Horror Express: Verotika (Glenn Danzig, 2019)

Say what you like about Glenn Danzig’s widely derided feature debut as writer/director/composer/co-cinematographer, which I finally persuaded myself to get around to watching last week - it’s a remarkable achievement in at least one respect.

Specifically, I’m referring to fact that, despite having been a successful musician and public figure for at least forty years at the time of this film’s production, Danzig still managed to create a movie exactly like the one a horny sixteen-year-old goth kid would probably have made, given access to the same resources.

Whatever your thoughts on the result of his efforts, his refusal to countenance any form of maturity whatsoever here is genuinely quite extraordinary, arguably making ‘Verotika’ the most purely (accidentally?) punk rock thing he has been associated with since Robo quit as The Misfits drummer in 1983.

Unfortunately however, simply being a contender for the most adolescent film ever directed by a sixty-four year old man does not necessarily mean ‘Verotika’ is worth watching. Indeed, for anyone lacking either a pre-existing interest in its creator’s oft-questionable oeuvre or a very indulgent attitude toward low budget 21st century horror, I’d recommend a hard pass.

As much as I’d love to defy critical consensus and declare this an unappreciated masterpiece, the sad truth is that, by any reasonable yardstick, ‘Verotika’ is an extremely bad film in pretty much every respect; indifferently directed, cheaply staged, sketchily scripted (to put it kindly), thoughtlessly misogynistic, entirely devoid of originality and filled with dead-eyed non-performances from a cast seemingly comprised of aspirant fetish models and porn stars. (1)

To paraphrase Chris Morris, we’re looking here at a crass, ugly and deeply stupid work, and yet.... what kind of horror/exploitation fan would I be if I couldn’t find something perversely captivating in the midst of this lumbering, irredeemable mess of nonsense?

Though it is not remotely as significant or enjoyable, ‘Verotika’ still, to some extent, captures the same mixture of gleeful nastiness and utter weirdness which helps make the early Misfits material so extraordinary. For all its faults, it bears the same gory signature of an artist whose brain-damaged concerns have (perhaps worryingly) remained remarkably consistent across five decades of creative output.

To run down a few elements of the ‘weirdness’ part of that equation, I’ve firstly got to commend Danzig’s refusal to adhere to the narrative conventions which usually govern the EC-via-Amicus anthology framework he has chosen to work within here.

The idea that segments within a horror anthology should consist of concisely rendered cautionary tales with a circular/twist ending goes completely out the window form the outset, but… in a way, I appreciated the open-endedness of this. 

 I mean, let’s just take the first story here - ‘The Albino Spider of Dajette’ - and admit that I have no idea why the aspirant fetish model with eyeballs where her nipples should be (played by Ashley Wisdom) gets victimised by an anthropomorphic spider monster which manifests itself whilst she is asleep, and proceeds to rape and murder women.

And if there is ultimately no connection at all between the eyeballs-for-nipples thing and the spider-monster thing, well… why not? That’s life, right? Here’s this poor girl, just tryin’ to get through life with her freakish eye-boobs, and today, she’s having an especially hard time of it, vis-a-vis the whole aforementioned spider-monster situation. There’s no moral pay-off, no clever resolution, no lessons learned - fuck you, O.Henry! It’s actually quite refreshing.

(Of course, I didn’t realise at this point in my viewing that I was actually watching by far the most well-developed of the film’s three segments, but… we’ll get back to that soon enough.)

More mystifying - as one or two commentators have noted - is Danzig’s inexplicable decision to have the cast of this first story deliver their lines in ersatz French accents.

If the intention here was to lend the film a sense of continental exoticism, I’m afraid it's rather undercut by the fact that ‘Verotika’ otherwise remains as all-American as a burger van parked outside a Sunset Boulevard strip joint. And, given that few of the performers appear to have much prior acting experience, and seem to have been informed about the whole accent thing about sixty seconds before shooting began.... well, you can imagine the range of out-rrrageous ac-CENTS we’re treated to here.

(My favourite must be the waiter who advises our heroine to hurry home before she falls victim to “zee neck brea-CURR”.)

Were it not for Danzig’s total devotion to the gospel of low-brow / trash culture, I’d be tempted to speculate that he intended this French accent thing as a kind of Brechtian disassociation technique - like Werner Herzog using hypnotised actors in ‘Heart of Glass’, but far more entertaining. But no. There is no way a man as steadfast in his aesthetic beliefs as Glenn Danzig would countenance such pretentious/abstract bullshit.

