“I have seen the dark universe yawning
Where the black planet's roll without aim
where they roll in their horror unheeded
without knowledge, or lustre, or name
- H.P. Lovecraft, Nemesis.
When your twisted soul is as ineffably steeped in the juices of the macabre as one Glenn “Ziggy” Danzig, it would be almost a crime against culture to deny the world your
dark vision writ in celluloid. Thank whatever nameless gods ol’ Ziggers makes obeisance to that this isn’t the case. After more than 40 years terrifying metalheads (the most fear- resistant of all subcultures) with his bands The Misfits, Samhain and the eponymous Danzig, the Crown Prince of Darkness has distilled the very nectar of fear into a 90 odd minute omnibus of pure erotic terror aptly titled Verotika (that’s a linguistic conjunction of violence + erotica for all you plebs who don’t dig on Latin.)
From the first scene of the movie I knew I was in for something different; this wasn’t just another run-of-the-mill horror anthology, this was something crafted by a goddamn master, a man whose very bread and butter is terror and the macabre. Picture this: A Satanic temple, complete with a pentacle, universal symbol of evil. A girl is there, chained up in terror. Suddenly, out of the shadows steps this totally evil, totally hot babe (September 2008 Penthouse Pet Kayden Kross). You can tell she’s evil because she has literal upside down crosses painted on her face. She walks, nay, saunters sexily over to the chained up, terrified wench, who pleads for mercy. Well, this being a film by Glenn “fucking” Danzig, aka Satan’s left nut himself, do you think she gets it? Hell no! The evil hottie plucks both her eyeballs right out with two stiletto sharp fingernails and pops them straight into her ravenous, waiting maw. “Welcome, my darklings,” she winks leeringly at the camera. Holy fuck.
From there onward it’s one long, torturous journey straight into the heart of darkness itself as the ol’ Zigmeister hammers us with a relentless onslaught of sex, blood and rock n’ roll. The story that follows is titled “The Albino Spider of Dajette” and I can assure you, it’s the type of nightmare that could only spring from the mind of a man so thoroughly entrenched in the occult, so utterly basted in the oils of iniquity that he bears the monolithic moniker “Danzig.” Imagine if you will, a scene of lurid eroticism; two bodies, intertwined in sinful embrace, ensnaring the viewer in their web of lust. Such is the ability of the Zigster to stir the senses with his portraits of piquant sensuality. Suddenly, this scene of libidinous delight takes a sharp turn towards the demonic, when the titular heroine (Ashley Wisdom, bearing a set of luscious lips that would do Meagan Fox proud) doffs her scanty top to reveal a pair of surgically enhanced ta-tas surmounted, not by plump, strawberry nipples, but, rather, a pair of malevolent, staring eyes!
Now, you might think that this dark turn of events might spell doom for her reluctant paramour (I should mention that this segment takes place in Paris, also known as the city of love, a tres erotique location) but it is not to be; Herr Ziegler's monsters are feeling monsters, dig? Instead, our heroine is left to pine for her lonely existence in the darkened room, her nipple eyes leaking milky teardrops that ultimately fall upon an innocent spider (a masterstroke of computer generated imagery I might add) that scuttles across milady’s boudoir floor. Then lo, what dark alchemy is here revealed? For, as the opalescent tears fall upon the hapless arachnid, a hideous transformation is engendered; from the very soul of our heroine’s despair, a six-armed spider demon arises, a nightmare drawn from her dark fantasies, hereafter referred to by the denizens of Paris in their Gallic exclamations as “Le Neck Brakkerrrr.” Needless to say, it doesn’t end well for our tragic, eye-nippled heroine.
More stories follow, each one a further step into the ebony depths of Ziggy’s benighted soul. There’s the harrowing yarn Change of Face, wherein another Danzigian tragic heroine is forced to hunt for the faces she desires to replace her scarred visage - she’s also a stripper. Then, things kick a massive notch up the gore scale for Drukija, Contessa of Blood, where a vaguely Eastern European(I'm just taking a stab here, but she's probably from a little place called Transylvania) chick orders her minions to kill a girl and then she bathes in blood and looks at the blood, then caresses herself, then caresses the blood, then looks at herself in the mirror for a really long time, then bathes in some more blood, then looks at herself in the mirror again, then looks at her face, then looks at her left side, then looks at her face again, then looks at her left side a few more times, then her hands, then her face, then she kills some more virgins and looks at their blood and looks at her hands, then eats a heart, and looks at the heart, then looks at her hands, then looks at some more things before chopping off a virgin’s head and looking at the head and caressing the head and then looking at it some more. Chilling stuff, and a bit of a whirlwind plot, that really brings home the senseless repetition of violence that must have scourged Eastern Europe during the middle ages. They even had enough in the budget for a horse and a wolf and some exterior shots, to really class up the production value.
I might be remiss in not spending more time on the chilling soundtrack work featuring numerous giants of heavy metal, industrial and death rock, including Magical Mister Ziggstofeles himself, but such is the iconic nature of the acts included, that it would warrant a separate review. Needless to say, if you like your music heavy, sleazy and spine-tinglingly horrific, you’ll have plenty to “jam-out” to.
Ultimately, time, not man, will judge the worth of El Ziggerino's masterstroke. It is only our part to view, to experience, and to finally succumb to the dark excesses of a master of the macabre. As ol’ Ziggeroo himself would say, “I ain’t no goddamn sonofabitch.” You better think about that, baby.
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