The Haunted World of El Superbeasto

Review by Nick Peron

Rob Zombie has finally made another good movie. After putting up with the horrible Halloween remakes, we finally get a movie that meets our expectations. However, this movie was three years in the making. Initially, Rob Zombie began working on this film 2006, just after he completed The Devil's Rejects , but getting the funding, and the distractions of making the aforementioned Halloween films slowed down production of this film. The last hurdle to cross before this movie was released in September 2009, was due to the distributor, Anchor Bay, being acquired by Starz Media. But it's finally out, and boy was it worth the wait.

For those of you who have been living in the cave since, well forever, The Haunted World of El Superbeasto is based on a comic book by the same name and was created by Rob Zombie himself. It stars comedian Tom Papa (The Informant , Analyze That ) as El Superbeasto, a Luchador mask wearing man of action who is usually more busy drinking heavy with fast women, or whoring himself out in lucrative merchandising campaigns. Also in the cast is (not surprisingly) Rob Zombie's wife Sheri Moon Zombie playing the role of Suzi-X, El Superbeasto's sister who is a sexy but dangerous gun toting femme fatal, who has a trust robot side-kick (Murray, voiced by comedian Brian Poshen) that has a very human sexual attraction to her.

The film centers around the villain Dr. Satan (voiced by Paul Giamatti of Cinderella Man fame) who learns that the stripped Velvet Von Black (Rosario Dawson) has the mark of the beast, and is prophesied to be the one woman that -- if he marries her -- will endow him with amazing Satanic powers. El Superbeasto gets involved when he happens to be at the strip club when she is captured and decides that saving her might be in his best interest. He also convinces his sister Suzie-X to help him out (even though she is being stalked by an army of Nazi zombies that want to collect the reanimated severed head of Hitler, which she had stole from them.)

I'll leave you to find out how the rest of the movie goes, but needless to say it's an amazing film. It's very reminiscent of exploitation cartoons of the 1970's like Fritz the Cat , COONSKIN , and has that cross-genre mishmash of characters that is reminiscent of Ralph Bakshi's Wizards . It also features moments that are animated in much the same style as old cartoons like Betti Boop.

Naturally, it's a cartoon that is geared toward an adult audience and you can find that this film is a swing parade of nudity, violence, and blood and guts. In spit of it's gratuitous use of these mediums, Zombie's film is rife with creativity, an interesting story, and a good laugh. Also, regardless of it's adult content, the film has an almost Halloween cartoon-special quality to it, kind of like It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown , only with guns and tits.

The movie is also full of some hilarious songs done in genres that are unlike Rob Zombie's usual fair. There is nary a single Rob Zombie song in the whole film, which is just as well because I feel that their inclusion wouldn't fit with the films tone. The funniest of them is a surf-rock themed song that is playing as Suzi-X is fleeing from an army of motorcycle riding Nazi zombies. There's also another hilarious song telling the audience that it's okay to masturbate to cartoons as Suzi has a catfight with Velvet.

Also keep an eye out for cameo appearances by both Bill Moseley and Sid Haig, both of whom reprise the roles of Ottis and Captain Spaulding (from Zombie's previous films House of 1,000 Corpses and Devil's Rejects respectively.)

What more do I need to tell you? If you've missed seeing original stories made by Rob Zombie, then you're going to want to pick up The Haunted World of El Superbeasto. Otherwise you're going to have to wait until 2013 for the release of Tyrannosaurus Rex (a film based on the comic book "The Nail" that wrote), because the next movie coming out by Zombie is (yet another) remake of The Blob .