Let's get this straight up front. I am an avid horror fan. If there is a horror movie made that I have some access to I will do my best to see it. If there is a comic based on horror I will try and read it. And my love of horror has crossed over to music as well; I've always been a huge Alice Cooper fan and found Rob Zombie through my son. With that in mind let me talk about the new movie written and directed by Glenn Danzig.

If you're not familiar with Danzig he began as the lead singer and one of the founders for the band The Misfits before moving on to other bands and finally as a solo artists. His songs "Dirty Black Summer" and "Mother" popular enough to find themselves on MTV, back when they actually played music. He took the fame from those items and began his own comic book company in 1994, a group of comics aimed at adults that contained imagery of a sexual and/or violent nature.

Eventually it was announced that Danzig would be writing and directing a film based on the comics he was behind. Fans were ecstatic to learn that these images would find their way to the silver screen. But the movie didn't quite play across the country that way as hoped and now finds its way to disc for fans to rush out and buy. My suggestion to those fans is don't do so or your love of Danzig may disappear.

Trying to describe just how bad this movie is will be painful for me, even more so because I enjoy Danzig's music. But this movie is so below so many movies I've watched over the years that to tell you just how bad the movie is troubles me. I could tell you that the movies made by Rob Zombie, with the exception of his first two films, have felt uninspired and similar to me but that every single one of them was like watching GONE WITH THE WIND compared to this one. I could tell you that this movie would be the worst thing you ever saw even if you watched it in fast forward. It really is terrible.

The set up for the film is our horror hostess Morella (Kayden Kross) taking out the eyes of her first victim, a woman hung up nude for her to indulge, before she introduces the first of three stories. Yes this is an anthology film but not like those made in the past that were enjoyable. Oh how you will wish your own eyes had been removed before this film ends.

The first story involves a woman whose day time job is posing for pornography with a kinky bend with eyes where her nipples should be whose tears fall on a white spider that then grows into a spider type man with six arms who kills prostitutes when she falls asleep. Oh and she's French and it takes place in France. How do I know? Because everyone in it speaks with the worst of all French accents you are likely to ever hear in a movie and because when the police finally show they're wearing French uniforms. The sets are lousy making high school production sets look amazingly realistic by comparison. The lighting is terrible and done for cartoonish effect that is poorly achieved. The acting, if you can call it that, shows why when you hire someone to act you shouldn't hire your stripper friends no matter how well-endowed they might be. And the effects...oh my. I am honestly sitting here shaking my head. If you have a man-spider make sure all of his arms move and 4 don't just sit there. And when they do move and that only happens when he's up against a wall it looks bad. But worse than that when you can see the edges of the costume, especially around his face, you've done a bad job.

The second story I forgot after I watched it but later remembered when I looked it up. A facially scarred stripper roams the streets where she carves off the faces of her victims to wear. Here again, do not, I repeat, do not hire your stripper friends to be in your movies just because they are willing to take off their clothes. This story was pointless and far too long. And yet it wasn't the worst.

That was saved for the third story involving a Countess Bathory type woman who roams the countryside with her soldiers taking young virgin girls hostage so she can bathe in their blood and remain young. This one is boring as all get out and felt like it was the longest of the three. It might not have been but the lack of a forward moving story made it feel that way.

I had heard this movie was dreadful but I wasn't quite prepared for how bad it actually was. I've seen some terrible movies in my day but this one was among the worst I've ever experienced. With his name on the film as writer, director and executive producer the one person that deserves the blame for this atrocity is Danzig. It all falls on his shoulders and with any luck no one will ever give him another dime to make anything else.

A few years back a video surfaced online showing Danzig confronting someone after a show backstage, getting in the face of the man who then knocked him out with one punch. When this film ended I wanted to start a go fund me page to make enough money to track him down and pay him to do it one more time. Danzig should be ashamed for releasing this piece of drek on the world. If every copy were to be burned it would be less damage to the world than allowing it to exist.

Let me set the stage.

Sixteen-year-old Sam could not be a bigger fan of Glenn Danzig. I combed my hair in a devilock, despite it being nearly a decade since The Misfits broke up in 1983. I devoured everything Plan 9 released, still love Samhain to this day and listened to the self-titled Danzig album so many times that there was no printed copy on either side of the cassette.

Right around Danzig 4, though, I kind of stopped enjoying his output. By Danzig 5 - blackacidevil - and its flirtations with industrial, the departure of the band's classic line-up and leaving Rick Rubin's American Records, I was pretty much done with Glenn's musical output. Sure, I'd check out his comics and listen to every new release, but there wasn't much for me to enjoy any longer.

No harm. No foul. People grow up, bands change. But man - I still go back to everything before 1996 and cut Glenn Allen Anzalone a wide berth, even when he defends Trump's policies or people send around memes of him. Because I remember when I was a kid - like Ragman in Trick or Treat - and Glenn and horror movies provided me with an escape from my small-minded hometown.

That said, after hearing about this movie, I couldn't wait to get my hands on it. As you may know, I do so adore auteur projects, movies with rock stars and when things go off the rails. This film promised - and delivered - on all three.



At Chicago's Cinepocalypse last year, Danzig claimed that he was inspired by Mario Bava's Black Sabbath and that the movie was his vision alone. No Hollywood suits had gotten in the way of pure, high octane Danzig here.

The funny thing is, on his way to making a Bava film, Glenn ended up making a late period straight to video Jess Franco movie instead.

I leave it up to you and your sense of taste as to whether or not that's a good or bad thing.