Indeed, the most incredible thing about all this is that he is entirely sincere, but… we’ll return to that train of thought later, because unfortunately we still need to address the film’s two remaining stories. 

So, sadly, the weird charm of the eyes-for-nipples/spider-monster business is entirely jettisoned in the second ‘tale’ presented here. A paper-thin item about a stripper with a mildly burned face (Rachel Alig) murdering and stealing the faces of other strippers, this one largely just serves as an excuse for what feels like hours of dispiriting bump n’ grind strip club footage, accompanied by a succession of mediocre stoner rock tracks.

Disappointingly, it also drops the French accents, but is notable for those of us charting ‘Verotika’s divergence from horror anthology tradition in that it doesn’t even attempt to have an ending. It basically just sets up its premise, and… stops? C’mon Glenn, give us something!

The third story, ‘Drujika: Countess of Blood’, certainly gives us… something… in that it’s a period-set Countess Bathory type affair. The attempt at a medieval setting is fairly ambitious under the circumstances, including use of actual horses, some limited location shooting and - get this! - a real wolf (albeit a not terribly threatening one).

But, on the other hand, you know we’re in trouble as soon as you note that the green-screened panoramic photo backdrop depicting the Contessa’s castle includes clouds of unmoving, still photographed smoke. Mario Bava, this ain’t.

With her spiked crown, latex fetish gloves and habit of staring contemplatively at bunches of grapes, the Contessa (played by Alice Tate) takes us straight into full-on Nigel Wingrove territory, somewhat reminiscent of those dreadful Redemption video promos we all had to sit through back in the bad old days every time we wanted to watch a Jean Rollin film.

Probably the film’s most overtly erotic segment, this one also finds Danzig indulging in some pretty shameless ‘chained virgin’ type fantasies. Perhaps he was going for a vague Borowcyzk / ‘Immoral Tales’ kind of vibe, though the faint Eastern European accents adopted by the cast aren’t as funny as the French ones, and again, the intended effect is rather spoiled by the arid, atmos-free L.A. porno feel, which hangs around the footage like disinfectant in a hospital ward.

Unfortunately, this also proves to be the film’s most boring segment - because, above all I think, what kills ‘Verotika’s chances in the midnight movie / so-bad-its-good stakes is actually its pacing.

Like so many amateur / first time filmmakers, Danzig just cannot cut his stuff for shit, stretching out most shots at least a few beats too long, and the concluding story finds him expanding this lethargic approach to a frankly quite trying degree, as he subjects us to several extended, silent medium-close ups of the Contessa bathing in blood or gazing at herself in the mirror which just seem to go on forever, seriously challenging the wakefulness of any late-night viewers who have proved hardy enough to stick with the movie thus far.

As expected by this point, there’s also pretty much no narrative here at all - just the blood-bathing Contessa going about her virgin-slaying day-to-day in more or less the manner you’d expect.

There is a certain audacity to the bit where she manages to begin fondling and eating a girl’s extracted heart whilst it remains beating and attached to the victim’s blood vessels, but the impact is deflated by the absurdly realised special effects, including the use of a heart prop whose size seems closer to that of an organ belonging to a large mammal than that of a human being. 

But, it matters not. Only an utter goon would demand realism in a context like this, and besides, to return to the point I touched on above, ‘Verotika’s sole saving grace - the unique component that allows this otherwise terrible film to cycle back round and grasp at something approaching warped greatness - is that Danzig is utterly sincere in his intent to make a sexy, gory erotic horror movie.

Unbelievable as it may sound in view of what I’ve outlined above, there is not an ounce of self-mockery or camp intent discernible here. Given how rare this total absence of self-awareness is in any creative industry these days, maybe we should take a moment or two just to think about that - to let it sink in.

Like the aforementioned goth kid sitting in the corner of the classroom, scribbling drawings of women who look like Death from ‘Sandman’ fucking bat-winged demons, Danzig believes his half-baked cartoon atrocities are transgressive and shocking, and that if you don't like it, you just can't handle his dark vision.

Given how few of us can make it to adulthood whilst retaining such knuckleheaded naivety - let alone preserve it through the rigors of adult life - isn’t that, in itself, a beautiful thing?

Or, to put it another way, I’d rather sit through ‘Verotika’ a million times than read a page of Morrissey’s stupid novel.

Saner voices may contend that neither option is compulsory, but saner voices have no place in this discourse. For as the man of the hour himself once sang, “possession of a mind is a terrible thing..”.

