Verotika

First things first: no, Verotika isn’t the new The Room. Maybe this is splitting hairs, but it’s more Ed Wood than Tommy Wiseau, which is fitting given that Wood is the poster boy for the kind of 1950s schlock that shaped much of Glenn Danzig’s imagination.

Like Wood’s films, Danzig’s Verotika is obliviously, bewilderingly badly conceived and made, often comically so, but it’s ultimately a slog. Of its three segments, the first is by far the most entertaining, and it goes downhill pretty fast from there. Maybe this would have been more fun in an audience setting, but my eyelids were pretty heavy by the end. I would tell you to skip the final two thirds, but who am I kidding? If you’re reading this, you’re probably a cinemasochist with Verotika firmly on your to-do list. In that regard, it doesn’t disappoint, exactly, but the next midnight movie sensation it is not.