VelociPastor (2018) is a clear cut example of a B-Movie.

The film follows a pastor named Doug Jones (Greg Cohan), who has the ability to turn into a dinosaur. He gained this ability after taking a trip to China, during which he stumbled upon a dying woman, who was being chased by ninjas. She gives him a mysterious artifact that he accidentally bleeds on while fleeing from the ninjas. 

When Doug returns to the states he is convinced by a hooker named Carol (Alyssa Kempinski) to use his prehistorical abilities for good, that means killing and eating criminals with his dinosaur powers. However things are not all as it may seem, as he’s also being tracked by the surprisingly racially diverse clan of ninjas from China, who are also a drug cartel. So Doug must evade the drug cartel ninjas from China, eat those who would harm others, and keep on top of his priestly duties.

The film was originally just a trailer the director, Brendan Steere, made in film school and put online. The trailer then became a viral hit so Steere decided to make it a feature-length film.

The movie was made with only $35,000-$45,000, which isn’t surprising to anyone who has seen the film. The effects are laughable, everyone is either over or underacting, and the plot is nonsensical. All of these factors add up to one of those films that’s so bad, it’s good. 

The film is clearly a throwback to grindhouse films, where the writers and directors would go all out making whatever film they wanted. This typically meant lots of gore and sexual content. VelociPastor has barely any sexual content, aside from saying that both prostitutes and pimps exist. The gore is so fake looking that it’ll more likely make the audience laugh instead of hurl. A big clue to VelociPastor being a throwback to those types of films is that, before the film was developed, they would put it in a 200 degree oven for 10 minutes to give the film an aged look,  and that the filmmaker manually inserted film scratches. Older grindhouse films were made in the ‘60s and ‘70s and were made on small budgets, meaning they would be like this if watched today.

The problem is that the film’s budget doesn’t have the budget to make convincing gore or a convincing dinosaur, which adds to the comedy. Depending on the scene, the dinosaur that Doug turns into either looks like it’s made out of paper mache or was a costume bought at their local Party City.

There are many plot points in the film that either come out of nowhere or are so out there that the audience will keep asking themselves “What is happening?” A great example of this is when a side character named Father Stewart (Daniel Steere) has a prolonged Vietnam flashback that adds nothing to the plot. The actors are neither dressed like they’re in Vietnam, nor does it look like they are in Vietnam, and they clearly just filmed the scene in a forest near one crew member’s home.

What also helps make the film such a memorable flick is all the weird characters, like Frankie Mermaid (Fernando Pacheco De Castro), a pimp who’s so cartoonishly evil, he literally steals candy from babies. Another great example is the leader of the drug cartel ninjas from China, Wei Chan (Jiechang Yang). His motives for why he’s selling cocaine (which I’m not going to spoil) are amazingly backwards and somehow involve religious motives.

If you can jive with its ridiculous plot; VelociPastor can be a very fun time filled with a lot of laughs, unintentional or otherwise.