After the death of his parents in a car fire, Pastor Doug Jones (Greg Cohan) begins to lose his faith. The head of his church, Father Stewart (Daniel Steere) suggests that Doug do some traveling to gain perspective. Doug ends up in China. While traveling around he finds a woman who had been shot with an arrow and is dying. She gives him an ancient artifact, a claw. Before she dies, she tries to tell him to destroy the artifact, but Doug doesn’t speak any Chinese. When he takes hold of the claw it cuts his palm.
The claw ends up being a magical item that has the power to change people into a “Dragon Warrior”. When it cut Doug’s hand it gave him the power to transform into a dinosaur. Back at home Doug finds out about the power when he sees a prostitute being attacked by a thief. Doug turns into a velociraptor and kills the thief. Carol (Alyssa Kempinski), the prostitute, sees what happened to Doug. After he kills the hood, Doug passes out. The next day he wakes up to find himself in Carol’s apartment.
Carol tries to convince Doug that his affliction is a gift from God. She believes that he can use his ability to get rid of the bad element in the city, people that have no redeeming value. Carol’s pimp, Frankie Mermaid (Fernando Pacheco De Castro), goes to confession. When Doug finds out that Frankie is responsible for his parents’ death, his anger takes over. He turns into a raptor and kills him. Doug is now convinced that his gift can be used to stop people who are beyond salvation. That is, until the ninjas show up.
“VelociPastor” was released in 2018 and was written and directed by Brendan Steere. It is an American horror comedy and a dinosaur movie.
While attending the School of Visual Arts in New York in 2011, Brendan Steere created a short film of fake grind house trailers. One of the trailers was called The VelociPastor. It was a hit, so Brendan expanded on the idea. With the help of crowd sourcing and family and friend donations, Brendan developed a feature length film.
The editing is a little choppy. Some of it may be intentional but some of it isn’t. The film itself is part syrupy melodrama and part lame joke. The camp factor is through the roof. The humor is mostly juvenile and is very much groan worthy. The film is definitely appealing to people who have a fondness for dumb jokes. The ridiculous dialogue includes a smarmy quote from Gandhi. The dinosaur costume, once it finally shows up, is a guy in a suit. The head of the stuntman wearing the suit sticks up in the back of it making the floppy monster look more like a big-headed camel then a velociraptor.
There’s a big elephant in the room here. In the beginning when Doug’s parents die in a car explosion, the special effects were never put into the film. The screen says “VFX: Car on fire”, but there is no car in the shot, just an empty parking spot. I have no idea if that was intentional or just a screw-up, nevertheless, seems to fit with the tone of the film, absurd.
The climax of the film includes a fight between Doug, as the raptor, and a smattering of ninjas. The climax was filmed in a remote area of a park. Still, people passing by in the park could see what was happening. The Police were called. The caller stated that "Ninjas and someone in a short fat dinosaur costume were running around in the park".