Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter (2001)

Directed by Lee Demarbre

Featuring Phil Caracas, Maria Moulton, Murielle Varhelyi, Ian Driscoll, Tim Devries, Josh Grace and Jeff Moffet

When the lesbians of Ottawa are targeted by vampires, Jesus Christ is on the case – using his holy martial arts skills to battle against the bloodthirsty undead killers.

Near the start of this movie there’s a scene where Jesus fights a bunch of female vampires on a beach, doubling over in pain when one of them kicks him in the balls. He still manages to defeat them, and goes into the city to get a haircut and ear piercings. He then bursts into a song and dance number (the only one in the film) about his mission to stop the vampires. After watching this ridiculous series of events, I knew I was going to like this movie.

It’s an obviously low budget, lo-fi kind of movie, with an ‘all the filmmakers’ friends acted in this’ kind of feel too it. But I think that this works in its favour, and I found it kind of charming. It’s a comedy, and as deliberately silly as the name suggests, but I did think it was quite funny.

It loses momentum a little after the first 20 minutes or so, but if you enjoy the idea of Jesus Christ (along with sidekick Mary Magnum, and later a Mexican wrestler named Santos) comedically fighting vampires, atheists, a mad doctor and other ne’er do wells, you will probably enjoy this film. There’s not much to it besides the various fight scenes, interspersed with silliness like Jesus going shopping to replace his robes with street clothes, or being invited on stage to do a song/drum solo in a club. But despite the simple concept it’s mostly pretty amusing, helped along by an original score that I also found pretty funny at times. One of my favourite moments involves God the Father communicating with his son via a talking icecream sundae.

Although I suppose the concept of Jesus as a vampire hunter could be seen as sacrilegious, I thought the film had a pretty positive attitude towards Christianity while also mostly being progressive towards the queer women in the film (although arguably less so towards a character billed as ‘the transvestite’, who is more or less treated as a joke).

Worth watching? It’s a stupid movie, but it’s supposed to be. And it’s amusingly so, if your viewing standards aren’t too high.

Truth in advertising? 5/5.

Cutie Honey (2004)

AKA: キューティーハニー

Directed by Anno Hideaki

Featuring Sato Eriko, Ichikawa Mikako, Murakami Jun, Oikawa Mitsuhiro, Katagiri Hairi and Sakai Eisuke

Our heroine Cutie Honey is an incompetent office lady by day, but also secretly a superhero, able to transform her appearance when she presses the pink heart on her necklace. When robberies occur and beautiful women start disappearing around Tokyo, Honey fights back against the Panther Claw group who seem to be involved with these crimes. In turn, a police inspector starts following Honey due to her association with the Panther Claw after she is seen fighting them. Honey must defeat the Panther Claw and their supernatural leader Sister Jill to set things right and also rescue her professor uncle, who they have captured.

I will admit to not being familiar with the Cutie Honey manga or anime that this film is based on, so I can’t speak to how it compares to those previous versions. But I enjoyed this film much more than I had expected to, having had pretty low expectations for a cartoon to live action adaptation, which I had heard was primarily a vehicle for showcasing the physical charms of the actor playing Honey (and honestly, there is at least a little truth to this last bit).

Yes, it was light and silly. It also had a frequently confusing, not very coherent plot. But overall it was a pretty enjoyable piece of campy comedy, with deliberately cheesy and cartoonish special effects that often make it feel more like a cartoon than a live action movie. It also has a few short animated sequences, a villain who bursts into a random song and dance number, and a surprisingly philosophical climax, which nicely focuses on the love that has grown between two female characters instead of the usual expected heterosexual romance. All in all, it’s a sweet, fluffy, funny piece of light entertainment that somehow also managed to feel a bit deeper than that beneath it all.

Worth watching? Yes – it’s bright, there’s usually a lot going on, and it’s lots of fun.

Truth in advertising? 5/5.

Steak (2007)

Directed by Quentin Dupieux

Featuring Eric Judor, Ramzy Bedia, Jonathan Lambert, Vincent Belorgey, Sebastian Akchoté and Laurent Nicolas

When teenaged Georges snaps and shoots several of his classmates, his best friend Blaise ends up taking the fall. After seven years in a psychiatric institution, Blaise rejoins society to find that things have changed: it is normal and expected for people to undergo extensive cosmetic surgery, and Georges has joined the milk-drinking Chivers gang. Shunned by his only friend Georges for not being cool enough to join the Chivers, Blaise decides to do whatever it takes to gain their acceptance.