In the first story, The Albino Spider of Dajette, an albino man spider - he got that way when a hooker with eyeballs for nipples named Dajette cried on him - talks dirty to several more prostitutes and then he snaps their necks. That's it, that's the tweet as they say. Dajette is played by Ashley Wisdom, who may be better known as adult film star Rachele Richey, who has worked with Rocco Siffredi, speaking of people I have idolized since my teen years.

Scotch Hopkins, who plays the spider-man named, well, The Albino Spider, spent eight hours a day getting into this makeup. Also: everyone in this scene seems to have a French accent.

Yes, for those of you wondering even more, is that Veronica Ricci from Bright Business Girls Learn Hard Bondage Lessons? Yes. It is.

The second story is called Change of Face and it's all about a mysterious woman who strips several times and then cuts off women's faces and sticks them to the wall. Does she want your skull? Does she need your skull? Who can say.

Beyond the starring Rachel Alig, this segment features a cameo by pro wrestler Sean "X-Pac" Waltman, along with London May (drummer and bassist from Samhain),adult stars Bobbi Dylan, Felicity Feline, Aaliyah Hadid and Katrina Jade, as well as reality star Courtney Stodden.

I don't tell you that there are adult film stars in this to shame them or you for enjoying this. No, I'm telling you so that you understand Danzig's id and the fact that there are three strip club scenes just within this one segment.

Finally, Drukija Contessa of Blood has Alice Haig as, you guessed it, Drukija, who is a contessa who finds young virgins, feeds them to her wolves and eats the rest when she isn't covering herself in their blood and spending time staring at herself in the mirror.

Amongst the virgins are - yes, adult star - Emma Hix and Caroline Williams - Stretch! - plays a peasant woman.

Doesn't this sound like Elizabeth Bathory? Yes. Of course it does. It's as if the box art from a Redemption film was the actual movie. Which is, I guess, exactly what it is.

If you read these accountings and say, well, surely some moments of surprise or pathos happened, no. They don't. Much like, well, gonzo pornography, each scene exists to give you what you want: blood, beasts and babes. Is it any accident that Kayden Kross is hosting the whole film as Morella, a woman who starts the movie by stabbing out a naked woman's eyes?

The thing is, there's promise. Danzig obviously knows who Fulci and Bava are, can recognize a great camera angle and gives horror viewers pretty much what they want, without any of the art or good taste or cutting away from scenes when they end like a normal director would.

Was I entertained? Holy wow, yes I was entertained. It was like a Tim Vigil comic come to life and I felt just as weird when he asked me at a convention if I was too big of a wimp to hang a Faust spread of a deadly orgy on my teenage bedroom walls.

Obviously, Glenn doesn't care what you or I think about this movie. Which is really how it should be. It's better than the majority of direct to streaming stuff you'll watch, it's definitely a singular vision and well, it made me forget the troubles of the world. Isn't that what movies should do?

Hosted by the demon Morella, a trio of stories coming from the pages of the Verotika comic-book series.

The Good Stor(ies): Change of Face-Roaming the streets at night, a stripper begins a reign of terror slicing the faces off of women she deems attractive in order to replace her own scarred face. When a detective realizes what's going on, he sets out to stop her rampage. This one wasn't that bad and was somewhat decent. Despite working with a premise seen dozens of times over with a figure looking to physically scar others because of her own deformity, the changeover here to the idea of a stripper doing it to maintain her looks and keep her career is serviceable enough for an anthology entry like this. Given enough encounters and cheap gore to satisfy with the removal scenes as well as a series of bizarre surrealism surrounding the growing collection of faces attached to her dressing-room wall or the faceless victims appearing during her stripping performance, it has some enjoyable aspects. The detective investigating everything, however, is completely laughable and the lack of realization over what's happening to them makes the encounters underwhelming for the most part though.

Drukija Countessa of Blood-In charge of a remote peasant village, a vile contessa takes away scores of young women and keeps them in her castle to feed on them and bathe in their blood in an effort to remain young forever. As she carries on her rampage on the citizens, her hubris eventually gets the better of her. Overall, this segment was quite enjoyable. The old-school Gothic atmosphere of the castle and the living conditions of those inside which serves to highlight her own extravagant persona are all well-handled and gives this some of its enjoyable atmosphere. Given a sleazy make-over with the copious nudity and gruesome bloodletting that emerges, including the bathing in blood sequences or nearly orgasmic glee with the blood on her body, they manage to hold up the general familiarity with the storyline directly and overtly copying other legends in the genre wholesale which renders much of the shocking acts rather pointless. Likewise, the comically awful effects here with atrocious gore-gags and make-up do knock this one down immensely.

The Bad Stor(ies): The Albino Spider of Dajette-Living with her boyfriend, a woman grows frustrated when a night of passionate lovemaking turns off another man when he sees her naked. When it grows so bad it manifests in the form of a murderous spider-person who begins killing her friends, she tries to understand how to stop it in order to keep them alive. This one wasn't too bad but it serves the film wrong as the lead-in entry. This one generates a fascinatingly bizarre overview of the physical ailment she suffers from and the utterly freaky emergence of the spider-creature through highly unconventional means is a fine way of getting this going. As well, there's a fine semblance of a relationship brewing between the two where his obsession with her and staying devoted to her manages to work well enough as a setup but the overall lack of explanation for what caused the creature to appear, the general inability to be disgusted by the illogical nature of it's being there and a wholly unsatisfying conclusion are big obstacles to overcome. Add a sluggish pacing onto it and this one is a tough one to open on.

Rated Unrated/R: Extreme Graphic Violence, Nudity and Graphic Language.