The title of this flick grabs you by the short-and-curlies and screams, “Watch me, motherfucker!” Your reaction, aside from, “Dude, leggo my ball hair and have an Altoid,” will probably be one of amusement with a touch of disappointment. Let’s face facts - a movie with a title this awesome is pretty much doomed from the get go not to live up to the promised awesomeness. As much as I’d love to tell you this is a 100% success story to the opposite effect, it ain’t to be. Here’s how it goes down.

A John the Baptist type narrator, who looks like a cross between Johnny Legend and the crazy bum from Hellraiser, spouts off some gospel passages. He’ll pop up throughout the movie like a Greek chorus, not always making a great deal of sense, but looking pretty damn cool doing it. The movie starts proper when we meet two punk-rock priests, who inform us that vampires have been killing lesbians, and there’s only one man who can stop them - Jesus. Seems he’s already made his second coming, and the priests find him baptizing people in a lake. They’re attacked by vampires, and Jesus defeats the vampires, but not before the priests are killed.

Jesus decides to modernize to better match his new surroundings, and here’s where the movie makes its biggest mistake. Jesus gets a haircut, shaves his beard off, pierces his ears, and discards his robes for modern garb. Now, aside from the fact that everyone calls him Jesus, he looks like just another dude, so when El Santo shows up later in the movie, it’s more like El Santo and Some Guy: Vampire Hunters. There are still plenty of good verbal Jesus jokes, but they don’t have the same impact coming from someone who doesn’t look like the stereotypical Anglo-Saxon version of Jesus. Considering the people who made the flick are obviously big into the punk scene, I’m sure it’s hilarious to them that they turned Jesus into a punker, but it doesn’t work too well for the rest of us. One of my favorite gags in the flick, completely unaffected by Jesus’s transformation, is the scene transitions, handled Batman-style with a spinning crucifix and a voice yelling “Jeeeeeessssuuuuuuuuus!”

Anyway, next we meet Maxine Shreck (ha ha), Johnny Golgotha (ha ha), and Dr. Praetorious, who are working on a way to make vampires able to walk in daylight. Seems a simple skin graft from one of the lesbian victims will bestow solar immunity on the lucky vampire recipient. Jesus meets up with Mary Magnum, an operative of the Church, and they confront Johnny, Maxine, and Dr. P. After Jesus and Mary get a vicious smack down from Max and Johnny, Mary is taken captive and Jesus limps off, to be nursed back to health by a transvestite. God appears to Jesus in his ice cream (yes, it is as goofy as it sounds) and tells him to call in his old buddy, the saint of the wrestling ring, El Santo. Santo arrives with his secretary, Gloria Oddbottom, and they head off to a nightclub which just happens to be filled with vampires. This is definitely the most amusing fight in the movie, with some very creative vampire deaths, including Santo flicking toothpicks into the vampires’ hearts. That, and the fact that the scat singer performing looks like a cross between Shane MacGowan and Maurice from the Gilmore Girls. Yes, I watch the Gilmore Girls, so shut the hell up. Santo winds up captured, and Max and Johnny show up at Jesus’s apartment with a vamped-out Mary, taking him to a junkyard. Just as Johnny is about to kill Jesus, Santo breaks free and they kick some vampire ass. Jesus takes a stake through the chest from one of the vampires, and the holy light that pours out destroys Johnny and his minions. Mary, Maxine, and several other of the vampire women are healed, and everyone walks away happy.

Like I said before, it’s not perfect, but it’s still damn cool, and after the initial disappointment wears off, it’ll grow on you. There’s plenty of clever jokes to enjoy on repeat viewings, and the musical numbers (especially the first one right after Jesus gets a haircut) are goddamn hilarious. It’d make a great double feature with Greaser’s Palace. When all is said and done, it’s okay, it’s all right, everybody gets laid tonight!