Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter (2001)

Rating: B

Dir: Lee Gordon Demarbre
Star: Phil Caracas, Ian Driscoll, Jeff Moffet, Maria Moulton

If the title doesn’t grab you outright, the tagline will: “The power of Christ impales you”. What’s not to like about a film that combines the Son of God, a Mexican wrestling icon, lesbians, kung-fu and vampires? Oh, and did I mention that it’s a musical? Christ (Caracas) gets called in to derail a plan that is making vampires impervious to daylight by giving them skin transplants harvested from lesbians. Despite assistance from sidekick Mary Magnum (Moulton), Jesus gets his ass kicked by lead vamps Johnny Golgotha (Driscoll, who also wrote the script) and Maxine Schreck, so calls on an old pal, masked wrestler Santos (Moffet) for assistance – good thing too, as the film had been starting to flag at that point.

Undeniably cheap, all the sound is dubbed in, and no-one would mistake Caracas for Jet Li – or, indeed, any player for a martial arts student. Yet it has enough imagination and wit to cover the inadequacies, and then some, with moments of sheer genius among the cheese, such as the impromptu use of intestines as nunchakus. It’s also, of course, blasphemous, though anyone watching is unlikely to mind God appearing to his son in the form of a bowl of talking ice-cream. The fights are inventive, despite the lack of skill, particularly one in a bar where everything from chairs to toilet plungers are used to dispatch the vampiric crowd. Safe to say that if you’ve been interested enough to read this far down, then you’ll enjoy the movie. Perfect Sunday afternoon entertainment.