Welcome back to Rob Zombie’s Spookshow at B-Movie Enema!

Last week, we looked at Rob Zombie’s take on The Munsters. While that movie ended up with some mixed results, it showed something that I don’t think many people realize about Zombie by looking at him, listening to his music and his on-stage persona, and the films he’s made over his movie career. Zombie has a real love for stuff he grew up with too. He isn’t all exploitation, foul-mouthed characters, and disgusting redneck murderers. No, he still likes comic books, the family-friendly TV shows he grew up with, and animation.

This brings us back to two elements of Zombie’s early influences and career that I hinted at last week. One of the guys he wanted to be was Stan Lee. Obviously, Lee is best known for his work in Marvel Comics, but it’s clear that Zombie sees Lee as a showman, something he would end up becoming in his music career. He also sees Lee as someone who created a shared universe of characters that seem to naturally fit in when they interact with one another. Zombie’s films have that shared universe feel to them. They all kind of show a darker side under the surface of the rest of the world’s brighter shine.

Now, when it comes to this week’s movie, The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, it’s clear this is taking on that love of comic books that were directly from guys like Stan Lee. This is Rob Zombie’s animated feature that is much more on the action and superhero side than the horror. It’s the yin to his horror yang growing up. It also features another famous Bela Lugosi element.

Now, I actually knew about El Superbeasto before this movie’s existence. In the early 2000s, Zombie wrote a comic book series called Rob Zombie’s Spookshow International. That’s the inspiration for why I called this month “Rob Zombie’s Spookshow.” See? I can also hearken back to my past for inspiration too! Anyway, this was published through the now-defunct publisher Crossgen (though, I’m not sure if I can really call it defunct because it still kind of exists as a Marvel property, eh… whatever).

I am a big-time comic book collector, and I was a big fan of a lot of Crossgen’s titles in the years before this book’s existence. By 2003, I was also a big fan of House of 1000 Corpses. So when I saw that Rob Zombie was going to be publishing a series through Crossgen, I was on board. The series featured a masked luchador named El Superbeasto.

If Zombie was showing an inspiration from the grindhouse and exploitation horror films of the 70s with 1000 Corpses, then Spookshow International was showing he was also heavily inspired by the EC Comics horror series of the 50s. But he was also showing something else that would come through a little more in the film adaptation of Superelbeasto. He was a fan of a more whimsical thing, like comic books and animation, even if he was putting a Zombie spin on it.

Some people don’t realize that there is a whimsy to Rob Zombie. You might look at him or watch his films and think, “This guy is whimsical? Yikes.” But he is. As he was forming White Zombie with his girlfriend, Sean Yseault, he was also working on Pee-wee’s Playhouse. This was a children’s program that is full of whimsy on the surface, but is kind of twisted under the veneer of whimsy. Zombie worked as a production assistant. Between his production knowledge and his on-stage design, he was hired to create a Halloween attraction for Universal Studios at their theme parks. That led to his desire to make films.

The Haunted World of El Superbeasto came at an interesting time in Zombie’s film career. He already made a name for himself with House of 1000 Corpses, and then got quite a bit of praise for that film’s sequel, the more grounded and realistic road horror film about serial killers, The Devil’s Rejects (more on that next week). The transition to make an animated film next was kind of an interesting choice. It went into production in 2006 with a 2007 release date in mind, but the film’s animation didn’t get completed until 2009. Before its release, Zombie made two Halloween films (more on that later this month). So the release is interesting. It was likely intended to release before his first Halloween film, but ended up coming out during the firestorm of side eyes and negative reviews of Halloween II, which is why this movie is probably largely unknown or forgotten.

So, let’s dig it up, dust it off, and make The Haunted World of El Superbeasto a little less unknown or forgotten…

If The Munsters was a love letter to growing up with a beloved TV show with monsters straight from the Universal catalog of classic monsters, The Haunted World of El Superbeasto doubles down on this. He kicks the movie off with an opening that directly homages the beginning of James Whale’s Frankenstein. A man, similar to Edward Van Sloan, comes out to warn viewers that this is a strange tale that might shock and terrify you, so you’d best heed the warning if you don’t think you’re up to the task. The movie then also uses the same music and title card background Frankenstein used for the titles, cast, and crew.

