“If I'm not back in five minutes, call the Pope.”

And so I'm back from outer space, and you can tell by that sad look upon my face that you should've changed that stupid lock and thrown away the—No. Wait. That's not right. Where was I?

Oh yes. Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter. It's like a 1980s Troma movie, but shot on 1970s film stock, except shot in the late 1990s in Ottawa, Ontario, and starring a few women who look like Suicide Girls.

This movie is WEIRD and DUMB. But is it the good kind of Weird and Dumb?

Story

Stop me if you've heard this before, but a bunch of vampires, led by Maxine Schreck (Murielle Varhelyi), Johnny Golgotha (Ian Driscoll) and Dr. Praetorious (Josh Grace), are killing and harvesting Canadian lesbians, so that they can wear their skin to gain immunity to sunlight. The only thing standing in their way? Savior of mankind and martial arts master Jesus of Nazareth (Phil Caracas) joined by his allies Mary Magnum (Maria Moulton) and silver-masked Mexican wrestler Santos Enmascardo de Plata (Jeff Moffet, and a nod to the actual El Santo luchador/movie star/vampire fighter)

Visuals

This was director Lee Demarbre's first feature length film, and it is extremely aware of its own amateurishness. I don't just mean the film quality. That's actually in its favor, since it really does remind me of 70s and 80s B-movies where the night scenes are poorly lit and the editing isn't quite as tight as it should be. The self-awareness expresses itself in the fight scenes, which are obviously not done by professional stunt people, but make up for it in goofiness. Jesus fights some vampires on the beach. Jesus fights a clown car's worth of Atheists in a public park who just showed up to pick a fight with him for no reason. Jesus & Santos kill a bar full of vampires with drumsticks, crutches, toothpicks and other improvised stakes. Dr. Praetorious (another nod to old cinema) fights Jesus by improvising organs as weapons.

Negatively, the pacing of the movie is rather awful. It's only 85 minutes long but so many scenes drag on much longer than necessary, particularly the “Jesus shops at a thrift store for hip new clothes” scene that wears out the gag really, really fast. The fight in the park with the atheists I mentioned? Completely irrelevant to the plot. The “Jesus Signal” scene transition? That gets old too.

Writing

Like the directing, there's a lot of hit and miss in Ian Driscoll's script. Some of the elements are great, and really show a deep love for genre films of the past. The whole presence of Santos is really funny, and not just because “haha, here's a luchador.” Johnny Golgotha is an AMAZING name for a douchebag vampire and I am insanely jealous. The crazy narrator-preacher that pops up randomly to rant at the viewer through his awe inspiring beard? That's pretty great too (and the best acting in the movie, at least... I hope it was acting). Unfortunately, there's lots more jokes that fall flat, like the running gag of someone grabbing the butt of Santos' appropriately named Gloria Oddbottom.

Sound

Everything is dubbed. Everything. A lot doesn't quite synch up with the lip movements, which can be funny. The occasional *bonk* sound effect in combat isn't very funny. The songs? Also not great.

Conclusion

Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter tries to walk a fine line between telling its own absurd grindhouse-esque tale with a straight face but then constantly winks at the camera that it knows its awful. It's shameless enthusiasm is commendable, and speaking from experience, it is damn challenging to make an intentionally cheesy film, so tremendous props for achieving that. Yet as a comedy, it ultimately falls flat for its dearth of good jokes. The concept is good fodder for absurdist humor, but it doesn't quite deliver in a way that, say, Tongan Ninja does, a contemporary movie that it shares a LOT of similarities with. Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter feels like it makes a much funnier trailer than feature.

“Ahhh! Take off you hoser!”

So, like, good day and welcome to our website.

While Saturday Night Live was a huge vehicle for getting comedians in the national spotlight here in the US in the 70’s and 80’s, Canada had its own sketch comedy show that did the same thing up north. Second City Television isn’t nearly as famous down here in the States, but it was where people like John Candy, Eugene Levy, Harold Ramis, Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas got their starts, so yeah, the show is a little bit more than a rambling way to introduce the next movie. Two of the characters created for SCTV were Bob & Doug McKenzie, added to the show’s lineup because the network wanted “identifiably Canadian” content on the show. The result were two idiot brothers who drank beer, wore tuques all the time and said “eh” at the end of sentences a lot. This was immensely popular, leading to 1983’s The Adventures of Bob & Doug McKenzie: Strange Brew.

