Holy Moly (1992) (USA)

⭐️⭐️1/2

Evil forces take control of a priest named Holy and force him to get into some malicious tomfoolery. The ponytailed priest (who looks like Tim Heidecker if Tim Heidecker’s parents were first cousins) walks around the neighborhood and chats with his parishioners in a carefree manner. So, he’s that kind of father. He delivers a sermon to a near empty church (one kid is reading Fangoria) and meets some dude named Vile outside of his church who was in the audience for his sermon. He wears sunglasses, a duster and looks mighty pale. He’s obviously evil. While the father is walking down an alley, Vile jumps him and forces him to come with him. He lets the priest know he has been chosen and he’s gonna be forced to help them spread their evil legion whether he wants to or not. They part ways, the priest ignoring Vile’s claim that he will be killing for him and there’s nothing he’ll be able to do to stop it. That night, the priest has a dream which looks like it takes place in a haunted house set up in someone’s garage who had access to a few cool masks and some color gels for a spotlight. It’s my kind of jamboree. Anywhoozle, the priest wakes up and wanders around all out of sorts. The usual locals he comes across on his wanderings all appear to be off (some dude reads GoreZone and suddenly wears a budget Halloween mask, some dude lazily dressed-up as a large-breasted woman shows off her vomiting baby who has the face of our hero Holy and some dude in a bald cap has sharp teeth). Holy flips out, throws up and grows some gnarly teeth because now he’s a vessel for evil or something. Poorly edited murders soon follow. Bald-cap-guy (he looks like someone remembered they were going to Comic Con the day of and had no other cosplay option but Dr. Phil) gets his fingers cut off with pruning shears following a dopey beating and is then stabbed to death in the church bathroom. Holy cleans up and disposes of his body once he wakes up in the bathroom following his malicious fugue state. More walking follows and Holy encounters even more props picked up from a Halloween store which were most likely bought on mom’s credit card. Vile returns to be all menacing in a high-school-bully-who-just-discovered-true-gore-tapes kind of way and Holy begins drinking after talking to his fish. I don’t think that’s an important story beat but let’s face it, I don’t think any of this is all that important. Holy drinks himself to sleep and has a nightmare where the now non-dismembered zombie of Dr. Phil rises from his grave and asks him “Why?”. I don’t know, Dr. Phil. I just don’t know. Drunk Holy acts drunk (poorly), throws up (professionally), transforms into a demon (maybe?) and then realizes his fingers are missing (possibly). It was all a head fuck and Vile shows up at Holy’s house for a final confrontation. He takes his true form and another lame physical altercation goes down. Is it fun? Sure. It may not have enough to fill its 40-minute runtime but it’s a bunch of buddies making a movie over a few weekends who had a shit-ton of spooky decorations and a minimal story. Music cues drop out completely so the actors can shout and the graphic violence isn’t convincing but I don’t think it was ever meant to be. They just wanted to show someone’s spine being pulled out of their ass and they did it to the best of their ability. It’s backyard cinema that had just a little more money than usual and access to more sets than a family member’s house where they couldn’t get any fake blood on the carpet.