VelociPastor (2017)

At about 11am on Tuesday I got a text from a friend advising me that this movie exists, a few hours later another friend was extolling its virtues on Facebook, after some initial dithering I started this movie around 7:50pm, by 8 it had won me over. 'VelociPastor' is about a Roman Catholic priest who travels to China after the death of his parents in an explosion, there he encounters an ancient artifact that gives him the power to turn into a velociraptor when angry, a prostitute then convinces him to use this ability to fight crime. Filmed for only $35,000 'VelociPastor' is more a high end amateur production then a low end professional one, and I mean that as compliment, it is far superior to something like say 'Sharknadio' which is it's distant cousin in the family of films with outrageous premises.

The film has moments of impressive editing, and one particular song I really enjoyed, elsewhere it has to play up its low production values and does that with tongue-in-check aplomb. The sequence of the priest's parents fiery death is simply done with a static shot of the side of a street with an 'Insert VFX' logo imposed over it. Though the movie has sequences set in China, Vietnam and what I presume to be upstate New York, each of these are filmed in what is clearly the exact same forest. The pastors preaching is shown from the audience's perspective, no establishing shots because they can't afford extra's.

Greg Cohan who plays the pastor Douglas Jones looks kind of like Michael C. Hall, he wisely chooses to play the part earnestly and gives some laugh out loud line readings, my favorite being "That's impossible, dinosaurs never existed, and even if they did I wouldn't turn into one." Alyssa Kempinski whose done perhaps the most 'real acting' of anyone in the cast is fine as the good hearted prostitute. Daniel Steere, who I suspect is the father of writer/director Brendan Steere plays Jones superior at the church Father Stewart, and Fernando Pacheco De Castro is at least moderately amusing as 1970's style pimp Frankie Mermaid. Perhaps you have to be in the right kind of mood for a movie like this, but I evidently was at the time I watched it because I thoroughly enjoyed this picture, it is better then it has the right to be and nicely and appropriately trim with a roughly 70 minute run time. Certainly guilty pleasure material. **1/2