PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*
I'm happy to add the TV-film adaptation of SUPERBEASTO to the short list of movies that "are better than the book." I reviewed the TPB collection of Rob Zombie stories here, and while Zombie's original concept had some merit, he blew it by reeling off his list of transgressive jokes with no more style than Stephen Colbert reading Trump routines from his teleprompter.
The big change seems to be that for the STARZ-financed movie Zombie collaborated on the script with his friend, comedian Tom Papa (who also voices the titular Superbeasto). In essence, HAUNTED follows the rough outline of the first story from the TPB. But the sheer quantity of jokes has been roughly quadrupled, making it a lot more likely that the viewer won't see all of them coming. Further, some of the plot developments of the original story have been finessed in a way one doesn't often see in stories devoted to lots of blood and guts and T and A. I can't necessarily credit Papa with all of the improvements, but that's what I tend to believe anyway.
I confess I've never read Jarry's famous play UBU ROI, but I thought the main character sounded a bit like Superbeasto. So I looked the play up on Wiki, and found a critic who called Jarry's world "a domain of greedy self-gratification." That applies to the HAUNTED WORLD as well. El Superbeasto is a vain, self-centered ex-wrestler who dwells in a world of weird monster-people and spends most of the time looking for bimbos in bars. He has a sexy sister, Suzi X (Sherri Moon Zombie), who's some sort of patch-eyed superspy (think Nick Fury with tits). I suppose she's the closest thing to a standard hero in HAUNTED, though I'm not sure her heroics aren't just an excuse to unleash her bloodlust. She sometimes tries to get her brother to help her on missions, and he usually blows her off because he's busy screwing around, in one way or another.
This time, though, Superbeasto hears the clarion call to heroism while engaged in pursuing a particular piece of trim, exotic dancer Velvet Von Black (who's a white girl, despite spouting ghetto lingo and being voiced by Rosario Dawson). Velvet is kidnapped to become the bride of Doctor Satan (Paul Giamatti), the ultimate shrimpy scientist desperate to prove his manhood. Superbeasto isn't much better, since he's mainly concerned with earning some carnal gratitude from Velvet. When all the principals converge, lots of sex and violence ensues. Oh, and the climax-- the storytelling climax, I mean-- is made much better by giving the evil doctor the power to change himself into a Godzilla-sized devil-man.
Other improvements include Suzi X having to fight off a horde of Nazi zombies to keep them from saving Hitler's brain. I'll give away a funny scene in which another horde of zombie soldiers are thwarted by the conundrum of whether a new Nazi regime would be the Third or the Fourth Reich. Papa and Zombie together also get a lot more mileage out of Suzi's robotic aide Murray, who's modeled on the frowny-faced automaton from the serial THE PHANTOM CREEPS. Other celebrity voices include Dee Wallace, Geoffrey Lewis, Rob (DARKWING DUCK) Paulsen, Laraine Newman, Sid Haig, Cassandra Peterson, and Tura Satana. With respect to Satana, the few lines she reads for a cartoon character-- quite logically named "Varla"-- provided the actress with her next-to-last role before she passed.
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