Horror Film Review: Mesa of Lost Women (dir by Herbert Tevos and Ron Ormond)

Posted on October 11, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Have you ever been kissed by a girl like this?” a disembodied voice asks at the start of 1953’s Mesa For Lost Women as a pair hands with claw-like fingernails caresses the face of someone who is later identified as being “Doc” Tucker (Allan Nixon).

Things get stranger from there. A couple is found lost and dehydrated in the Mexican desert. Grant Phillips (Robert Knapp) rambles about “super bugs” out in the desert and how they have to be destroyed. American land surveyor Frank (John Martin) assumes that Grant must be delirious but Frank’s assistant, Pepe (Chris Pin Martin), knows differently. We know that Pepe knows differently because the narrator tells us that Pepe had heard all about the monsters in the desert but Pepe keeps that information to himself….

Who is this narrator and why is he so condescending? (For the record, he’s actor Lyle Talbot, who split his career between major, Oscar-winning productions and stuff like this.) Have you ever noticed that a narrator usually just leaves you feeling even more confused by what you just watched? There’s a trailer playing right now for a film called Ella McCay that opens with Julie Kavner saying, “Hi, I’m the narrator!” and whenever I hear that line, I’m just like, “Oh, this film is going to be so bad!”

I think it’s because most narrators are added after the fact, in an attempt to give some sort of uniformity to a badly constructed movie. The narrator is there to tell us stuff that a good movie would be able to show us. For instance, in the trailer for Ella McCay, Julie Kavner tells us that “I’m nuts about her,” as a way to assure us that Ella McCay is someone worth making a movie about. Now, ideally, you wouldn’t have to have someone tell you that. You would just watch the movie and say, “Hey, Ella McCay! She deserves all the happiness in the world!” But when your trailer is a bunch of scenes of Ella McCay acting a bit immature for someone who is destined to become “governor of the state you were born and raised in,” you need that narrator to say, “No, she’s likable, I promise!”

By that same logic, Mesa of Lost Women was apparently a mash-up of several different films, none of which had a complete script. Narrator Lyle Talbot is here to tell us that, despite what we’re seeing, Mesa of Lost Women is an actual movie with an actual story as opposed to just a bunch of random scenes that were haphazardly crammed together. We get a flashback of a scientist named Masterson (Harmon Stevens) traveling to the laboratory of Dr. Aranya (Jackie Coogan) and discovering that Aranya is creating giant tarantulas and transforming human women into mind-controlled slaves with the instincts of a spider. Masterson doesn’t think that’s ethical so Aranya’s assistant, Tarantella (Tandra Quinn), gives him an injection that turns him into a simpleton. Masterson ends up in a mental hospital, though he later escapes. Meanwhile, an American businessman and his girlfriend (Mary Hill) come to Mexico and witness Tarantella dancing in a bar. Masterson shows up and shoots Tarantella and then takes everyone hostage so that he can force Grant, who we now discover is a pilot, to fly him to the mesa of lost women …. or something.

Despite the best efforts of the narrator, the film is impossible to follow. A big problem is that Dr. Aarnya’s plan never makes much sense. How is creating a giant spider and a bunch of women who think that they’re spiders going to help him conquer the world? The other problem is that the film had two directors, one of whom was an enigmatic German named Herbert Tevos who got the job by claiming to have directed Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel. Tevos’s footage of Dr. Aranya, the giant tarantula, and the “lost women” was not enough to secure the film distribution so a second director, Ron Ormond, was brought in to shoot a bunch of new footage to make the film more commercial. Tevos’s film became an extended flashback in the middle of Ormond’s film and the whole thing is a big mess.

In fact, the film is such a mess that some people insist Ed Wood must have been involved. It is true that narrator Lyle Talbot also appeared in Plan 9 From Outer Space and Glen or Glenda. Plan 9‘s Mona McKinnon appears as a spider woman. So does Dolores Fuller, who was Wood’s girlfriend at the time. Wood later “borrowed” Mesa of Lost Women‘s score for Jail Bait. Mesa of Lost Women was definitely Wood-adjacent but, by all accounts, Wood didn’t actually do any work on the film. This mess of a film belongs to Tevos and Ormond.

And it is a mess. It’s a watchable mess, in much the same way that a nuclear meltdown would probably be watchable. But, nonetheless, it’s still a mess and the incoherence of the plot really does get on one’s nerves, despite the best efforts of Lyle Talbot. Talbot can’t sell the viewer on Mesa of Lost Women. Maybe he would have had better luck with Ella McCay.