 --

(1)As it seems ungallant to let a statement like that stand without unpacking it a bit, here are the results of my IMDB-based research into ‘Verotika’s cast. So, we do indeed have several porn stars (primarily Ashley Wisom), along with a large number of people who have very few IMDB credits aside from this one (so who knows what they normally do all day), and a few legit actors.

Surprisingly, probably the most noteworthy person in the cast is actually the one with the silliest name, Kansas Bowling, who it turns out has won considerable acclaim as a director of music videos (working with Iggy Pop amongst others) and played a small role as one of the Mansonites in Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. As one of the Contessa’s victims in ‘Verotika’, she is assigned the thankless task of remaining dead and topless through several very long scenes.

October Horrors # 14: The Monster Club (Roy Ward Baker, 1981)

Yet another British horror film that I’ve put off watching for a long, long time, ‘The Monster Club’ sounds on paper like a uniquely unappealing prospect.

The very last gasp of Milton Subotsky’s Amicus productions, it saw the company considerably toning down the more violent elements of their long-running horror anthology series, going instead for a family friendly, tongue-in-cheek approach, whilst simultaneously making a desperately misguided attempt to court a youth audience more interested in slasher and zombie flicks by adding a pop music / variety show aspect to proceedings.

Clearly smelling embarrassment a mile off, both Cushing and Lee declined to participate, and I wonder to what extent they regretted their decision in subsequent years, given that, against all the odds, ‘The Monster Club’ somehow turned out to be an absolute delight.

Vincent Price, always game for this sort of caper, conversely described it prior to shooting as “..the best script I’ve been offered in years”, and indeed he anchors the anthology’s extensive framing sequences with gusto, playing an urbane vampire who takes a midnight snifter from the neck of the miraculously-still-alive John Carradine, portraying these stories’ real life author, R. Chetwynd-Hayes.

I confess, I’m not familiar with the work of Mr Chetwynd-Hayes (despite having spent much of my life skulking around second hand bookshops, I don’t recall ever actually seeing one of his books), but, based on the version of stuff that made it to the screen here, I think Price had a point.

Although each of the three stories presented here (four if you count the framing narrative) sounds pretty twee on paper, they all manage to temper their Halloween party silliness with a reassuring edge of pitch-black nastiness that causes them to linger longer in the memory than they really should.

The “monster genealogical chart” – tracing the complicated results of inter-breeding between vampires, werewolves, ghouls and humans – which provides a jumping off point for the three segment is a strange and imaginative conceit that I’ve never really seen explored elsewhere, and most people’s pick for the best of the stories will probably be the tale of James Laurenson’s lovelorn ‘shadmock’ (a creature who makes up for his position as the lowest and most diluted form of monster with his uniquely destructive whistle).

Aside from the fact that everyone treats Laurenson as if he is hideously deformed when clearly he’s just a fairly normal looking fella with heavy make-up and a bad haircut, this tale is really beautifully done, mixing some doomed, fairy tale-style emotional yearning with some proper, EC Comics style poetic justice and a cat-incinerating gimmick reminiscent of Jerzy Skolimowski’s then recent ‘The Shout’ (1978).

Furthering the spirit of the in-jokery introduced by featuring Chetwynd-Hayes as a character, the stakes are upped when the movie’s second story is introduced by a much-loved movie producer named, uh, “Lintom Busotsky”(!), who introduces what is purportedly a preview of a film he has made based upon his own childhood.

You see, Lintom’s dad (Richard Johnson) was a vampire – an exiled Count who now has to “work nights”, commuting from the suburbs to the West End for his nocturnal fix, leaving the youngster in the care of his adoring mother (Britt Ekland!). Admittedly, this business skims pretty close to the realms of tweeness, but the stuff about the exiled aristocratic vamps having to slum it as down-at-heel refugees, bullied and feared by their neighbours, adds a nice bit of verisimilitude, and things get considerably more interesting once Donald Pleasence is introduced as the chief of “The Bleeney”, a sinister, black bowler-hatted police division charged with the investigation of “blood crimes”(!).

Splendidly enjoyable stuff, this segment ends up toying with our sympathies in an uncomfortably ambiguous fashion; where do we stand, between the cheerily blood-thirsty, family-man vampire, and the cold, pinched-lipped cops who want to make poor Britt a widow..?

