“Dinosaurs never existed, and even if they did, I don’t transform into one.” Unfortunately for him, our hero is wrong on both counts. This may also be the only line of effective religious satire in the absurd dinosaur-priest themed cheapie The VelociPastor (2018). Mostly using religious trappings as window dressing, this B-movie, written, directed and edited by Brendan Steere, offers exactly what it promises: a minister who turns into a carnivorous dinosaur. Nobody watches a flick with a title like this and expects incisive social commentary, but that one jab at Young Earth creationists packs more of a wallop than any of the baddies with whom our prehistoric clergyman does battle.
The VelociPastor took $36,000 to make and gives exactly zero fucks. It kicks things off by wearing its micro-budget on its sleeve, cheekily splashing “VFX: Car on Fire” across the screen in big block letters in lieu of an actual vehicle in flames. The rubber dino suit eventually used in hand-to-hand combat scenes against a gang of coke-selling Christian ninjas looks much worse than you’re imagining right now. In a flashback scene to the Vietnam War, filmed in what appears to be a city park, soldiers wandering in the background can be seen wearing jeans. Following various decapitations, obvious mannequin heads are sent rolling or are held aloft with no effort given to make them look like the person killed. At one point a woman steps on a landmine and is reduced to a splatter of so much red paint.
This is a film that is intentionally bad, and successfully so. The paper-thin plot is fueled by revenge. After young priest Doug Jones (a scenery-chewing Greg Cohan) witnesses his smiling, waving parents get blown up in that aforementioned effects-less car explosion, he briefly questions his faith and then follows the advice of a more senior minister (Daniel Steere) to travel halfway across the globe to do some soul-searching. He ends up backpacking in China, where he happens upon a woman (Claire Hsu) dying of an arrow wound. She hands him a dinosaur claw relic, with which Doug promptly scratches himself, thereby inadvertently imbuing him with transformative were-dino powers.
Back home, he starts having strange dreams. One night he saves Carol (Alyssa Kempinski), a prostitute with a heart of gold, from some toughs, and she informs him that those aren’t dreams he’s been having. He is, in fact, turning into a dinosaur at night and eating people. So naturally, the prostitute and the priest decide to team up so Doug can wield his power for good and rid the world of evildoers in the most preposterous way possible. At the top of the list is Frankie Mermaid (they call him that because he’s “swimming in b*tches”), a greasy pimp who also killed Doug’s parents for some reason. But ultimately, it’s a showdown with the Christian ninja drug-dealers, and an unlikely familial connection among their ranks, that finally prompts a full view of a transformed Doug in cheap, rubber dinosaur suit form.
Like similar oddball schlock that could only dream it had the budget of Sharknado, such a movie existing and being readily available to stream on Amazon Prime almost feels impossible. That someone actually followed through on this goofy idea to produce a feature-length artifact may actually lead one to believe in miracles. There was even pre-Covid chatter about a spiritual sequel from Steere, with the working title of Outback Dracula, in development. Despite hammy acting, no-effort practical effects and a plot that feels like the sugar-fueled daydreams of a hyperactive eight-year-old, The VelociPastor finds redemption in how faithfully it embraces camp.
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