Dead Man’s Gold (1948, directed by Ray Taylor)

Posted on March 8, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

Jim Thornton (Britt Wood) has discovered a gold mine so he writes to his old friends, Lash LaRue (Lash La Rue) and Fuzzy (Al St. John), asking them to come help him guard it. When Lash and Fuzzy arrive, Jim is nowhere to be found. With the help of Jim’s niece (Peggy Stewart), they discover that Jim’s been murdered. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that the murder was carried out by Conway (Jason Cason) and his men and that’s a good thing because a genius is something you will never find in a Lash La Rue western. However, Lash suspects that Conway was following someone else’s orders. He and Fuzzy set up a trap to reveal the true identity of the mastermind.

Lash dresses in all black and often uses a whip instead of a gun but this is still a standard B-western. Historically, it’s important because it was the first movie that La Rue made with producer Ron Ormond. Ormond later went from producing Lash La Rue films to directing them and Lash’s career never really recovered. (Ormond, whose non-Lash LaRue films included Mesa of Lost Women and If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?, was never much of a director.) Fortunately, Dead Man’s Gold was directed by the dependable Ray Taylor, who keeps the action moving and crafts an adequate if not exactly memorable western.

There is one cool scene in Dead Man’s Gold, in which Lash uses his whip to knock a shot glass out of a bad guy’s hand. Let’s see The Lone Ranger do that!

Horror on the Lens: Mesa of Lost Women (dir by Herbert Tevos and Ron Ormond)

Posted on October 11, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s Horror on the Lens is the infamous 1953 film, Mesa of Lost Women. Off in the middle of the desert, Dr. Aranya (Jackie Coogan) is conducting dangerous experiments that are resulting not only in giant spiders but also a master race of superwomen who Aranya is planning to use to conquer the world or something.

Mesa of Lost Women is a bit of a disjointed film. It was originally filmed by a German director named Herbert Tevos, who claimed to be an associate of Erich Von Stroheim’s and a former collaborator of Marlene Dietrich’s. However, despite his claims of being well-connected, no one was particularly impressed with Tevos’s first cut of the film so Ron Ormond was brought in to film additional scenes, the majority of them featuring Jackie Coogan as the insane Dr. Aranya. Jackie Coogan was, at the time, still best-known for playing The Kid in the Charlie Chaplin film of the same name. After Mesa, he would go on to play Uncle Fester on the original Addams Family.

Anyway, Mesa of Lost Women is one of those B-movies that simply has to be seen and heard to be believed. (Lyle Talbot provides the narration, which is judgmental even by the standards of the 1950s.) Enjoy Mesa of Lost Women!

4 Shots From 4 Films (Sigh): Every Young Woman’s Battle (2014), The Creation Adventure Team: Six Short Days, One Big Adventure (2002), Let Me Die A Woman (1977), If Footmen Tire You What Will Horses Do? (1971)

Posted on July 25, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

There are so many movies/videos that I am sitting on. Some I have seen, and some I only know because I have seen a review of them, but I do have a copy of them. I thought I would share four of the real crazy ones. If nothing else, just in case I never get to them.

Every Young Woman’s Battle (2014)

I actually have a partial review of this written. It’s been sitting in the drafts section since April. The reason is that there is just so much crazy that the review is going to be really long. The video is a speech given by Shannon Ethridge to a small room of middle-aged Asian women and one guy basically telling them that your husband is not the one who is going to satisfy your “emotional needs.” That’s what Jesus is for in a marriage. So, it’s kind of like War Room (2015), but a whole lot crazier.

How crazy? First, she opens up the lecture by telling us she is passionate about sexual purity because she has AIDS. Visual AIDS! Then she shows pictures of her family. She goes on to tell us about the time she came to her husband and told him he wasn’t satisfying her “emotional needs.” I put them in quotes because she will make it clear she means sexual needs along with the emotional component. So, how does her husband respond to this? He says he could line up all the men in Dallas outside her door, but it wouldn’t be enough for her. That’s right. He offered to arrange a Debbie Does Dallas (1978) gang bang for her. That’s just one example of the crazy, and how this is really sad for Ethridge at the same time.

