Verotika

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)

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)

Music legend Glenn Danzig discovered the dormant Ed Wood in himself in his old age and unleashed him onto the world. The result is the anthology film Verotika, which will indelibly leave its mark on the minds of those who see it. The first review from Bloody-Disgusting stated that it is the horror equivalent of the cult The Room by Tommy Wiseau, and I must say that this comparison is spot on. Both films are so bad and ridiculous that they are actually fascinating and impossible to look away from. Danzig is completely terrible in almost every aspect of film production - in most scenes, the editing comes about 5 to 10 seconds later than it should, the camera often pans off and clearly doesn't capture what it should, etc. The culmination is the theatrically bad acting - that's what happens when you cast 90% porn actresses in a film who instead of acting lessons practiced other activities important to their main profession. In every way, this is pure cinematic garbage, but I royally enjoyed most of the footage, so I will appreciate Danzig's lack of skill with 1* for the shittiness of unprecedented proportions. Sometimes I just get a kick out of how someone can't even handle the most basic things when shooting a film. I would like to think that Danzig trolled us, but unfortunately he himself probably thinks this is good and stands by it - most likely no one around him has the balls to tell him that he shouldn't release this into the ether. I probably should wish for Danzig to stick to music production and give up on making films, which he is much better at, but my twisted and self-deprecating self will be happy if Danzig doesn't give up and keeps on directing. Which will probably happen, as in a recent interview Danzig announced that he is soon going to shoot his next film, which will be a vampire spaghetti western. I can't wait! (10/06/2019)

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)