By Keri O’Shea
Some of you may remember, a few weeks back, we featured a nifty and very gory short film by the title of Brutal Relax? Well, wouldn’t you know, but filmmakers Adrián Cardona and David Muñoz have only gone and taken their madcap visions of the walking dead back to the time of Christ…
This is, at least at first, a very recognisable Jesus (played by Marc Velasco) with some very recognisable followers. Ours not to ponder how a Middle Eastern man transmogrified (I love that word) in popular consciousness into a benign, blue-eyed hippy with facial hair, but regardless of that, Velasco is our Jesus, and he’s obviously having difficulty keeping a handle on the whole miracle thing. So much so that, as per the story of Lazarus, when Jesus brings him back to life he turns out to be a Bible-era zombie. Damn.
You’d better take a look for yourselves…
Yep, so before long we have Pharisean zombies (understandable), Roman Legionary zombies (equally so) and…cowboy zombies? Hey, we’re dealing with the dead coming back to life here, so it wouldn’t do to get too skittish about anachronisms. The point is that our Lord and Saviour has a situation on his hands and he has to do what he can to re-establish order. Like Brutal Relax before it, this film is played for laughs, as well as being endearingly tongue-in-cheek and splatter-happy. I’ll admit to laughing out loud at the multiplying fishes as weapons idea; why not employ a piranha as a means of eviscerating an undead cowboy?
This is not a philosophical work by any stretch of the imagination, then, but if you like your films shot through with flying limbs and various other splatstick humour, then Fist of Jesus is a blessing. Cardona and Muñoz know how to have fun with their screenplays and hey, if you like this film, it turns out they’re hoping to make it into a feature-length, so by all means go and show your support at their website or at their Facebook page. Amen.