This film is certainly very odd, being set in a strange and off-kilter retro-future. The setting is a blend of different time periods, with cars from the 70s and 80s, and the Chivers gang being very 1950s-ish. Add in the preponderance of plastic surgery, assorted absurd conversations and bizarre situations, and the gang’s penchant for unusual games (which are a mix of mental arithmetic and beating each other with a cricket bat) and you have a weird mix indeed. Underlying the satire of American college movies and the odd comedy is an atmosphere often vaguely filled with dread.

Although there are some bizarrely funny moments, I felt that this film really dragged on. Only just making it through the first half, it improved somewhat and gained some momentum during the second half of the film. But the film does not really contain enough laughs to sustain it as a comedy, nor enough plot to sustain it as any other genre. With this being a French-language film I am not sure whether there may have been something lost in translation. I am also not familiar with the starring comedy team Eric and Ramzy, so perhaps there is some context or expectation that I am not quite getting. But despite really enjoying some of Quentin Dupieux’s other supremely strange films, this one fell quite flat for me, with only a few moments of humour to redeem it.

Worth watching? Not really: it had a few very funny scenes, but overall dragged quite a bit and felt quite inconsequential in the end.

Truth in advertising? Although to be truthful I am not sure why the film has this title, it works well enough given the absurdity of the whole thing. 3.5/5.

Supermen of Malegaon (2008)

Directed by Faiza Ahmad Khan

‘We don’t have the facilities, but we are making films. That’s what is special.’

Times are tough in the small Indian town of Malegaon. Many of the inhabitants work hard operating mechanical looms, but regular power failures make it difficult for them to make ends meet. At the end of the working week there is no entertainment in Malegaon apart from watching movies, so the town is a little movie obsessed. Against this setting, ex-video parlour owner Nasir creates ultra-low budget film remakes as a hobby. After remaking several Bollywood films as spoofs set in Malegaon (filmed on video and edited using two VCRs) the acclaim he receives locally encourages him to try his first Western remake: his own version of Superman, starring the almost emaciated Shafique.

This documentary follows the production of Malegaon Ka Super Man through all its trials and tribulations, not limited to budgetary problems, experimenting with green screens and zero-budget special effects (my favourite being shots of Superman flying being created by seating the actor on a motorbike with the cameraman seated behind him, filming over his back as be pretends to fly), and dealing with the difficulties of finding an actress to play the leading lady (sexist cultural attitudes entrenched by poverty and lack of education confine women in Malegaon to the home, so an actress is eventually hired from another nearby town). In his role as Superman, Shafique is long suffering, putting up with being pushed along by a truck while wearing roller skates, being dunked in milk and muddy water, being pulled along while hanging out the back window of a rickshaw, climbing the outside of a building (seemingly without safety precautions), and ‘saving’ drowning children when he cannot swim himself. Although Nasir long believed that it only took a single person behind the scenes to make a film, it is really heartwarming to watch the crew come together to make their movie, especially knowing that this is all a hobby for them.

One of the things that I love most about b-grade and fringe film are the movies which seem more home made; where you can sense that nothing much besides the desire to make a movie went into the production of the film. The very first film I reviewed for this site, The Astounding She-Monster, is one such backyard epic. I love these films because whenever I feel like things are going wrong in life, I think ‘well, if those people could manage to make a movie despite not really having the means to do so, I can get through whatever hassles I am having now – and maybe even will have created something to show for it at the end’. Supermen of Malegaon is like an extreme version of this – despite poverty and turmoil, Nasir and his crew come together and create a film celebrating their community. It is even more uplifting for this, without being cloying or sentimental in any way. This documentary is a fascinating glimpse into an unknown cottage industry, and a great story of determination in the face of adversity.

Worth watching? Yes – I highly recommend it.

Truth in advertising? Yes – it is both about a Superman remake, and the sometimes almost superhuman lengths the crew go to in order to get their film made. 5/5.