Somewhat surprisingly, both of these first two stories boast pretty solid production values, with some impressive set design, striking compositions and beautiful photography. (The vampire story even achieves some Bava-esque moments, with saturated gel-lights blurring into deep shadow.) Having presumably put the ignominy of Scars of Dracula far behind him, the sixty-four year old Roy Ward Baker proves here that he was still capable of knocking out of the park when circumstances allowed.

The third story, it must be said, looks considerably more poverty-stricken, but its tale of a ghoul-haunted village lurking just off the M4 nonetheless delivers the film’s most sustained dose of fetid, horror-ish atmosphere. As several commentators have noted, the fog-shrouded village with a graveyard at its centre seems like a deliberate call back to Amicus’s very first horror film, 1960’s ‘City of the Dead’, and the self-aware vibe continues as we’re introduced to a film director - a brash, Porsche-driving American played by the perpetually hungover-looking Stuart Whitman. (Named “Sam”, and notable for his cantankerous attitude and insistence upon realism, I briefly wondered whether this character was intended as a kind of vague skit on Sam Peckinpah.)

After he finds himself imprisoned in the village inn whilst in the process of scouting locations for his latest horror movie, Sam befriends a sympathetic young “humegoo” (human / ghoul hybrid), and also enjoys a few run-ins with the one and only Patrick Magee. It must be said, Magee doesn’t really seem to be putting a lot of effort into his role as the inn-keeper here (perhaps he was miffed at the absurd make-up he had to wear?), but it’s nice to have him around nonetheless.

Sadly this segment is regrettably over-lit (nixing the fancy lighting seems to have been a common Baker move when pressed for time), which serves to draw attention to the iffy sets and abysmal ghoul make-up (green faces all round), but things are once again saved by the strength of the writing, including some grisly details of the ghouls’ corpse-chomping lifestyle, and some interesting reflections on the torn loyalties of the unfortunate Humegoo.

A strong as these stories are however, I think it’s fair to say that ‘The Monster Club’ will always be chiefly remembered for what goes on in-between them, as Price introduces Carradine to the pleasures offered by the titular club, including performances from a selection of the very finest rock n’ roll acts that a bunch of elderly men working for a small film company on the verge of bankruptcy could persuade to record vaguely monster-themed songs for them during the uncertain, transitional year of 1980.

First, we get a sort of tough, new wave-aspirant pub rock band called The Viewers, whose members are probably still lurking in various North London pubs bitterly complaining about the fact that the only thing anyone remembers them for is this stupid bloody film. Though blighted by a truly dreadful set of lyrics, their song ‘Monsters Rule OK’ has a good, Stiff Records style power-pop chug on the verse and an affirmative, sing-along chorus that you’ll find impossible to shake after hearing the track twice during the movie.

Next up, the bitter ending to the Shadmock story is swiftly forgotten as we head straight into a performance by some character named B.A. Robertson. I confess, I’d never heard of this guy before, but according to Wikipedia he recorded for the Asylum label through the late ‘70s and early ‘80s with a certain amount of success, before becoming a bit of a minor celeb on UK TV.

‘Sucker For Your Love’, Robertson's contribution to ‘The Monster Club’, is actually a bit of a banger - in fact it’s easily my favourite song in the film, and I’d definitely commend it to any contemporary garage / punk band in search of a good, off-beat song to cover.

Filmed entirely in sweaty close-up (we never get to see his band members – maybe they didn’t make it to the shoot?), Robertson works through some fairly bizarre shtick here, alternatively rolling his eyes and staring at the ground whilst delivering extraordinary lines about “making love to a colander” and such like. Wild stuff indeed.

Probably the most awkward segment in a film that often seems entirely predicated on awkwardness comes from a band named Night, who deliver the next musical performance. The musicians here resemble a Rorschach test of guys who all got kicked out of different bands for being too sleazy and/or thuggish, whilst out-front a Bonnie Tyler styled female vocalist belts out a tune entitled ‘I’m a Stripper’, which I refuse to describe further, simply on the basis that I don’t even want to think about it anymore.

After this traumatic experience, our septuagenarian protagonists enjoy The Monster Club’s own strip routine. Filmed in silhouette, this is actually a quite inventive bit of animation in which – surprise, surprise - the performer strips right down to her skeleton! (“What a glorious set of bones,” exclaims Price).

In what seems to be a bit of an R. Chetwynd-Hayes trademark, all of this jolly business suddently takes a darker turn than expected, as Price instigates a debate with the “club secretary” (who resembles a member of The Goodies dressed as a werewolf) over whether or not the author’s fictional analogue should be allowed to become the first human to attain membership of The Monster Club.

