Review of The Haunted World of El Superbeasto (2009) by Steve D — 01 Dec 2009

This movie is not for everybody. It packs enough cartoon blood, violence, and nudity here to make Rob Zombie's other movies look subtle in comparison. El Superbeasto is not a children's cartoon, it's a exploitive and twisted attempt at making an animated feature. It's filled with some great homages to classic films (practically every big screen monster is used here, everything from Michael Myers to Jack Torrence from The Shining), and of course Zombie's usual bunch is back to provide voices for the gang of misfit characters here. Although it's humor is ludicrous and at most times striving to be funny, I did in fact find myself laughing along with some of the characters. Suberbeasto is in no way a good old fashioned cartoon movie, and I wouldn't recommend it to most, all I can say is this: if you've tolerated Zombie's past work you may find some enjoyment out of this mess.

Blood, boobs, and curses. How els can you sum up a film such as this? From the start of the film, that's all your catered to, all the way up to the very end - and it gets worse and worse as it progresses. Violence and nudity in animation may fail to offend some, but there's just so much of it here that even I, one of the few people out there to which this film is made, found it to be in extreme excess. You see cartoon nipples and privates on display every two minuets. Normally I wouldn't complain about such actions, but even I found myself saying 'enough is enough'. And if you thought Zombie's characters cursed a lot before, brace yourself. To say the language in this film is extremely juvenile would be an understatement of monumental proportions. Every curse in the book is used. Said curses are strung together with the hippest street slang known to man. To add further pain, we get little melodies throughout the film as theme songs for characters or just to add curses where no one is talking at any given moment.

Not to completely bash this movie, I'll admit I like the animation here. Think along the lines of Ren & Stimpy meets Spongebob. The voice over works well too. I found the voices of Beasto and Dr. Satan (and his ape slave) preformed quite well. The opening scenes of the film were vintage and fantastic, but from there on out be warned: this is not intended for the Scooby Doo crowd.