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.

Summer of Santo: The Diabolical Hatchet (José Díaz Morales, 1965)

 After taking a well-earned break from Mexico’s cinema screens following his memorable visit to The Wax Museum, Santo, The Man in the Silver Mask, returned some eighteen months later to face an altogether more intractable problem in director José Díaz Morales’ ‘The Diabolical Hatchet’ (‘El Hacha Diabólica’, 1965).

Turning to my go-to source of info on Luchadore cinema, the late Todd Stadtman’s Lucha Diaries website, I learn that ‘The Diabolical Hatchet’ was actually one of a series of quickie, low budget pictures The Man in the Silver Mask made for producer Luis Enrique Vergara, following the completion of his prior contract with the slightly more up-market Filmadora Panamericana.

Now, I’ve previously had bad experiences with jumping blindly into these off-brand, Vergara-produced Santo movies (witness the listless Santo Attacks The Witches from '64), but rest assured - though its budgetary constraints are plainly evident, ‘The Diabolical Hatchet’ at least hits way above its class in terms of sheer weirdness - which is the main thing that draws us to these films in the 21st century, let’s face it.

In fact, this one actually turns out to be something of a crack-brained pulp masterpiece, compressing an epic tale of time travel, diabolism, hereditary super powers, atavistic hauntings, Manichean dualism and the cyclical nature of myth into 74 minutes and still finding time for both several extended wrestling bouts and loads of boring footage of people walking from one place to another.

Right from the outset, the film immediately wrong-foots viewers, as we see a procession of hooded, torch-bearing monks bearing a stretchered body toward a funeral service. As the solemn corpse-bearers progress through several moody shots, we gradually realise that the body they are carrying is that of none other than El Santo himself!

Furthermore, when the monks reach their destination, they lower our hero into a tomb bearing the legend, ‘Santo, El Enmascarado de Plata - Year of Our Lord 1603’.

What the hell is going on here?! I don’t know, but I bet you’re dying to find out, right?

After the chief monk has intoned a moving eulogy, declaring that the departed El Santo was “a man who knocked on our door many years ago, seeking peace and rest”, and who “fought against the dark forces which came after him and woman dear to his heart,” the brothers file out of the crypt, only to be replaced at the graveside by menacing figure clad in black boots, a black wrestling tunic and an executioner’s hood, wielding - yes - a bloody great hatchet.

“I won’t ever let you rest,” gloats The Black Mask (for it is he), “I will follow you through time until I carry out my vengeance!”

And with that, we jump forward to the twentieth century, where Modern Day Santo is performing some rather half-hearted warm-up exercises in his dressing room before the evening’s big match at The Coliseum. (I found it spiriting to observe that the champion’s routine actually resembles my own morning exercises - which are no grand spectacle, let me assure you, readers.)

Anyway, our hero’s subsequent bout is rudely interrupted when The Black Mask appears out of thin air waving his axe around, and basically begins trying to fuck shit up. Unfortunately, the villain proves a tough man to bring down, but the combined efforts of El Santo, his original opponent in the match, the referee and several members of the audience eventually prevail, forcing the supernatural blaggard to beat a hasty, spectral retreat.

Understandably spooked following a further incident in which the Black Mask attacks him at night in his bed (the curtains in his high rise apartment are lovely), Santo turns for advice to the latest in a long line of learned scientist-friends whose daughters he happens to be dating. (As his fans will be aware, El Santo’s passion for scientists with beautiful daughters rivals even that of Fu Manchu in those Harry Alan Towers-scripted movies.)

Evidently a man of wide-ranging talents, Santo’s scientist-friend (sadly I have been unable to identify the actor who plays him on this particular occasion) immediately confirms the titular hatchet (abandoned by its own following his night time escapade) does indeed date from the 17th century, and notes that it is inscribed with “a symbol of evil, the powers of Satan” (ie, a skull and cross-bones).

Moved by the doctor’s observations, Santo is seemingly prompted to begin making an absolutely astonishing revelation about his own origins.

So, as it turns out, El Enmascarado de Plata’s iconic mask and cloak were actually bequeathed to him by his father, and are made of a mysterious, indestructible material which also helps charge him with energy in times of need. Sewn into Santo’s mask is a triangle inscribed with repetitions of the word “ABRACADABRA”.