Plot
Okay, so we’ve got two brothers in Toronto who drink beer a lot, don’t have jobs but sort of have a cable access show and start the movie off by airing their disaster of a movie before an audience that hates it. Needing money (and needing to buy their dad some more beer) they put a mouse in a bottle in an effort to try and get free beer from the brewery, which happens to be going through some regime change. The old owner was murdered by his brother and the owner’s daughter is trying to assume ownership (and find out if her dad was murdered and by whom). Allied with the usurper is the brewery’s Brewmeister, who happens to also own the asylum next door and is working on a special mind control beer with which he will TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!! Hockey is also involved. All of this happens in 90 minutes. Now, sharp viewers will notice that this movie has a lot of plot points, characters and names lifted right out of Hamlet. Not the mind control beer, obviously, but Shakespeare wasn’t perfect, eh?

Characters
Bob McKenzie: Rick Moranis plays the shorter, meeker brother. He’s sort of the idea man, but he also gets pushed around a lot by his brother. He does, however, have an incredible capacity to drink more beer than is humanly possible, which comes in handy. Bob McKenzie also takes a shine to the heroine of the movie, but its not reciprocated.

Doug McKenzie: Dave Thomas (the actor, not the guy who founded Wendy’s) is the dumber, more aggressive brother. He’s also something of a idiot MacGyver, able to intuitively get technology to work for him. Individually, the brothers don’t have much personality, but together the banter flows fast and furious and they play off of each other brilliantly. As far as Shakespeare analogues, they’re the Rosencrantz & Guildenstern of the movie, except main characters and not killed off by Hamlet’s douchebaggery.

Pam Elsinore: Lynne Griffin plays the heiress to the Elsinore Brewery. Obviously a Hamlet analogue, she’s a plucky, stubborn lass who wants to take over the family business like dad intended.
Jean “Rosie” LaRose: Angus McInnes plays an employee of the brewery and also a patient at the insane asylum who was a hockey star before a mental breakdown. He’s a nice guy, a little slow on the uptake, but, well, generally more competent than the McKenzies. Bob looks up to him (since he has Rosie’s rookie card). He and Pam take a liking to each other. That and the mental sickness makes him this movie’s Ophelia.

Hosehead: The McKenzie Brothers’ dog, a large, beer loving pooch that gets very, very, very protective of his beer.

Claude Elsinore: Paul Dooley plays the sniveling, weasely villain who takes over the brewery after his brother’s death. Well, yeah, obviously he did it. He’s Claudius (hell, his wife’s name is Gertrude) and a very ineffectual villain, but also gets a lot of funny lines as he blatantly tries to deflect any culpability on his part.

Brewmeister Smith: Max von Sydow plays the real villain of the movie, a doctor of psychology and the Brewmeister at Elsinore. Smith is the guy behind the guy, and von Sydow plays him up as a serious, credible mad scientist who can also crush people’s heads with his bare hands. He’s actually really badass in this movie. He also has an assistant named Ted (Brian McConnachie) who works the computers and gets the crap beaten out of himself frequently.

Dad McKenzie: The cantankerous old dad of the brothers, which wouldn’t be worth mention except for the fact that Mel FRIGGIN’ Blanc did his voice, making him sound a lot like Yosemite Sam. This is awesome.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas, the movie knows its not high art, so it really goes more for comical effects. The special effects are pretty low budget and the matte painting backgrounds are obviously so. This isn’t to say the movie isn’t visually interesting in places. The hockey game in the basement of the facility, where lunatics hopped up (zing!) on mind control beer put on odd plastic armor (black and white are the teams) and play hockey to synthesizer music. Its…odd and actually a little creepy, but also pretty cool.

Writing
Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas again, which makes sense. Dialog is sharp and funny and the plot spirals wildly into the realm of the absurd. Sure, it wouldn’t be able to hold up to serious scrutiny (there’s a hell of a lot that just isn’t physically possible for a comedy that takes place in “the real world”), but here, rule of funny supersedes fixing plot holes. As far as stupid comedies go, this one’s really good with some great comedic bits (like a dog flying off to drink beer, a lawyer who physically fights off the press with kung fu, and an underwater gag that- no, I won’t spoil that one).

Sound
The original score by Charles Fox is okay but nothing particularly worthwhile or memorable. There are a lot of moments where the music gets appropriately creepy (for comical effect). The title song, “Strange Brew” that plays over the beginning credits by Ian Thomas is about as interesting as the soundtrack gets.

Conclusion
Strange Brew is a really funny movie and totally recommended with the caveat that it’s a willingly stupid movie that refuses to take itself seriously. I mean, it has Max von Sydow plotting to TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!! with mind control beer. If the thought of that appeals to you, you’ll have a good time. If not, you’ve been warned.