Which Was Worse #7
The VelociPastor vs. Shark Exorcist
Hello and welcome to Cinema Wellman! I am your host David, and today we have the 7th episode in our “Which Was Worse?” series, so there’s nothing good to see here today!
Our “WWW?” series takes two definitely bad movies and pits them against each other to decide which was worse.
So far, we’ve paired up bad shark movies (more of those to come in the future!), airplane movies, haunted vehicle movies, movies that were blatant rip-offs of blockbusters, captive animal movies, elevator movies, and a three-way holiday battle!
Today our subject is the clergy as we present The VelociPatstor vs. Shark Exorcist!
It's "A Man of the Claw" vs. "Satan Has Jaws!"
The first test, as always, is putting the films through the official Cinema Wellman “Which Was Worse Rubric” where they can “earn” 1 to -3 points in five different categories.
After that we will rely on the painstaking notes I took while watching which are never edited.
No spoiler alerts needed; both of these movies were straight up garbage.
There’s really no good place to begin, so we’ll begin with The VelociPastor.
The VelociPastor (2018)
NR/75 m/IMDb: 5.1/directed by Brendan Steere
The Official Which Was Worse? Rubric
The VelociPastor will begin with a score of -12
*IMDb: “After losing his parents, a priest travels to China where he inherits a mysterious ability that allows him to turn into a dinosaur. At first horrified by this new power, a hooker convinces him to use it to fight crime. And ninjas.
*” Rated X - by an all-Christian jury” (-1)
*Seconds after we meet the pastor, his parents are killed when their car explodes. They don’t show any of it, but the screen includes the words, “VFX: Burning Car” (-3)
*Here's a sample of some of the wonderful dialogue:
” Your parents died. That’s what parents do.”
Carol: “I don’t know much about God.” Pastor: “I don’t know much about dinosaurs.”
” Good thing that ninja told us where his hideout was before he died.” (-3)
*Written, edited, and directed by Brendan Steere” so we know exactly who to blame. (-1)
*The priest meets up with a woman with an arrow through the center of her chest. He asks her, “Are you hurt?” (-2)
*Carol’s pimp is straight out of the 70’s. Red felt hat, leather fur lined coat (shirtless), abusive, combover. I read that the actor picked his own wardrobe which is no surprise. (-2)
*The dinosaur effects are so bad; I honestly don’t know what to compare them to. (-4)
*To make Carol, the sex worker, seem alluring, she blows on her coffee? She’s turning tricks to put herself through college, in case you were wondering. (-1)
*The zooming in and out of the camera on faces is one of the first things they expressly told us NOT to do in film school. (-1)
*No wonder he doesn’t know much about dinosaurs. This priest doesn’t believe they ever existed. Why was that added to this? It’s only mentioned once! (-1)
*When the priest doesn’t have anything to wear, Carol dresses him in an orange knit miniskirt. Carol is a sex worker and there isn’t one bit of men’s clothing in her apartment? (-1 for this happening, -3 for dressing the priest in an orange knit miniskirt)
*I was wondering if the costume department ever saw a priest in real life. (-2)
*The pimp’s name is Frankie Mermaid, and he goes to confession. He confesses that he took candy from a baby and then threw that baby in the river. He is also conveniently the person who killed the pastor’s parents. (-4)
*Pimp is murdered by the pastor IN the confessional booth WITHOUT the pastor turning into a dinosaur. So, he’s just a normal murderer? (-2)
*I directed better actors when I ran the drama club at the C.G.S. (-1)
*The songs on the soundtrack had to have been recorded by friends of the director. There’s no other way they’d be that bad. (-1)
*Stupid montage of the priest doing religious stuff (giving communion to CAROL! Ew!), working out, and killing people. (-3)
*There are two separate scenes that are just made up of people laughing. Any laughing I did during this movie was AT them, and not WITH them. (-2)
*This older priest was in the Vietnam War?!?! When does this movie think the Vietnam War took place? The war flashback takes forever and includes the worst landmine death ever recorded in film history. The “effect” must have included a Home Depot bucket of blood. (-4)
*The ninjas from the opening scene show up at some point, so they must have made the trip from China. Some of these ninjas have British accents, and these ninjas deal coke. (-2)
*There really are NO “special” effects in this movie. The dinosaur looks like one of those inflatable Halloween costumes. Quick cuts substitute for FX. (-4)
*A sex scene shot using a SPLIT SCREEN?!?! (-2)
*Post coital ninja invasion. Three ninjas jump through wide open windows in Carol’s bedroom, and Carol and the priest kill all three. Didn’t even take them long. No weapons. Carol is quite the ninja killer for a sex worker/student with zero training. (-3)
*At one point the priest has “the force?” Why? And he has it without even bothering to turn into a dinosaur. Why does he ever bother to turn into a dinosaur? (-3)
*The non-dinosaur priest tears the bad guy’s head off, and there’s no blood. None at all. Zero blood. And it’s clearly a mannequin head. (-2)
*It ends with a Gandhi quote about the elimination of violence. Gandhi also would have been for the elimination of this movie. (-1)
*I was going to cut it some slack because it was a student film, but so was THX1138 and that’s not nonsensical garbage. (-3)
*Carol takes a samurai sword to the chest and survives. What is she wearing in the hospital? Her own clothes under a johnny? What hospital does that? Why is the surgeon smoking? A title card reads “SHE’S FINE!” (-4)
*You can’t decide you made a comedy after you film it. (-3)
Final Score for The VelociPastor -81
Shark Exorcist (2014)
NR/71 m/IMDb: 1.3/directed by Donald Farmer
The Official Which Was Worse? Rubric
Shark Exorcist will begin with a score of -13
*IMDb: “A demonic nun unleashes holy hell when she summons the devil to possess a great white shark.”
