Verotika

Glenn Danzig, the music legend, seems to have channeled his inner Ed Wood in his later years and unleashed it upon the world with his anthology film, Verotika. This movie leaves an unforgettable mark on anyone who watches it. Comparing it to the horror equivalent of Tommy Wiseau’s cult classic The Room is spot on. Both films are so disastrously bad and unintentionally hilarious that they become mesmerizing — you simply can't look away. Danzig fails spectacularly in almost every aspect of filmmaking. Most scenes suffer from poorly timed cuts, with edits coming a good 5 to 10 seconds too late. The camera work often misses the mark, literally not capturing what it should. And then there's the acting — it's painfully theatrical, made worse by the fact that 90% of the cast are porn stars, who, let's be honest, have honed skills that don't exactly include traditional acting. Despite the film being an utter train wreck, I found myself thoroughly entertained throughout most of its runtime. It’s pure cinematic trash, but it’s fascinating trash. For that, I’m giving Danzig 1 star for creating a masterpiece of monumental awfulness. Sometimes, there's a certain charm in witnessing someone fail so completely at even the most basic elements of filmmaking. I’d like to think Danzig is trolling us, but sadly, he probably believes in the quality of his work. It seems like no one around him has the guts to tell him otherwise. While I should probably hope he sticks to music, which he excels at, the twisted, masochistic part of me wants him to keep making films. And it looks like my wish might come true — Danzig recently announced plans to direct a vampire spaghetti western. I can't wait! (10/06/2019)

After its premiere, Verotika was preceded by unfortunate reputation of being something like Tommy Wiseau's The Room. I might venture to dare say it is even worse. Rocker Glenn Danzig apparently decided after getting sixty to move on from music, and try his hand at filmmaking, so he made a horror anthology movie based on his own comics. It features atrocious actors, backward editing, absolutely tragic camerawork, repugnant CGI, a screenplay that does not make any sense at all, and the movie also lacks any sort of plot development, plus, in addition to all of that, it looks like it was directed by a five-year-old child. There is also the ubiquitous and excessive sexism - yes, Verotika indeed has it all. The movie consists of three individual stories, which are connected by framing segment Morella: The title character Morella is played by the American porn actress, Kayden Kross, and first she gouges out the eyes of a woman tied up in a torture chamber, then she turns to the camera to begin telling the individual stories, that really have only one thing in common, they are all absolutely awful. The Albino Spider of Dajette: And so the unintentionally ridiculous rollercoaster ride begins. A photomodel manages to be bound to a spider-demon in some weirdly bizarre way, and then the spider-demon goes out killing and raping prostitutes while she sleeps. The story takes place in France for some unnecessary reason, so all the actors try to put on a French accent so they all just sound incredibly fake. It is side-splittingly funny. Change of Face: A disfigured stripper who performs under the name of Mystery Girl, kills women at night and collects their carved off faces. There is obvious inspiration from the classic French movie Eyes Without a Face by Georges Franju. However, it is quite a repetitive and boring story with the most incompetent police investigator from the whole of film history, against whom even Jacques Clouseau can be considered a first-class detective. Drukija Contessa of Blood: Pure suffering. While the previous two stories had at least a bit of a storyline and plot, that can not be said of this segment at all. This relentlessly exhausting and plotless version of a story about a bloodthirsty Countess bathing in the blood of virgins, offers nothing but long shots of the Countess splashing around in a pool of blood and then looking in the mirror for a long time. During this part of the movie, people in the cinema began to cheer at the movie to try and encourage the story to move along. However, the story does not shift at all, not anywhere and then it just ends. I think Glenn Danzig mistook us for dummies, and sold us down the river. Verotika is an example of absolutely colossal cinematic artlessness, the director's over-abundance of self-confidence, and his utter lack of self-reflection. I do not say BOO! just because I had fun watching this gatrbage. [Sitges 2019] (10/05/2019)

A well-known problem of filmmaking impotence: The inability to keep the actors in the frame and the inability to move on from the frame (and when they finally do, it has to be a combination of dissolve and fade out). Tommy Wiseau and James Nguyen get a new major competitor for the throne of living archpriest of dreadful awkwardness and bombastic lack of reason. Watching Verotika alone makes you want to slit your wrists to end the misery (so it is actually an impressive work that penetrates reality with its motifs). But in a group, or preferably in a packed cinema at the Shockproof Film Festival, watching Verotika becomes an epic experience overflowing with bursts of laughter and instantaneous live commentary. In fact, the most wonderful thing about Verotika is how it manages to be surprising with what can be wrong with a film, and in this case, everything is absolutely wrong. (11/01/2021)

The American movie Verotika provides us with its own take on a horror anthology. I found Verotika to be rather repulsive, and I am not talking about the gore. Glenn Danzig is primarily a musician, and what he has produced is clearly an example of why he should stick to the day job, as his movie will only appeal to either die-hard fans or viewers who like really crap movies. (05/20/2020)