In the time of social distancing, pandemics, and streaming service smorgasbords, you can find all sorts of movies to pass the time. Catch up on the To All the Boys sequel for date night on Netflix. Watch Shia Laboeuf meta his childhood on Amazon Prime. Or even watch an Akira Kurosawa classic on the Criterion Channel. All those choices too stressful for you? Feeling dumb? Got 70 minutes to kill? Well, Vudu’s got the VelociPastor, here to lay the biblical smackdown, power down your brain, and make you laugh with low budget nonsense.
I can’t believe this is the same medium used by a genius like Kurosawa, but here we go. Doug Jones (Gregory Cohan) is a priest traveling through China, disillusioned by tragedy. He stumbled upon an ancient artifact that empowers him to become a velociraptor when he gets angry, saving a hooker Carol (Alyssa Kempinski) along the way. Carol convinces Doug to use this power to fight crime, but Doug and his friend Father Stewart (Daniel Steere) are hesitant because of their Christian morality,
Movies like Sharknado have made this easy for Brendan Steere to make VelociPastor work. Find a blend of self awareness, cheesiness, and audacity, and people will forgive most of your low budget limitations. Steere mostly gets there. His self-awareness is his weak spot: he winks too aggressively, making his movie smug in its stupidity. However, he does balance that with some on point mockery, like a terrific opening gag about how low budget his movie is. I can’t believe I’m doing this, but, *sigh* like Spielberg in Jaws, he uses extreme restraint on showing us the VelociPastor in full ass kicking action until the climax of the movie, making that joke we’re all waiting for completely pay off.
The story is your superhero origin story basically, with Doug the Bruce Wayne and Carol the slutty Robin. Steere keeps the mythology vague so you don’t ask questions. But the characters for this type of film are not too badly written. Also thankfully, Gregory Cohan and Alyssa Kempinski sell the sh*t out of it, playing the movie completely straight, grounding their situation and winning over the audience. Cohan makes that moral dilemma of his feel pretty honest for a long time…until it’s time to…raptor up? Jurassimorph? I’ll keep work-shopping it.
It’s pure audacity where Steere wins you over though. The villains? Drug dealing christian ninjas: a series of words I didn’t know I wanted but am glad exist. This script isn’t The Usual Suspects but it does have some great stupid touches. There’s a useless flashback that’s only there for a decent punchline, a legitimately terrific plot twist that made me laugh out loud for a decent while, and one amazing line I’ll be repeating for months, maybe years, describing the origin of the pimp’s nickname: Frankie Mermaid.
Also smart of Steere is The VelociPastor’s runtime: 75 minutes. I say, you put this thing on if you’re killing time before an even you have to get to, or right before you go to bed, to decompress, sit back, and let Frankie Mermaid and the VelociPastor take you to B movie horror comedy nirvana for a little bit. Sadly, I’ll spoil this for you, no one sleeps with the VelociPastor. I guess Brendan Steere had to save something for the sequel.