Jesus Christ (Awana Gana) is called upon by his father God to return to Earth, so after looking about at the motley gang of folks throwing shapes around him he emerges from a white mist dressed from head to toe in white, with a matching suit and cape, and gold cross hanging from his neck on a chain. After walking across the sea to Rome, he ponders his next move, and decides to visit an office executive named Lettuce Pop (Stella Carnacina) who is currently having problems with the Mafia, as two gun-toting gangsters are menacing her. However, when Jesus arrives he manages to confound them, thus winning the heart of Lettuce, an occasion she celebrates in song...
There was a lot of singing here, it was a musical after all, and to all intents and purposes inspired by the movie of the Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice production Jesus Christ Superstar. Some describe White Pop Jesus as a spoof, yet while there were plentiful comedy elements it was very sincere indeed about its religion, building from a series of sketch-like sequences to a pious finale that would not have looked out of place in the Superstar big screen effort from seven years before. It was this curious approach to Christianity that has made it stick in the minds of the hardy few who have seen it, as if making the excuses that it couldn't be blasphemous since it was really backing the whole Christ thing.
There were signs director and screenwriter Luigi Petrini had been influenced by Bugsy Malone as well, not because the cast were children, but because he was much enamoured of depicting comedy gangsters who sang: their big number about how everyone blames the Mafia for everything sounded very jaunty in a Paul Williams fashion. But in the main it was showing how Jesus would be reacted to should he have returned to us in 1980 Rome that diverted us here, and he strikes a not exactly inspiring figure, played by Italian singer Awana Gana in his only film role and not looking like the Biblical idea of the Messiah with his single dangly earring, slightly receding shaggy perm and moustache (but no beard), not to mention his liking for dressing all in white.
Maybe he resembled a Christ as imagined by eighties Italians, or maybe he was hired because he could sing, but on the subject of those tunes this has been described as the "disco Jesus" movie when in fact most of the music sounds like your basic pop opera rather than anything John Travolta would have strutted his funky stuff to in Saturday Night Fever, indeed much of it is a not bad pastiche of the Webber/Rice work, if not as memorable. There were dancing setpieces which resembled extracts from contemporary Italian variety shows complete with performers decked out in fancy costumes, and Jesus even got to hoof it around with a woman in a spandex leotard in one anti-drugs number - there was a Devil too, though he was underused in spite of a song of his own promising temptation.
Not that Christ will have anything to do with that, wandering the cast and dispensing advice, even driving a car around the Roman countryside as Lettuce professes her love for him which he does not respond to. The police got involved too, a bunch of bumblers led by Inspector Vito (Gianni Magni) - to give an idea of the level of humour, he asks a cop to get him a Panther, meaning a car, but when he walks outside he is confronted with an actual big cat which roars at him. Not the sort of mistake you'd imagine, well, anyone at all in the history of the universe making never mind orchestrating, but that was what we were expected to laugh at. By the end of the film, Jesus (who has regular conversations with the Almighty, represented by the clouds parting and the sun shining through) has gathered a group of disciples, mostly women, and is telling them he will be betrayed, but this has very little resonance making the turn to "we really mean this, folks" religious tribute hard to take. Maybe if it had been more crass, more glitzy, it might have a bigger reputation? Though it's probably quite crass enough.
