Last fall, I presented the readership of The Poly with a review of what I called “the ultimate bad movie experience;” namely, Manos: The Hands of Fate. What made that movie so wonderfully terrible was that it was written and filmed in complete seriousness, its cast and crew only discovering following release that they had created comedic gold.
However, there is another type of bad movie available: those that are created solely to be terrible. In this genre, you will find such gems as Army of Darkness and Uncle Sam (all residents of Troy should see the latter). Just as Manos was the peak of serious-but-terrible movies, there is a movie so utterly awful it must claim the title of best made-to-be-funny bad movie: Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter.
The plot is simple. Jesus has returned to Earth and is living quietly in solitude, but he must emerge from hiding to do battle with the legions of the undead who are killing lesbians at an alarming rate (you see, they need the lesbian skin to protect them from sunlight, which harms vampires because it exists as both a particle and a wave and…yeah). To do this, he calls upon his allies Mary Magnum and El Santos, a retired Mexican wrestler, and throughout the movie fights atheists, beatniks, and, of course, vampires. Oh, and it’s a musical.
The movie is wonderfully done, and even the most religious of my friends enjoyed it for its plentiful biblical references (“Lemonade? Will there be enough?” “Oh, there’ll be plenty.”)
There is a long, long fight scene with a gang of atheists that could only be choreographed better by, well, a dog with down syndrome.
The technical aspects are “amazing,” like slow-motion punches reminiscent of “Power Rangers,” and small neck wounds that coat an entire windshield in blood.
This is funnier when one considers how it was made. After doing a little bit of research on the film, I discovered that it was made by a group of film students at a legitimate film school in Ottawa, Canada, with a budget of $100,000.
How anyone managed to spend $100,000 on this movie is stunning, but I expect a great deal of it went toward the airplane and Cadillac for one scene, and there was probably a good amount of embezzling, too.
The best part of Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter is its one-liners, which is an art form where bad movies are concerned. Lines like “Real enough to you?” after Jesus beats up the atheists, and “If I’m not back in five minutes, call the Pope,” are tossed out in the middle of scenes, and easily missed if you’re not paying attention to the movie. Perhaps the funniest line in the movie is when Jesus’ dessert starts talking to him, and he asks “Is that you, bowl of cherries?”
Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter is a movie that anyone will enjoy. Young and old, religious and unreligious, all will love the good clean fun that this movie offers. And at the end of it, who knows, maybe you’ll love lesbians and bisexuals with pro-wrestler fetishes as much as your favorite vampire-hunting messiah.
