By Jerry Roberts

October 18, 2002

"The first testament says 'Love Thy Neighbour'. The Second testament says 'An eye for an eye'. The third testament . . . KICKS ASS!!" - tagline

This may come as a shock but Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter is not the most blasphamus film that is going to end up on this site. No, that comes in the form of the abyssmal remake of Psycho. JCVH is, however, the funniest film on this site, a bizarre combination of action comedy and religious mind-bending in which Jesus himself does battle with an unholy legion of lesbian vampires.

The movie takes place out of time in Southern, California (where else?) where leather-clad night feeders make lunchmeat out of pedestrians dumb enough to walk around the city in the dead of night. Chief among these children of the night is Maxine Shreck (and if you don't get the joke in that name then I'm afraid I will have to revoke your Video Rental Card).

As the movie opens, Maxine is driving her latest victim's car toward a rising sun but, to our surprise, does not become food for the dust-buster. A sun-resistant vampire? How can this be? I'll tell you in a moment.

The unhealty plague of vampires greatly concerns two priests to decide that help may be needed to fill their shrinking congregation. So, they jump on their mo-ped and head down to the beach to ask for help from the title slayer. As we meet him, Jesus has apparently returned and now lives a blissful existence at the beach baptizing the wayward and giving out little bits of philosophy such as how a humble sandcastle is like the kingdom of Heaven (don't ask).

The priests arrive to get Jesus' help but before they can fill him in, they are attacked by a jeep-load of vampires. The J-Man has obviously spent some time training in a dojo somewhere because he can kick some butts. Wiping out all the vampires except Maxine (who escapes) he decides to make it his mission to rid the town of this unholy plague. Off on his mission, the son of God gets his hair trimmed and sheds the robes for more casual California dude-wear. And he doesn't forget his main squeeze, Mary Magnum whose outfit reveals that she may not have fully given up her former profession.

Taking up an apartment in the valley, Jesus is hard at work making wooden stakes when he is attacked by a carload (and when I say carload, I mean one car and thirty people) of atheists. Yes, atheists. Jes turns the old crane techique on them and they run like scared little pagans. This scene provides nothing to the movie except to inform us that the messiah don't take to no jive turkeys creepin' up on his turf.

Spotting Maxine at a hospital, Jesus and Mary follow her into a nearby hospital where they see a certain Dr. Praetorious doing an unholy experiment: Grafting the skin of dead lesbians onto the bodies of wounded vampires to make them sun-resistant. Why lesbians? Well, there are reasons that this movie is on my list.

But that's not all, there is a development even more bizarre then lesbian skin grafting. Oh, yes. When things look their darkest and it doesn't seem that Jesus' mission will succeed, God calls in a sidekick. And thus, into this chaos, flying in on his own airplane complete with theme music, comes the one and only El Santos!! That's right, the silver cowled, grapple-happy Mexican wrestler himself fights along side the lord of lords and wouldn't you know, they make a heck of a team!

Offended or not, you have to love a movie that strives to be this bad. Not just bad but ambitiously bad. It was directed be Lee Teamous, the brain who gave us the great but forgotten gem Harry Knuckles and the Tomb of the Aztec Mummy and movies like that and JCVH will either make him an underground legend or find him at the bottom of a river. I'm sure he know that he will have deserved which ever he gets.