Halloween month is all about watching some classic horror films and catching up on the more recent entries to the canon you might have missed in cinemas, but part of is also about watching some glorious low-budget shlock.
A good example of this is 2018’s The VelociPastor, which recently became available to watch with a Prime Video subscription.
Although it might be hard to tell from the title, the film is about a pastor who (stay with us here) transforms into a dinosaur.
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Having received the mysterious power during a trip abroad, he is at first horrified by his new ability, but is convinced by a hooker to use his power to fight crime. As we see in the trailer, that means scrapping with ninjas who like to hang out in tents in the park in broad daylight.
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Unsurprisingly, fans like the film more than the critics, with Rotten Tomatoes scores of 75% positive and 59% positive, respectively.
“Velocipastor knows exactly what it is: a sincere parody that is genuinely funny,” Nerdist wrote. “Some of the dialogue is so good, plenty of lines will be fun to yell out in a theater.”
“[Lead actor Greg] Cohan is disarmingly charming, and the laughs and gore pop up regularly,” said Nashville Scene, while Pajiba called it “slyly sophisticated and delightfully dumb”.
Flickering Myth didn’t think it hit the mark, writing that: “Even with the over the top silliness it’s clearly embracing and relishing in, it’s not quite able to be convincing enough as a spoof comedy of a B movie.”
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The film has proven to have quite the legs since it first released. The filmmakers had a panel and screening at New York Comic-con over the weekend, where one of them walked around in a dinosaur costume (of course).
A new DVD and Blu-ray edition taken from the 4K master has also just been announced, while a sequel wrapped up filming in 2023 and recently had its music and practical FX shots all sorted.
The VelociPastor is available to stream now on Prime Video.
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Joe Anderton is a freelance news writer at Digital Spy, having worked there since 2016. In his time, he’s covered a host of live events and interviewed celebrities big and small. A big fan of TV and movies both mainstream and obscure, Joe also enjoys video games and in particular PlayStation. Joe currently does not use Twitter, but he only ever used it to tell people to watch the film Help! I’m a Fish.