The Creation Adventure Team: Six Short Days, One Big Adventure (2002, dir. Cathy Henderson)

An apple on the end of an arrow gets shot into the nose of a dinosaur in the Garden of Eden. Do I need to say more? This is a video that was meant to teach creationism to kids, but actually winds up making everyone alive ashamed to be part of the human race regardless of what they believe. Oh, and it has a sequel where they explain the whole dinosaur situation in creationism.

Let Me Die A Woman (1977, dir. Doris Wishman)

In the transploitation mondo “documentary” Let Me Die A Woman (1977) they felt it was necessary that we see what happens when you have sex too soon after having bottom surgery. It’s very important that we see it, and can’t just be told. How else do you do this scene, but to have the trans woman have sex with a cab driver played by no less then Deep Throat (1972) pornographic superstar Harry Rheems. He says, “Thanks, lady,” which is immediately followed by her noticing blood on the sheets in between her legs before quickly grabbing the phone. It then cuts back to Rheems who seems happy about the situation before leaving the room. That shot above is from when he tells her “thanks”. We learn from the “doctor” of this movie right afterwards that what she had was “sex impatience”. Apparently, sometimes you just have to have Harry Rheems’ dick in you.

That’s not all this movie shows either. We have the graphic bottom surgery scenes, the dick chopping off scene, the maintaining your new vagina with a dildo-like object scene, and more!

If Footmen Tire You What Will Horses Do? (1971, dir. Ron Ormond)

This is one I have only seen a review of, but I do have a copy of it. The film is basically a cross between a Christian and Communist scare film. This is from the end of the Communist part of the movie. At the end, there is just a little kid left. He won’t give up his belief in Jesus, so the Communist solider pulls out a machete, chops off his head, and throws it off into a field. That’s it right there. This from a director who survived a plane crash and decided to stop making exploitation films to make Christian scare films instead. As Brad Jones (The Cinema Snob) said: “He never really stopped making exploitation films. He just made sure to mention Jesus in all of the them.”

What’s great is that the first film and the last one here actually have a connection to each other. In If Footmen Tire You What Will Horses Do? (1971) there is a scene where Communists are apparently going to teach boys about the seven erotic zones of passion in every woman. Of course they cut away from that because that situation doesn’t exist. In Every Young Woman’s Battle, Ethridge says the devil perverted sexuality seven different ways or seven different times in the Bible. That’s where that 1970’s Christian scare film got that from.

44 Days Of Paranoia Addendum : “If Footmen Tire You What Will Horses Do?”

Posted on March 23, 2014 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

I sincerely hope that Lisa Marie Bowman will forgive me for muscling in on her (I assume, at any rate) recently-completed “44 Days Of Paranoia” series here at TTSL, but I just couldn’t let it wind up without drawing attention to what is (hopefully) the single-most paranoid flick ever made, namely Ron Ormond’s 1971 Red Scare/Come-To-Jesus religious exploitation number If Footmen Tire You What Will Horses Do?

Ormond was a veteran of the B-movie scene who’s probably best remembered for Mesa Of Lost Women, but at some point in the late ’60s he got scared to death of the emerging youth/anti-war culture and underwent a religious conversion of the “hard turn to the right” variety. Withdrawing from “the business” to his home in Nashville, Tennessee, he founded an outfit known, ever-so-modestly, as “The Ormond Organization,” and set about making evangelical films with his brother and wife as his principal “employees.” The war for our nation’s souls was on, and the Ormonds were determined to do their part by spreading the celluloid gospel.

Enter the Reverned Estus W. Pirkle, hailing from , as you’d probably expect with a name like that, the one-horse town of New Albany, Mississippi. Pirkle was an old-school preacher of the “fire and brimstone” variety who was dismayed by all those pesky civil rights “agitators” who were showing up and disrupting God’s plan for a racially segregated South. He was also worried to pieces about the so-called “Red Menace” He found a way to amalgamate all of his various paranoias into one succinct little book, the title of which you can probably already guess being that this film is based on it, and became a big hit on the traveling revival circuit and at Southern Baptist churches throughout the Bible Belt.

Obviously, when you team up the “talents” of an Ormond and a Pirkle, the end result is going to be a pretty combustible mix, indeed. But you can’t know just how combustible until you see the fruit their collaboration wrought.

