THE RESTORATIONISTS: LOST AND SAVED

By Peter Conheim

In 2010, a flood of truly biblical proportions hit Nashville, Tennessee, and surrounding areas. Beginning on 1 May, with the effects lasting for days, an astonishing twenty inches of rain fell, smashing all local records, overtopping rivers, and killing twenty-six people. The flood destroyed more than 10,000 structures, and, in one fell swoop, virtually the entire creative output of the filmmaking family of Ron, June and Tim Ormond.

In one closet at the home of Tim Ormond – son of Ron and June, and sole heir to the family legacy – were stored all the original 16mm reversal masters and 35mm negatives, plus virtually all surviving prints, of the Ormonds’ filmmaking output. Within a matter of hours, all of these irreplaceable reels were underwater, the house submerged up to its second storey. In effect, the master elements for all but three major Ormond productions vanished forever on that day.

As a result, in the cases of Untamed Mistress (aka Law of the Jungle), White Lightnin’ Road, Girl from Tobacco Row, Forty Acre Feud, Please Don’t Touch Me, The Exotic Ones (aka The Monster and the Stripper) and The Grim Reaper, all that survives are 1990s-era standard-definition video transfers, mostly in the incorrect aspect ratio of pre1953 cinema, before widescreen became standardised. The presentations on these tapes are thus ‘open matte’, revealing parts of the top and bottom of the image which were always intended to be masked when the films were blown up and exhibited in 35mm.

Ron and June were grindhouse mavens, shooting their pictures on vivid Kodachrome and Ektachrome 16mm reversal stock, intending them to be masked into widescreen later, using the Auricon camera, which revolutionised on-the-go filmmaking with its ability to record a soundtrack directly onto the film simultaneously with image. Sadly, since every one of their original master positives and duplicate 35mm negatives is lost, the film restorationist has no way of properly presenting the films they made before 1971 in their correct widescreen aspect ratios. From that point forward, however, there would be no need for 35mm and widescreen, as their works would only appear in church screenings on 16mm projectors, where the image would be opened up to the squarer ratio of 1.37:1.

We have tried to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, as the saying goes, by presenting their five widescreen works in the best possible approximation of their original theatrical ratio on home video for the first time. As true restoration is impossible, we have instead cleaned and stabilised the surviving transfers, using multiple sources when available. In our research during the past six years, we encountered several utterly battered and incomplete 35mm blow-up prints of these pre-1971 films from private collectors, each with colour having entirely faded to magenta beyond rescue. It was clear that there was no use in scanning these mangled elements, and that it was far better to opt for the best available SD tape masters, several of which had excellent colour, instead.

Peter Conheim is a musician, multimedia artist, film historian and lead ‘Restorationist’ at byNWR. He is the founder of the Cinema Preservation Alliance, based in El Cerrito, California.

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