*The opening scene shows a nun stab a young girl and drop her in the water for the shark. (-1)
*” Filmed & Edited by Jamie Nichols,” “Written & Directed by Donald Farmer.” Good. Two people to blame for this one. (-2)
*With movies like this, it’s hard to determine which is worse, the acting or the script. (-2)
*Girl #1 is attacked by the shark, but there’s very little blood. She’s only in the hospital a couple of days. “That’s the thing about almost dying, Emily. It’s a buzzkill.” (-2)
*Host of a show called “Ghost Whackers” gets possessed by Satan, who is also possessing the shark. He gets around. (-2)
*I really want the shark to kill every single person in this movie. (-2)
*” Respect for Acting,” and “The Art of Acting” are two books that are visible in the priest’s office. (-2)
*You know how you can’t record at the beach because the wind messes up the sound? The makers of this movie did not! (-3)
*The priest in this movie is the brother of the sleazeball that picked up hitchhiking Girl #1 and was later eaten by the shark. How convenient. (-1)
*None of the shark attacks are shown. We see the victim. We see the bad CGI shark. We see the victim go under. We see red water. We see the intact corpse floating covered in blood. (-3)
*At times it appears as if entire scenes are missing. (-2)
*There’s VOMIT! And it’s bad vomit. No vomit looks like that. (-3)
*They add a sorority initiation to this mess? Why?! (-2)
*Another shark attack just shows (bad) reactions of the witnesses. (-2)
*The soundtrack is louder than the dialogue in many scenes. (-3)
*Has anyone ever seen a real priest?! Why doesn’t anyone dress these movie priests correctly? This one is wearing a quasi-turtleneck. If you’re watching today on YouTube, I’m dressed more like a priest today than either of these movie priests! (-3)
*Two characters are shown wandering around a carnival with no dialogue. They’re pantomiming everything to each other. Maybe the sound department forgot the mics that day. (-3)
*So is Girl victim #1 now a “shark?” She has shark teeth once in a while and loves to be in the water. Is this a water vampire story? (-3)
*The exorcism is lit by Tiki torches. (-1)
*More vomit. (-2)
*Girl victim #1 kisses a guy and now he’s possessed? What? (-2)
*I think a shark came down from space at one point. (-2)
*If you add up the screen time of people walking, jogging, and driving (without dialogue), I swear it has to be over 10 minutes. This is a 71-minute movie! (-3)
*A girl in a bikini is stalked. She’s sunbathing in a park and the stalker stands over her and takes twenty pictures of her. We then watch him scroll through EVERY ONE of the pictures he took. (-4)
*The nun is back, and she stabs another girl. (-1)
*The nun then licks the blade of the bloody knife. More than once, and then offers a rather pedestrian “Hail Satan.” (-3)
*The shark flies out of the water at the end. No explanation. (-3)
*Nothing at all is resolved. Absolutely nothing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that in a movie before. Zero attempt to wrap things up. (-4)
*And there’s a post credits scene that’s OVER five minutes (remember, this is a 71-minute movie!) and involves a girl at a gift shop in an aquarium playing with shark dolls and ends with her getting red eyes and vomiting. (-3)
Final Score for Shark Exorcist -82
So, the “winner” of WWW7 is The Shark Exorcist!! In a vomit walk off!! That last scene won/lost the match!
This is kind of a surprise because I hated VelociPastor more than I hated Shark Exorcist.
But like I always said when I was teaching, “Live by the rubric, die by the rubric, unless the psychotic nun with the big knife kills you first.”
Well, that is a wrap from Cinema Wellman and “Which Was Worse? #7”
All-time WWW statistics will soon be available to no one’s surprise.
We had originally planned our salute to airplane movies today, but more films needed to be screened in order to successfully pilot an Air Wellman airplane.
We will be flying the friendly skies with Wellman Airlines two weeks from today unless a door blows off mid-flight.
Next week we’ll be back, and we hope you’ll join us as we here at Cinema Wellman admit that we really don’t know anything at all about film.
I hope you’ll join us in the confessional and, until then, take care.
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