“The word abracadabra comes from the name of a wise man who practiced the science of good, called Abraca,” the doctor informs us, rather questionably, after consulting one of inevitable dusty volumes of occult lore.

This disconcerting discussion of El Santo’s metaphysical origins is interrupted however when, right on cue, lightning strikes, and a female ghost whom Santo is inexplicably able to identify as “Isabel” (played by his frequent co-star Lorena Velázquez) appears, warning our hero that he must destroy The Black Mask, a feat which can only by accomplished by removing said mask and laying bare the evil-doer’s face.

She also says this, which is kind of cool:

How to solve a problem like this then, eh? Well, waiting until the bugger next shows up and pulling his mask off would seem like a satisfactory plan to me, and, clearly conscious of the fact the movie has another 45 minutes or so left to run, the doctor has an alternative suggestion for getting to the bottom of things.

“I can send you into the past, Santo,” he announces within seconds of the ghost’s departure, “you can solve the mystery.”

Naturally, the big man is up for the challenge, and, if you were wondering what that weird machine which looks like a radio set with a kind of modernist wind vane sticking out of the top of it in the corner of the doctor’s under-furnished lab is, well… guess what;

Back in ‘the past’ (presumably the late 16th century), we’re treated to a series of murky, rather poorly staged vignettes concerning a romantic rivalry played out between two Zorro-esque masked caballeros - one of whom of course wears a white mask, the other black - who are competing the affections of the still-very-much-alive Isobel.

These scenes seem to be attempting, rather shoddily it must be said, to replicate the feel of a contemporary historical melodrama, but, even here, high weirdness abounds.

Spurned by Isobel, the Black Caballero retreats to his taxidermy-strewn subterranean lair, where he… kneels before the altar of a moth-eaten bat god named Ariman, apparently.

Considerably upping the ante on his conflict with The White Caballero, the bad guy pledging his eternal soul to his diabolical master, in exchange for possession of Dona Isobel. He is, of course, swiftly transformed into The Black Mask, and heads off, axe in hand, to kidnap his beloved. Returning to his regulation gothic horror dungeon, he then attempts to win her heart by chaining her to the wall and waving piles of the jewels in her face whilst gloating like a fiend, the ol’ charmer. 

Not to be outdone, the Good Caballero responds to this provocation by hiking out into the desert and consulting a benign, white-haired hermit / wizard man who lives in a poorly wrought polystyrene cave. This is, of course, a descendant of the aforementioned Abraca.

“You will never use weapons to fight your enemies,” the hermit tells his visitor, “for that would destroy your strength and eclipse your heart’s kindness. You will fight against the forces of evil for generations to come. You are now Santo, the Man in the Silver Mask.”

And thus, our hero is born - well over three hundred years earlier than was previously assumed to have been the case.

It’s difficult to convey just how bizarrely off-kilter this hastily bolted on origin story feels, over a decade into El Santo’s real life career as a wrestler and public figure. 

Drawing comparisons is difficult, but… let’s just say that it’s as if you went to see the latest James Bond movie, and Bond suddenly revealed that he was actually part of a lineage of smarmy establishment thugs dating back to the crusades, and that the thread of his tuxedo had been blessed by Merlin the Magician, or somesuch. Unexpected, to say the least.

Given that the spirit of 20th century Santo has travelled back in time to observe the heroic rebirth of his noble ancestor, you would think the natural next step would be for the filmmakers to raise the implication of what happens when he bumps into his outwardly identical 16th century forebear, but… mercifully perhaps, the possibilities arising from that one are skipped over. In fact, I think the implication is that Santo and his scientist-friend have merely returned to the past ‘in spirit’, helpfully allowing them to view a bunch of pre-edited flashbacks.

Anyway, after a bit more uneventful scrapping on the one bit of suitably old looking street which the filmmakers were able to shoot their 16th century segments on, The Black Mask finds himself arrested by the inquisition, who naturally take a dim view of him marauding around the place calling upon the powers of his diabolical gods and suchlike. Thus, we’re treated to one of the stranger reiterations the famed opening of Mario Bava’s ‘Black Sunday’ (1960) you’re ever likely to see.