“Can we truly call this a monster club if we do not boast amongst our membership a single member of the human race?” Price asks, before running through a quick list of humanity’s more monstrous achievements before an audience of startled-looking extras in Halloween masks. The death camps, the trenches of WWI, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the witch trials and the horrors of the inquisition all get a look-in – oh, such laffs.

A celebratory closing number was clearly needed after that jarring bit of heavy-handed moralising, and who better to provide it than pioneering ‘60s/’70s psyche-rock wildmen The Pretty Things? As a fan of the band, I was very much looking forward to seeing them close the show, but - oh boy.

I know it has often been said that most survivors of the ‘60s found themselves in a pretty dark place at the dawn of the ‘80s, and, on the evidence of this footage, it seems as if the Prettys were feeling the pain more than most. I’ll spare you the sartorial details (although vocalist Phil May’s short-sleeved shirt must be singled out for its sheer awfulness), but, far more onerously, the band seem to have been taking some tips at this point from the cod-reggae sound of UB40 (who also contributed something or other to ‘The Monster Club’s soundtrack, although mercifully they declined to appear on-screen) and the results are… not good, to put it mildly.

The Pretty Things’ Wikipedia page notes that “the new wave sound did not improve their sales figures,” and that they split up shortly after filming their appearance for the film, but their gently skanking, prog-funk direction nonetheless apparently held enough appeal to get Price and Carradine out on the dance floor, where they proceed to boogie away unsteadily for a few minutes, Vincent dancing hand in hand with a young lady in an alien mask and a fat suit. It is not a sight easily forgotten.

Despite the evident silliness of these Monster Club segments, it’s still a shame I think that Cushing and Lee turned this one down. In spite of everything, the evident good feeling and ‘anything goes’ attitude that characterised the making of this film could have make it a delightfully irreverent farewell for the old gang.

I know that the wizards at Cannon deigned to bring us ‘House of Long Shadows’ a few years later, but, aside from the wonderful performances from all the horror stars, I’ve always found that film to be a rather dour, poorly conceived mess, in which director Pete Walker’s darker sensibility mitigated against the gentler, more whimsical take on gothic tropes that his stars (and their fans) might have preferred for their final curtain call.

If they’d all decided to call it a day with ‘The Monster Club’ though, well, just imagine – Vince, and John, and Peter all arthritically jiving to the last, spluttering gasps of The Pretty Things’ career, as Sir Chris sits glowering at a table in the corner, spluttering at the indignity of it all. Never fear though, I’m sure Vincent could have had a quick word in his ear, promising to insert some high-falutin’ reference to The Seal of Solomon into the script or something, at which point he’d have perked up a bit, and perhaps even smiled and snapped his fingers. Ah, it would have been lovely.

But -- he have what we have, and happily ‘The Monster Club’ is still far better than it really has any right to be. More than anything, it feels akin to watching a top quality Amicus anthology movie interspersed with a particularly barrel-scraping instalment of Top Of The Pops 2 - and what better entertainment could we in the British public possibly ask for than that? Why this hasn’t become a much-loved Christmas TV fixture, I can’t possibly imagine. I almost felt like swapping my usual hard liquor for a box of Quality Street and a milky cup of tea whilst watching it. Perfect comfort viewing for all the monster-lovin’ family.

The Pan Book of Horror Stories edited by Herbert Van Thal (1959 / 12th printing, 1965)

  

So, check out what I recently found skulking on the goodwill shelf in a café in Laugharne, South-West Wales. A £2 donation to the local cat welfare charity (appropriately enough), and it was mine.

Anyone who has spent any amount of time lurking in British second hand bookshops or libraries will no doubt be familiar with Pan’s seemingly never-ending series of horror story collections, and to be honest I’ve rarely paid them much attention, but I couldn’t resist the fantastic design and artwork of this first volume (uncredited, of course)... and the vague knowledge that some of these are quite collectible didn’t hurt either.

Pretty interesting line-up too, with the authors presented, strangely yet pleasingly, in alphabetical order. An early Nigel Kneale story, more slumming literary colossi than I can bother listing, and, most interestingly from my POV, ‘The Horror in the Museum’ - a story now widely recognised as being more or less entirely the work of H.P. Lovecraft, but presented here under the name of its original credited author, Hazel Heald, and presumably licensed directly from publishers of ‘Weird Tales’ without the involvement of Lovecraft’s executors.

(Well, it’s interesting to me, at least.)