a Cuban guy rather than, you know, a Soviet (which was a big 'Superpower'), is anyone's guess. Shouldn't those kids be praying to ''Brezhnev'' for candy?[[/note]]

* OohMeAccentsSlipping: This is especially apparent with the main Commissar. He's played by a very DeepSouth kind of guy trying to talk like an invading Soviet and failing miserably, with an accent that seems to waiver between "Count Dracula" & "Foghorn Leghorn". The other "Communists" aren't that much better, either.

* ThinkOfTheChildren: Much of the handwringing comes from communism's supposed effects on the next generation, such as teaching them to reject Christ and [[SexIsEvil informing them at a young age about the body's erogenous zones]].
** And the worst scenes of violence in the film involve children.

During the 1970s and 1980s, this film was circulated amongst the more fundamentalist churches in the United States -- and not just in the DeepSouth. Today, it's something of a CultClassic for [[SoBadItsGood different reasons]]. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5o_LwqX77I See it here.]] Followed by two spiritual (literally) sequels, 1974's ''[[https://youtu.be/hR8VkciG1jo The Burning Hell]]'' and 1977's ''[[https://youtu.be/TY2eECIIFlQ The Believer's Heaven]]'', where Estus Pirkle preached on what awaits Christians in Hell and Heaven. Both of these films differentiated by featuring guest speakers, and Biblical re-enactments, though violent scenarios remained in them, particularly the former's depiction of Hell.

* {{Gorn}}: People are graphically shot, a boy get a pencil shoved in his eardrums, a child's head is chopped off, bloody corpses are strewn about...seriously, this movie has more blood and gore then some '''''horror films''''' did at the time.

** Reverend Pirkle says that three million Christians have been killed in UsefulNotes/NorthKorea, twenty million Christians have been killed in the [[UsefulNotes/SovietRussiaUkraineAndSoOn Soviet Union]], and fifty million Christians have been killed in RedChina. If that seems like an oddly large number of Christians to be living in China, it's because Pirkle took the complete death toll of the Maoist regime and, apparently unaware that one of Mao Zedong's [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign more ill-advised policies]] caused [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine a famine]] that would have killed Christian and non-Christian alike, just assumed that all the victims were Christians. The numbers from North Korea and the Soviet Union seem to be based on the same "reasoning" (though in the latter, at least more victims actually ''were'' targeted for their religion).

** "One of the top communists in America today said, 'I dream of the hour when the last Congressman is strangled to death on the guts of the last preacher and since the Christians love to sing about the blood, let's give them a little of it. Let's cut the throats of their children and let them drown in their own blood on the altar. Then we'll see if they enjoy singing these hymns or not.'" Far-right conspiracy theorists have long attributed various versions of this quote to then CPUSA leader Gus Hall, but [[BeamMeUpScotty there's no hard evidence he ever said anything of the sort]].[[note]]The first part is derived from something attributed to philosophers Jean Meslier or Denis Diderot, mostly in this form: "Man will never be free until the last king is strangled in the entrails of the last priest." In their case, too, it's questionable whether either said it.[[/note]] [[invoked]]

** Reverend Pirkle claims that it took only a week for the communists to take over China. Who knows where he got that figure from, but it's total nonsense. The [[UsefulNotes/NoMoreEmperors Chinese Civil War]] which eventually resulted in [[RedChina Communist]] [[UsefulNotes/ChineseWithChopperSupport military victory]] (under UsefulNotes/MaoZedong) lasted from 1916 to 1950, with some time on the proverbial back-burner/low heat for the UsefulNotes/SecondSinoJapaneseWar.
** Reverend Pirkle says that three million Christians have been killed in UsefulNotes/NorthKorea, twenty million Christians have been killed in the [[UsefulNotes/SovietRussiaUkraineAndSoOn Soviet Union]], and fifty million Christians have been killed in RedChina. If that seems like an oddly large number of Christians to be living in China, it's because Pirkle took the complete death toll of the Maoist regime and, apparently unaware that one of Mao Zedong's [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign more ill-advised policies]] caused [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine a famine]] that would have killed Christian and non-Christian alike, just assumed that all the victims were Christians. The numbers from North Korea and the Soviet Union seem to be based on the same "reasoning" (though in the latter at least more victims actually ''were'' targeted for their religion).
** "One of the top communists in America today said, 'I dream of the hour when the last Congressman is strangled to death on the guts of the last preacher and since the Christians love to sing about the blood, let's give them a little of it. Let's cut the throats of their children and let them drown in their own blood on the altar. Then we'll see if they enjoy singing these hymns or not.'" Far-right conspiracy theorists have long attributed various versions of this quote to then CPUSA leader Gus Hall, but [[BeamMeUpScotty there's no hard evidence he ever said anything of the sort]].[[note]] The first part is derived from something attributed to philosophers Jean Meslier or Denis Diderot, mostly in this form: "Man will never be free until the last king is strangled in the entrails of the last priest." In their case too it's questionable whether either said it.[[/note]] [[invoked]]

** A subtle one is how the USSR is portrayed as some sort of atheist hellhole, yet participation in the Orthodox church started to pick up again after the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union during World War 2. While the church was controlled by the Soviet government and the post of Metropolitan of Moscow was vacant for some years beyond 1917, Christianity has been central to Russian identity for so long that even communism could not dislodge it.

* DeathOfAChild: In fact, the worst scenes involve children... from the boy getting his eardrums punctured (then barfing up a storm), the kids forced to drop their dad on a pitchfork and the kid who gets his head lopped off. Then, of course, the kids seen among the gunned-down dead.

* WhatTheHellIsThatAccent: What has been described as a "Communist accent". A deep blend of German, Russian and Cuban, with it shifting not only from scene to scene, but within the same lines. In the case of the [[OohMeAccentsSlipping Commissar]] (the guy in the Trope Page photo above with the kid... whom he soon beheads ...), add a bit of "DeepSouth".

* TheBadGuyWins: As one would expect from the premise, the DirtyCommunists in Pirkle's sermon not only have taken over America, but have their way every single time. No one dares even try to stop them, not even in a HeroicSacrifice way; and are little more than {{dirty coward}}s content in letting them rape women, enslave children, and kill anyone they please for no reason and borderline idiotic for continuing to practice Christianity in public areas where the Communists can easily kill them.

** The only exception being Judy near the end, who stands up and shrieks a genuinely horrified "NO!" when Perkle finished the "beheaded kid" story (which is odd since nobody in the Church is in danger and a bunch of horrific stuff was described before). Thus, anything approaching decent acting is applied to the most inappropriate moments.

* ScareEmStraight: The whole point.

* TheBadGuyWins: As one would expect from the premise, the DirtyCommunists in Pirkle's sermon not only have taken over America, but have their way every single time. No one dares even try to stop them, not even in a HeroicSacrifice way; and are little more than {{dirty coward}}s content in letting them rape women, enslave children, and kill anyone they please for no reason.