One of my most anticipated movies for 2019 was Verotika from the horror-rock legend Glenn Danzig, and even though I'm extremely disappointed and think that this film is terrible in any possible way, his next film Death Rider In The House Of Vampires is one of my most anticipated movies for this year.
I've seen so many "bad films" and low budget films that low budget isn't an issue anymore for me in order to enjoy a movie. What I like in low budget and debut films is that you can find very talented people with fresh and bold ideas, creative minds experimenting with new methods, people with passion for film-making who manage to overcome technical and budgeting issues.
Then it's the other kind of bad films, the ones that are "so bad it's good", movies that are unintentionally funny, that even though they are full of flaws you still enjoy them for their absurdity, films that are a guilty pleasure ...and then it's movies like Glenn Danzig's Verotika that are plain bad.
Let's get something straight from the get go, if Verotika's budget is a million dollars, it is not a "no-budget" movie for me, it's not even a low budget movie. I've seen films with 500.000, or 100.000, or even 10.000 that are much better from Verotika from every aspect. I'm saying this because I saw reviews defending this film for it's budget. The problem here is not the budget, it's the skills and the story. It seems that Glen Danzig has no idea how to shoot and direct, at some points it looks like he never watched a movie in his life! If he had I assume that he would have noticed all these flaws on screen. Even Plan 9 From Outer Space wasn't made so poorly! There is some proper lighting here and there but there is a director of photography so the credit goes to him.
I'm not going to write about the horrendous writing and acting because it's not a big deal for me (?), meaning it's not the worst thing about this movie, but I will write about the editing. This is the worst editing I've seen in a movie, and I've seen movies that were literally butchered but because they were really good at some other points, the bad editing or some other flaw added to the "cult" experience. This is not the case.
At the end of every scripted scene the film keeps rolling and the actor (or the horses) is left alone with no direction, not knowing what to do, looking so awkward and uncomfortable that the viewer feels embarrassed on behalf of them! and after a couple of excruciating long minutes of silent screaming the scene to end ...we go to a fade out. Every scene ends with a fucking fade to black!
Even with all of the above I could still enjoy the movie if there was some cool gore, some sexy scenes, or some whatever crazy thing happening but there wasn't any! The worst thing about this movie (and the most disappointing because of Danzig's name) is how lame, tame, boring and uninspired the story and the vision of this movie is. It's not creepy, not shocking, and for a film called Verotika it's not sexy or erotic enough. There isn't any nudity except a pair of saggy tits (or a pair of plastic tits with eye-ball nipples) and a making-out scene that it's so soft it's family friendly. The gore is as lame as well. It's not just that it's poorly executed (looks like blood tubes and dripping blood plastic knifes bought for a Halloween costume) it's the ideas that are super cliche. A strangler, a girl who skins faces (really?) and Elizabeth Bathory (REALLY?). For his next film I'm expecting a killer with a knife, Frankenstein's monster and ...a ghost. Unfortunately the technical flaws are the only thing worth mentioning about this film.
P.S. The soundtrack is lame too! How did he managed not to have a killer soundtrack?