I see you, Rob Zombie, I see you.

We meet El Superbeasto. He’s a director who likes to tell people he’s making art. In fact, he’s out here looking for tits and ass. The more of a young bimbo the girl is, the more likely he’ll cast her. He’s making a movie called Big Spicy Meatball Man. It’s a porno. He’s making a porno.

It took all of four minutes to see cartoon titties, so that’s something. Five minutes to see his hairy, pimple-ridden ass. But, as the full moon appears, the two women he’s doing the scene with start to turn all weird-like. Their eyes flash red. They get pentagrams on their foreheads. One of them turns into a werewolf. That werewolf babe bites him on the ass. It’s a whole thing.

The one that doesn’t turn into a werewolf turns into a gorgon. El Superbeasto slaughters the monster babes. Despite blood everywhere, no one else on set seems to make much of a big deal out of this. He heads off to the titty bar while his theme song plays. Basically, as the theme song states, he was a baby in a luchador mask dropped off at the doorstep of a family who raised him. He fucks bitches and kills monsters. He’s an all-around super-heroic guy.

He even hit Michael Myers with his car when the slasher walked out into the street in front of him.

So, yeah, El Superbeasto hangs out at a titty bar where there are all sorts of monsters and zombies and characters from horror movies. There’s an astronaut who gets his chest burst by a Xenomorph, like John Hurt in Alien. Jack Torrence from The Shining is there. The Bride of Frankenstein is hanging out at the bar. It’s a monster hangout.

Meanwhile, his “sultry sidekick,” and adopted sister, Suzi-X, is a super spy and on a mission. This is borrowing from his fake trailer from Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s Grindhouse. That was the trailer for Werewolf Women of the SS, which, itself, was a piece of cinematic art. Anyway, one of the werewolf SS members is Suzi-X in disguise.

Suzi-X is ready to kick off a mission that El Superbeasto was supposed to help her with, but he’s too busy at the bar trying to mack on the Bride. So she’s left to break into the Nazi fortress to steal the head of Hitler in a jar alone. She expertly grabs the head and escapes. She laments not having her own theme song, so she gets one.

She grew up being a cute and pretty girl who ultimately didn’t want to fit into the traditional jobs and roles for a girl. So she set out with a personal mission. She was going to kill every shitbag she came across in the world. While she is technically the sidekick to her brother, El Superbeasto, she also has a sidekick, the horny robot Murray the Robot (who looks like Bela Lugosi’s killer robot from The Phantom Creeps, which itself was a constant presence in Rob Zombie concerts). Murray the Robot is in love with Suzi-X, just like any other guy who saw her tits and ass… so the song told us.

By the way, Murray can change into a bunch of different vehicles that Suzi-X can use. Also, the X in Suzi-X’s name is for “Xtra bonus!!!”

Another concept borrowed, sort of, from a past Rob Zombie movie is our main villain, Dr. Satan. Dr. Satan is on a mission from Hell. If he finds a woman who has the mark of the Devil on her ass and marries her, he will be able to take over the world. He’ll gain the powers of Hell while transforming into Satan.

Dr. Satan believes he’s found the girl that he’ll marry to gain all these powers of Hell. She’s basically the greatest of all strippers, Velvet Von Black. He sends his ape sidekick, Otto, after her. Otto’s not so sure that she’s the one. Dr. Satan only thinks he saw the mark he’s looking for, but Dr. Satan is an impatient little devil. He threatens Otto that if he doesn’t do what he says, he’ll remove the screw in the top of his head, thus making him a simple ape again, and send him back to the wilderness – a terrifying concept to Otto.