The film version of If Footmen tire You What Will Horses Do? takes the form of an extended screed from Pirkle to us lowly mortals in the audience from his position in the pulpit, and, using a “lost soul” teenager named Judy (played by one Judy Creech) as our “point of entry,” shows how Godlessness and moral corruption have wreaked havoc on the lives of our young. What Judy’s doing that’s so wrong is never made clear, mind you, but hey — we know that she does have a boyfriend.

Judy looks especially forlorn when Pirkle talks about the evils of liquor, dancing, and television (he avoids calling out civil rights and anti-war demonstrators by name, but he does inveigh against “riots on campus” and “unwholesome” ideas taking root in the minds of our young), but she’s been unaware of the larger plot that her morally fast-and-loose ways have been playing into — the Communist takeover of these United States.

A lame series of “documented” re-enactments of scenes that “took place in other countries” (where everybody’s got a southern accent) show us what will happen after the dastardly Reds conquer America in, according to Pirkle’s estimation, 16 minutes flat — you can count on, among other atrocities : Commie soldiers breaking into your home to have their way with your wife; kids being forced to pray to Fidel Castro in the public schools in exchange for candy; Christians being shot in the streets and their bodies being left to rot in the baking sun; sons being forced to kill their own mothers if they won’t renounce Christ; and, perhaps most insidious of all, 12-to-16-hour work days, seven days a week, 363 days a year (funny, but that sounds more like a union-busting capitalist’s wet dream than a Communist one).

Dead kids are a mainstay throughout If Footmen Tire You What Will Horses Do?, and when Ormond and company run out of youngsters volunteered by their parents to lay down, pretend not to be breathing, and get splattered with Red Karo syrup, they often resort to using shop mannequins as stand-ins to pad their “mass slaughter” numbers. One scene where no plastic dummies are used, however, is perhaps the film’s most disturbing : a struggling young boy has his eardrums pierced with a bamboo stick so “he can no longer hear the word of Christ” and pukes all over himself while fake blood gushes out of his ears in rivers. Yeah, I know the red stuff’s not real, but the vomit most certainly is, and if the evangelical blow-hards who made this propaganda had any sense of shame they’d at the very least blush for resorting to on-screen, and very real, child abuse in the furtherance of their “holy” cause.

And that’s where Ormond, Pirkle, and the rest of the Holy Rollers who participated in this thing lose me. On the one hand their film can easily be dismissed as the delusional ramblings of the truly insane, but the scary thing is that this is just a celluloid reflection of what many Americans truly felt at the time (and feel now, with Muslims taking the place of Communists), and they were willing to do real harm to a kid in order to dramatize their dipshit point of view. Without that one scene I could have easily laughed my way through If Footmen Tire You What Will Horses Do?, but that single, solitary instance shows that there was, indeed, genuine evil at work here — and those pesky Reds weren’t the source of it.

Look, let’s not kid ourselves — Communism didn’t work out too well anywhere it was put into practice (although Cuba is far from the dictatorial hell-hole that most right-wingers are still trying to convince us it is), and Stalin and the like were, indeed, responsible for countless atrocities. But it’s not like anti-Communism necessarily has clean hands, either. Just ask the people of Vietnam. Or Nicaragua. Or El Salvador. Or Laos. Or Bolivia. Or — the list goes on and on. And we definitely lose any sort of moral high ground we might claim over our purported “enemies” when we resort to the very same tactics in combating them that we accuse them of utilizing.

If Footmen tire You What Will Horses Do? offers a pretty good example, in microcosm, of exactly what I’m talking about. It’s propagandistic nonsense born out of irrational fear that has no basis in factual reality whatsoever and is willing to make a kid throw up on himself just to add an exclamation point to its absurd claims. It could have been fun, hokey, stupid shit — and most of the time it is — but the sick minds of Ormond and Pirkle took it seriously enough, and were willing to traumatize and harm one of the young souls they were supposedly out to “save” in order to prove just how serious they were.

This flick was largely played on 16mm projectors at churches and revival halls, where it was presented as, of course, God’s honest truth. And while all that may seem hokey today, the audiences who watched it at the time lapped it up. In fact, an entire generation was raised on this horseshit. So next time you hear one of the blowhards on Fox “news” or right-wing talk radio blathering on about the “evils” of Communist, Socialist, Islamic, etc. propaganda, consider how far the “good guys” have been willing to go when it comes to brainwashing their own youth. Here’s a YouTube link to the full movie so you can make up your own mind:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5o_LwqX77I