During a sermon Jesus learns from Jacob that his son Lazarus has died. Jesus promises Jacob to resurrect him. Lazarus is resurrected, but as a zombie. He attacks Jacob and Jesus can only barely escape. The zombie epidemic spreads rapidly, and Jesus hurries to his friend Judas to fight the undead with him. Armed with fish, the two of them fight together against the zombie hordes, which now include the Roman occupying forces and a gang of cowboys, and can finally defeat them in a bloody battle. The plot of Fist of Jesus and the accompanying short films are peppered with visual references to special effects from other great horror and splatter films.
Cast
Background
Muñoz and Cardona originally planned a feature-length film entitled Once Upon a Time in Jerusalem, for which Fist of Jesus would serve as a teaser along with other Fist of Jesus short films such as: The Blind Man, Helaings, Canaan Weddings, The First Miracle and Joshua and the Fist of Jesus DVD. However, a crowdfunding campaign launched for the feature-length film did not raise enough capital, so the project was put on holdfor the time being. The DVD of the short film features a trailer of the project, cancelled and messed up scenes, as well as a making of. In October 2014 KISS ltd. released a PC game entitled Fist of Jesus - The Bloody Gospel of Judas. In this cartoon-like game developed by Mutant Games Judas and Jesus have to fight off attacking zombies in 60 levels, but meanwhile the game is no longer available. On April 30, 2015 Austrian Illusions Unltd. Films released Fist of Jesus as Germandubbed version on DVD and Blu-ray.
Reception
Fist of Jesus was predominantly positively evaluated. Adrian Halen from HNN Horrornews.net judges the film: "Great special Fx and gory bits make this unexpected extreme piece fun and gross all in the same bundle. … David Muñoz and team know how to bust up dead corpses with glorious visual work while still keeping the action footage alive and wacky." Peter Osteried judges on the German website gamona.de: "Das Ding ist schnell, es rockt und es gibt keine Sekunde Leerlauf." The website schnittberichte.com calls the film: "… leicht amateurhaften Splatter für zwischendurch … bei dem Fans auf ihre Kosten kommen.". GIGA editor Leo Schmidt rates Fist of Jesus as: "… ultrabrualen … aber feinen feinen Trash-Streifen“.
Awards
Fist of Jesus has been screened at numerous international fantasy, trash and short film festivals and has received more than 70 awards, including jury and audience awards, as well as awards for best film and special effects. David Muñoz and Adrián Cardona were nominated for the Grand Prize for Short Film at the 2013 Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival. The film poster for Fist of Jesus is based on the poster of the 1979 Monty Python comedy The Life of Brian and received a CinEuphoria Award in 2014.