It should also be noted that Dr. Satan isn’t the only guy seeking Velvet Von Black’s attention. Naturally, El Superbeasto witnessed Velvet Von Black’s amazing talents on stage. The thing with Velvet Von Black, though? She’s kind of a cunt. She thinks she’s better than all the other dancers. She calls them names. She’s rude and mean and foul-mouthed. But, daaaaamn, did you see her dance, bro?

El Superbeasto has to figure out if he wants to chase after Otto and Velvet Von Black to save her, so he can be rewarded with her all over his junk and junk, or if he would rather wait for his order of hot wings that are soon to be up. But he ultimately decides that he probably should save the day.

While Suzi-X fights off zombie Nazis, El Superbeasto shows up to ask for her help to save Velvet Von Black, but only after he tells her she’s just a sweet village girl and in no way is he trying to score with her. As he tears down the street in his car, El Superbeasto discovers a trail of cigarettes going into a cemetery. While he was trying to figure out whether he should save her or eat his hot wings order, we saw Velvet Von Black light cigarette after cigarette, dropping each one after just a single puff. That proved to be something of a trail of breadcrumbs.

Also, hanging out in the strip club, where Suzi-X is doing some work to figure out what’s the story with the ape who took Velvet Von Black is all about, are Otis (Bill Moseley) from House of 1,000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects and Tura Satana from Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

Oh and Captain Spaulding, also from House of 1,000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects, is there too…

While Suzi-X shakes down the various creatures and killers at the strip club, El Superbeasto is confronted by a giant monster thing guarding Dr. Satan’s HQ. This basically comes down to them exchanging snarky comments. Suzi-X learns from the Alien Xenomorph that Otto works for Dr. Satan, and reveals that to El Superbeasto, but the monster guarding the HQ captures the hero and brings him to Dr. Satan directly.

However, El Superbeasto knows who Dr. Satan is, even if he’s wearing a devil mask. He’s Steve Wachowski. When they were in high school, “Lil’ Stevie Pee-Pee Pants” was obsessed with Suzi-X. He would write songs about her and sing them to her while she was at cheerleading practice. El Superbeasto would beat him up for being so dorky. When El Superbeasto answers his cell phone, interrupting the villain’s big speech about what his revenge will be about, Dr. Satan has his monster guard knock El Superbeasto out and tossed into the dungeon.

That dungeon, I might add, has El Superbeasto’s two worst fears – his weird uncle, and rats… that fly out of his weird uncle’s prolapsed asshole.

Suzi-X and Murray arrive at the cemetery where Dr. Satan hangs out. There, they are still dealing with zombie Nazis. Because she did kill that Hitler head in the jar, she technically unleashed the second coming of the Third Reich, which she nearly derails by asking if it would technically be the Fourth Reich. Either way, a bunch of new zombie Nazis crawls out of the graves to prevent them from getting to El Superbeasto and Dr. Satan.

I want to add that every time Suzi-X comes across the zombie Nazis, it fucking kills me. It just keeps adding onto the original song that played the first time that chase occurred earlier. Part of it is the bop of the song that reminds me of something out of Scooby Doo. Part of it is how the song just explains what we’re seeing… um… kind of like how I do these reviews. Hmmm… Anyway, part of it is the occasional cuss word dropped into the lyrics. It’s brilliant.

It’s time for the wedding of Dr. Satan and Velvet Von Black. Suzi-X confronts El Superbeasto about how he clearly was only trying to save this woman to get in her pants. He explains that Dr. Satan is actually her old admirer, Steve Wachowski. When she finally remembers him, she nearly pukes and decides he MUST be stopped!

However, El Superbeasto is not very good at the hero thing. His plan to stop the wedding just before the “I do” part at midnight, which will give him all his super Satan powers, is foiled by his own buffoonery. His plan was to dump blood onto Dr. Satan, like in Carrie. Why? Well, El Superbeasto thinks he’s a dork so he thinks pulling a prank at his big coronation would be the best way to deal with this. But he failed. Now Dr. Satan is, like, really Satan.

