Category: Halloween 2026 – Rob Zombie’s Spookshow

Halloween II (2009)

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Happy Halloween, my dear, ghoulish Enemaniacs! We’ve made it… Rob Zombie’s Spookshow at B-Movie Enema went overtime, but also will conclude today, on the greatest and spookiest of all days, and as they all say, “Everyone deserves one good generational family trauma.”

Yesterday, I looked at the oft-reviled 2007 version of Halloween. The opportunity for him to do that remake came at the pinnacle of Rob Zombie’s popularity as a horror filmmaker. He was basically able to write the check himself for whatever he wanted to do after The Devil’s Rejects scored big with horror fans and even some critics. However, I’m not entirely sure what horror fans expected from Zombie. Did they think Zombie was going to make a slick thriller like Carpenter would? Did they expect Zombie to basically make a shot-for-shot, scene-by-scene remake like Gus Van Sant did with Psycho in 1998? Why did they think it wasn’t going to be more in alignment with House of 1000 Corpses and the aforementioned The Devil’s Rejects?

I don’t know what people expected because we got a Rob Zombie movie. A Rob Zombie movie, I might add, I like more today than I ever did at any point in the past. But this kind of derailed him as a potentially viable horror auteur going forward. He had a ton of goodwill built up, and it all got spent and flushed down the toilet by the Halloween fans simply railing against it for days, weeks, months, years, and now decades. But that movie did make enough money out of the gate for producer Malek Akkad to say he wanted a sequel.

And boy, what a sequel 2009’s Halloween II is.

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Halloween (2007)

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Looks like we made it!

Every year at B-Movie Enema, you can expect two things. First, October will have a theme. Second, Halloween is a special time of year. So much so, I will throw in a special Halloween review for bonus times. Well, once you realize that I chose October 2026 to be “Rob Zombie’s Spookshow,” you had to know what that meant for this weekend, right now, right here.

Yes, it’s time to talk about Rob Zombie’s Halloween from 2007 (with, of course, the sequel coming tomorrow for the holiday itself).

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31 (2016)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle1 Comment

After this week, we’re 66.7% of the way through this October’s spoopy theme, Rob Zombie’s Spookshow, here at B-Movie Enema!

I ain’t gonna lie… We kind of peaked last week with Rob Zombie’s best film of them all, The Devil’s Rejects. I mean, not only is it a well-crafted, very viscerally terrifying film, but it kind of was the pinnacle of Zombie doing his 70s retro grindhouse thing. Where are you gonna go from there? Well, today, in the year of our Dark Lord 2026, we know where he went. We’ll talk about that starting next weekend. But he kept rolling with this retro grindhouse, throwback to 1970s exploitation horror, probably well past its prime.

Certainly, by 2016, it seemed reviewers were kind of done with it. This week, we’re looking at one of his films that I have not actually watched, 31. In fact, to date, this is the only Rob Zombie movie I haven’t seen. I largely didn’t see 31 because I heard not-so-great things about it. Despite getting some pretty cruddy reviews, it still holds around 47% on Rotten Tomatoes. That’s actually not as bad as you might think based on the talk around it.

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The Devil’s Rejects (2005)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle2 Comments

Welcome to the very exact midpoint of this year’s Rob Zombie Spookshow here at B-Movie Enema.

In 2003, after a couple of years of trying to find a distributor or studio willing to take a chance on his grindhouse throwback, Rob Zombie introduced a terrifyingly raw and visceral form of horror that, maybe ahead of its time, really put audiences through more of a horrifying experience than a form of entertainment. This was his debut movie, House of 1000 Corpses. It really played like the nightmarish and realistic grit that was seen in movies like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. At times, it felt like you were watching something you weren’t supposed to see. It was equal parts a movie narrative and a window inside a scattered and deranged mind.

What made the movie terrifying were the members of the Firefly family. Specifically, Otis, played by Bill Moseley, himself a veteran of the TCM franchise, Baby, played by Sheri Moon Zombie, and friend and accomplice to the family, Captain Spaulding, a deranged clown played by Sid Haig. They were violent. They were antisocial. In the case of Captain Spaulding, he was charismatic. In the case of Baby, she was sexy – a honeypot waiting to reveal a psychotic who liked to play with her prey.

While working on House of 1000 Corpses, Zombie would have what he called a “vague” idea for a story that featured the brother of a sheriff the Fireflies killed coming back for revenge on the family. This revenge plot leads him on a manhunt for the three most interesting characters to complete his revenge. Thus was born what is undoubtedly Zombie’s masterpiece, The Devil’s Rejects.

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The Haunted World of El Superbeasto (2009)

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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.

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The Munsters (2022)

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Welcome to the most wonderful time of the year at B-Movie Enema!

Ah, yes… October. The weather gets cooler. The movies get spookier. B-Movie Enema celebrates an anniversary. Each year, I choose a theme for the month, and I thought it was high time to feature the works of one Robert Bartleh Cummings, better known to the world as singer/songwriter/producer/filmmaker/actor Robert Zombercrombie.

Er… I mean Rob Zombie.

Now, to get things started with what I’m dubbing Rob Zombie’s Spookshow, I think it’s important to understand that I’m not here to bash on Mr. Zombie’s films. I actually have a more nuanced take on his works. While I can say not all his movies are exactly my speed, there are a few of his works I very much like (one of which I will definitely review in a couple of weeks). The movies that aren’t really my speed still aren’t entirely worthy of the onslaught of snarky commentary the internet is oh so well known for. And speaking of… Let’s kick things off with Zombie’s 2022 take on The Munsters.

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