As 16th Century Santo calmly looks on, the black-clad miscreant is burned at the stake, vowing infernal vengeance against his opponent’s descendants, before - in a winningly peculiar twist on the formula - he escapes the flames by transforming into a particularly scrappy looking, rather overweight bat and making his wobbly, wire-bound exit, accompanied by a deluge of traditional bad guy cackling.

Once 20th century Santo has returned to the present day, back story duly filled in, fight fans in the film’s original audience may have been forgiven for assuming that ‘El Hacha Diabólica’ was finally about to settle down into a pattern of more traditional, down-to-earth luchadore business, as our hero inevitably sets about breaking the curse by removing his supernatural antagonist’s mask in the manner which comes most naturally to a seasoned grappler.

And indeed, several extended, fixed camera bouts between El Santo and The Black Mask do follow in quick succession, but, even here in its final stages, ‘Diabolical Hatchet’ is still determined to be as weird as hell.

In particular, I enjoyed the plot point which sees Santo determine that he must lay to rest the spirit of Isobel, by tracking down the location of the basement in which The Black Mask imprisoned her. Excitingly, The Champion of the People achieves this goal by sitting at his desk, studiously consulting an enormous reference work cataloguing colonial-era buildings.

This pursuit obsesses him to such an extent that, when his latest girlfriend (the daughter of the professor, of course) calls late at night to let him know that, “something terrible is happening here,” as lightning strikes and shadow of The Black Mask looms upon her wall, instead of nobly rushing off to save her as we might reasonably expect, Santo takes an uncharacteristically cynical approach, merely calling the police and informing them that a woman has just been murdered at a certain address, dutifully promising to take his revenge upon the killer, before returning to his reading! 

(“Just tell your boss Santo called,” he growls down the phone line, briefly turning the movie into some kind of morbidly surreal film noir.)

In technical terms, it must be said that ‘The Diabolical Hatchet’ is no great shakes. Though the extensive nods to Poe-derived gothic horror are a nice touch, we're a far cry from the era’s more lavishly appointed Mexican gothics. Morales’ direction is pretty perfunctory, largely comprising awkwardly-framed, point-and-shoot medium shots, whilst the sets are threadbare, the performances muted, and… oh boy, all those extended scenes of people walking from one place to another really become intolerable after a while.

The most egregious example of this phenomenon is a sequence at the film’s conclusion in which, having finally discovered the ancient house in which The Black Mask’s historical depredations were committed, our hero proceeds to walk around every inch of it very s-l-o-w-l-y for six solid minutes… right at the point at which any sensible action-adventure movie would be gearing up for its rip-roaring finale! 

Admittedly, Santo walks like a boss, but still, it is rather perplexing to see this kind of blatant padding employed to such an extent in the midst of a film which, as I think has been demonstrated above, contains enough crazy ideas to keep the wheels spinning for hours, if only the filmmakers had bothered to explore them properly.

Once again though, it is the sheer, shameless weirdness of ‘El Hacha Diabólica’ which makes it worth seeking out. From wantonly assigning a previously unguessed at mystic / supernatural origin story to an otherwise earth-bound franchise character, to creating its own highly specific yet totally random mythology of demons and wizards, to the callous murders of several major characters at the hands of the gloating villain…. its total refusal to give a fuck about the continuity and conventions governing pop cinema storytelling make it feel more like a story written by an imaginative eleven year old than a professional screenwriter.

Three months after ‘El Hacha Diabólica’s release, Santo was back on solid ground, taking on ‘The Strangler’ in René Cardona’s ‘Santo vs El Estrangulador’; must have been a relief after this caper.

I mean, I can't absolutely say for sure, but what’s the betting that, in the course of his myriad subsequent adventures, Santo never again deigned to mention that he and his ancestors were gifted with magical powers by the descendent of a wizard named Abraca, or that his mask and cloak date from the 16th century and convey protective and restorative powers?

Well, modesty is one of the Champion of the People’s many virtues, I suppose. He probably wouldn’t want to shout it from the rooftops, would he? I’m sure a few bewildered kids who ended up stuck in front of this one at the Saturday matinee had a few tales to tell the playground about Santo’s secret origin story, and I’m sure they wished they’d never bothered, as the strange tale of Ariman and Abraca and Santo’s distant Caballero ancestor faded into (probably quite justified) obscurity.