Dr. Satan carries Suzi-X with him as he goes on a rampage with “Yakkity Sax” playing like it’s a Benny Hill sketch. Velvet Von Black is pissed because he’s with another woman when it’s supposed to be her half his shit. Because Velvet calls Suzi-X a “stank ass ho,” this leads into big catfight between the two babes. The song even tells us all that it’s okay for us to jerk one out to cartoons because the Japanese do it every day.

Suzi-X eventually wins. Dr. Satan says that Suzi-X is the new Mrs. Dr. Satan. When Velvet Von Black says she gets half his shit, he annuls the marriage by squishing her under his hoof. After a convoluted series of things that must align properly, Dr. Satan loses all his Satan powers. El Superbeasto beats the shit out of Dr. Satan. He then takes all the credit for saving the day.

While El Superbeasto celebrates saving the day and the adoration that comes along with it, Murray and Suzi-X consummate their budding romance, and Otto is forced to serve Velvet Von Black.

This is a crazy movie. The Haunted World of El Superbeasto is, somehow, simultaneously exactly what I thought it would be and not at all what I thought it was going to be. I didn’t expect this to be a musical. I’m not surprised this is something like a Ren and Stimpy on cocaine. It goes for whatever over-the-top joke it wants to go for. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. While it does work very well when it does work, again see the thing about the zombie Nazis song that killed me every time it cropped up, when it didn’t work, it was pretty bad.

I think my biggest issue with the movie was the title character. Whenever Suzi-X and Murray were doing their thing, the movie lit up for me. There was something fun and, yeah, kinda sexy about Sheri Moon Zombie being a badass and Brian Posehn being a lovesick sidekick. Naturally, that’s where you got that bop of a hit song “Zombie Nazis.” All the many songs written by Chris Hardwick and Mike Phirman, who recorded together as Hard ‘n Phirm, are just great. Paul Giamatti as Dr. Satan was some pretty top-notch cartoon voice acting. Otto was a fun character with the idea that, depending on how tight or loose the screw on the top of his head was screwed, the smarter or more savage he would be. I love that. Very cartoony. Also, another very cartoony idea was Velvet Von Black, the woman on a pedestal who was really unsavory and unattractive because she’s so unsavory. If you didn’t know that was Rosario Dawson, you’d probably never guess that she’s doing that voice.

I never really cared for El Superbeasto, though. I like the concept of the aloof, head stuck up his own ass, hero. I like the voice work from co-writer Tom Papa. He just turned out to be the least interesting thing in a movie that had so many other interesting things going on around it. I was faaaaar more interested in the types of adventures Suzi-X and Murray were on than anything the lead character did.

All that said, this is a marvelously animated and designed cartoon. I may never have been all that big on Ren and Stimpy as a show or the Spümcø style, but this is a very clean and perfectly stylized cartoon. It’s almost a classic cartoon in the vein of a Tom and Jerry or Looney Tunes that ended up having dirty, nasty sex with Penthouse Comics in a rat-infested alley. Also, you know those rats came out of El Superbeasto’s weird uncle’s prolapsed asshole.

I think if I got my wish of a Suzi-X-focused movie, I’d be a whole lot happier and would gladly return to this haunted world of Mr. El Superbeasto. Until then, I’m not sorry I saw this. I’m glad I got a few good laughs. I’m really glad I have a new favorite song about zombie Nazis. I’m REALLY glad there’s a whole moment carved out for Sheri Moon Zombie to talk about the various “curses” that are involved with Nazis (my favorite being “Fuck Nazis”).

Anyhow… Let’s wrap up the business here and look ahead to next week. That’s when we’re going to review what most believe is Rob Zombie’s masterpiece. Yes, we go on the road with the surviving members of the Firefly family as they kill their way to the border in 2005’s The Devil’s Rejects. So, pack up the car and join me as we pick up some tutti fuckin’ fruity!

In the meantime, I’m gonna go hang out with Suzi-X and Murray the robot so we can kill some zombie Nazis… hit it, Hard ‘n Phirm!