Verotika Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		4.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		1.5

Verotika Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 13, 2020

According to Glenn Danzig’s rather amazingly long and varied credits page on IMDb (one which incidentally doesn’t even encapsulate all of Danzig’s other musical accomplishments), Danzig appeared on a 2016 episode of Portlandia, so in keeping with that series’ often skewed sense of humor (one I can tell you as someone who has lived the bulk of his adult life in Portland, isn’t that far removed from “reality”), maybe it’s not entirely off base to question whether Verotika, Danzig’s first effort as a feature film writer and director, is supposed to be this funny? My hunch is the answer is probably disappointingly “no”, but this weird quasi-anthology piece plays kind of like a low (lower?) rent Elvira: Mistress of the Dark at times, with a trilogy of stories featuring bridging sequences with a kind of Elvira-esque character. Nothing ever struck me as even remotely scary, though there are a couple of “eww” moments with regard to various special effects that may attract praise from lovers of bodily maiming. That might spell trouble for a perceived horror film, but Danzig exploits a lot of female nudity here which may recommend the film to some (my sense is the target demographic for this effort may be younger males than I), albeit sometimes with a different sort of bodily maiming (mammarying?) on display (details below).

All three stories here have a few elements in common, including an emphasis on bodily immolation as well as more fanciful elements like one story featuring a rather buxom lass whose breasts sport eyes instead of nipples. There are some pretty gruesome makeup effects, especially in the second story which features a "face thief" (and I'll let you guess how the thievery takes place). Danzig proves himself to be a rather able stylist a lot of the time, as can perhaps be made out by some of the screenshots accompanying this review, but the writing here is haphazard at best, and some of the line readings struck me as just flat out hilarious.

Verotika Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Verotika is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Cleopatra and MVD Visual with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.38:1. The IMDb lists the Arri Alexa was used, and I'm assuming things were finished at a 2K DI. This is perhaps by design one of the more "video"-esque looking releases I've seen lately. Fine detail is often great, and the imagery typically quite sharp (when not being intentionally skewed), but everything is kind of flat and dimensionless a lot of the time. The palette is nicely suffused, though some of the darkest scenes look a bit murky and can tend toward noise.

Verotika Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

It frankly continues to boggle my mind that a label with the built in association with sound like Cleopatra would continue to release Blu-ray discs with only lossy audio options, but this is another release from Cleopatra that in fact only offers Dolby Digital 2.0 and 5.1 tracks (perhaps in an unintentionally "meaningful" way, the disc is authored so that the audio options are contained under the Bonus Features menu, as if audio were something "extra"). The surround track does regularly place discrete effects in individual channels, creating some nice immersive moments, and the film has a kind of moody, often rock inflected, score by Danzig that tends to emphasize the lower frequencies (though that particular aspect almost inarguably would have sounded better in a lossless environment). Dialogue (such as it is) is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. As I've mentioned many times before in reviews of Blu-ray releases which only have lossy tracks, there may not be anything inherently "wrong" with the Dolby Digital tracks included, but the lack of lossless audio doesn't warrant a higher score in my considered opinion.

Note: Another slightly weird aspect to this disc is that while the Bonus Features menu features audio setup options, it doesn't have any subtitle options. There are either English or Spanish subtitles available by pressing the Subtitle button on your remote.

Verotika Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Slideshow (1080i; 3:10)


• Trailer (1080p; 1:04) kind of weirdly is preceded by a Cleopatra masthead (00:10) which is authored separately.

Additionally, a Soundtrack CD featuring Glenn Danzig's score is also included.

Verotika Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I'd love for Danzig to team up with some perhaps more accomplished writers and performers, because he definitely has an eye for staging things effectively. This film has a few squirm inducing moments, but there's no sustained feeling of dread. Video is generally solid, but audio is lossy on this release, for those who are considering a purchase.