Under The Influence: Verotika (2019)
It's Friday, and that means it's time for a brand-new episode of the show that talks about stuff on purpose! Can you believe it's already been two weeks since the last episode of TRAPPO.? Time really flies, doesn't it?
Since it's officially Black Friday, at least here in the good old U.S. of A., we couldn't think of any better way to commemorate this grim non-holiday than by talking about notorious metal maestro and sometimes-comic book publisher Glenn Danzig's feature directorial debut, 2019's Verotika, a film that's already become notorious among certain circles of bottom-feeder cinephiles. But is Verotika's already somewhat legendary reputation truly deserved? That's what we're here to find out. So strap in for an extended and inebriated discussion of this no-budget cinematic shocker portmanteau by listening below, or finding us on Anchor, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, or Stitcher, so choose your own adventure and join us on this journey into madness.
One quick note before we part until next time: you may have noticed that the previous episode begins with a quick discussion of Glenn Danzig's upcoming Death Rider In The House Of Vampires. That's because that episode was originally meant to be uploaded after today's Verotika discussion, but numerous factors, including some technical issues I had to address in editing, forced me to delay the publication of this episode, and our Album Exchange had to be uploaded first. Ultimately, I think things have worked out for the best, since sharing our Verotika episode on Black Friday feels entirely appropriate.
While you're here, why not leave a comment and tell us what you think about Glenn Danzig's magnum opus? And you might as well share your own "so bad it's good" favorites while you're busy typing. We'd love to hear from you, so send us an email if you have something a little substantial to share with us, and you can also follow us on Instagram and Twitter if you want the full TRAPPO. experience. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time!
I don't know about Danzig's music career, really. I've heard maybe three of his songs. I just know him as that guy from the meme who's buying cat food or whatever. That's why Danzig is to me, that and the guy who buys the house with the elf blood from Aqua Teen Hunger Force. I watched the trailer for Verotika last year, and it looked like the dumbest possible thing. I still haven't seen the movie, and I don't know if I could make it through the whole thing based on the clips and stuff from the episode. I think just listening to you guys talk about it for over an hour is enough for me.
ReplyDeleteI read some of Danzig's comics in the 90s, and I remember the comic shop treated those things like porno, behind the counter and out of sight. You had to ask specifically for Verotik comics to get your hands on them, and if you didn't know the shop had these books behind the counter, you'd never know they were there. After checking a few issues out, I understood why: it's just a bunch of (mostly poorly illustrated) explicit nudity and graphic violence for its own sake, real "shocking: edge lord crap that most people lose interest in once they stop being thirteen year old boys. I guess Danzig's been thirteen years old for 53 years, since he hasn't matured a bit. I rented Verotika from a Redbox a while back, and the only thing that shocked me was the fact that there wasn't MORE gratuitous nudity and violence, but I just don't think he had the budget for any real elaborate prosthetic makeup or to convince anybody else to take off their clothes, rather than from any serious sense of maturity or restraint. I won't lie and say the movie didn't entertain me, and yet I still feel dirty, like I should have just left well enough alone and rented a Fast and Furious movie or whatever instead.
ReplyDeleteConsidering your podcast was almost as long as Verotika, I didn't know if I'd be able to listen to the whole thing, but I did. It was enjoyable, but there are some issues. I only mean this to be constructive criticism, so please don't take this the wrong way, but there are some real issues with your audio. There are crickets in the background, but there are times when the sound of the crickets chirping becomes so loud that it becomes almost painful to continue listening for short periods of time. And I'm not sure what exactly the source is, but there is a consistent rustle, sometimes quite intrusive, that sounds sharp and scratchy, like somebody's touching a microphone. I know sometimes when I'm talking with somebody over my headphones, my clothes might bump into the microphone built into the dangling cord, and I've been told it makes a similar noise by others, so that might be what it is. I don't know if these are just limitations due to recording equipment or not, but they can be very distracting at times, but I'm sure you're probably aware of these issues, too.
Those problems aside, I think I enjoyed the episode and will check some of your others out here, so I might stick around. As for suggestions, I don't really have any "so bad it's good" movies to throw out aside from the ones everybody else knows. Maybe "Miami Connection", but that one's pretty hard to see these days I think. I know the blu ray is out of print, and I don't think it's streaming anywhere, and you can't even buy it VOD on Amazon, so who knows what's going on there. So that's probably not a great suggestion if you haven't seen it. Sorry.
Danzig's gotta new movie out called DEATH RIDER IN THE HOUSE OF VAMPIRES! I haven't seen it but it can't be good! I saw the trailers and some lame interviews on his YouTube channel and it looks so low-rent and pathetic. Why does this old man suddenly think he can be a movie director when he can barely make coherent music? He just watches a bunch of movies made by people with real talent and thinks he can just pick up a camera and do all that himself? Gimme a break! What's wrong with this guy? His ego has got to be monumental to think he can just make good movies when he's nothing but a hack! VEROTIKA is pretty boring, unfortunate. I fell asleep for maybe twenty minutes while watching it and didn't feel like I missed anything. Maybe the plot? Oh well. I'll never waste more of my time watching THAT garbage again!
ReplyDelete"Verotika" actually sparked an interesting conversation among my friends when we all watched it last year. Sometimes we get together for a bad movie night, and we'll just watch whatever garbage we can find on Amazon Prime or whatever and joke around for a few hours while we drink some beer and eat some nachos. Harmless fun. Back in October I recommended we watch "Verotika" because I'd heard a lot of "things" about the movie. It seemed right up our alley.
ReplyDeleteBottom line: out of the four of us, two of us (myself included) thought it was a fascinating mess and we had a good time watching, but the other two just couldn't get into the movie at all and thought it was one of the most boring experiences they'd ever had to suffer through since we started bad movie nights. So we just started arguing about the dubious merits of the movie, and that led to a larger discussion about what makes a movie "so bad it's good" and what separates that from just "bad". We really went back and forth on this, and we all agreed on movies like "Troll 2" and the like because those are pretty easy choices, but we couldn't agree on other, more polarizing movies like "Verotika" or even "Dangerous Men" (if you haven't seen that one, I would recommend it), because there are elements to these movies that can be incredibly off-putting for people, and we can't agree as to what those elements are.
Maybe it's the digital photography of "Verotika". If it had been shot on 16mm film thirty years ago, there's no way the movie wouldn't have a special edition blu-ray from Arrow Video or Vinegar Syndrome. Nostalgia can hide a lot of sins. Maybe in twenty years people will be talking about Glenn Danzig's "trash masterpiece" the way people fawn over "Samurai Cop" right now. Probably not. And maybe that's for the best, but I think it's a worthy "so bad it's good" movie. I may not watch it again, at least for quite a while, but I had a good time marveling at how grossly inept the whole movie was. And the friendly argument it inspired was a lot of fun.
I say bring on "Death Rider And The House Of Vampires"!