If you’ve ever wanted to see what happens when The Island of Dr. Moreau is filtered through the budget of a local middle school theater group and the ethical compass of a gas station taxidermist, then Superbeast is for you. It’s a film that dares to ask, “What if genetic engineering, jungle sweat, and half-hearted philosophical mumbling collided in a tropical train wreck?” And then, in classic 1970s drive-in fashion, it answers: “Who cares, just bring the rifle and the serum.”
Plot: Science! Madness! Monotony!
Superbeast begins with a bang — a guy goes nuts on a plane and gets killed. This is the film’s first and last effective moment of tension. From there, we follow Dr. Alix Pardee (Antoinette Bower), a pathologist who stumbles into a Philippine jungle plot so convoluted it should be accompanied by a diagram and a bottle of aspirin.
Dr. Bill Fleming, played with all the charisma of a wax mannequin by Craig Littler, is our resident mad scientist. He’s turning convicts into “superbeasts” with his serum — basically violent mutants with above-average cardio. The twist? He lets a wealthy game hunter (Harry Lauter in his final cinematic humiliation) track and kill them in the jungle for sport. Think Jurassic Park meets The Most Dangerous Game, except with all the suspense replaced by extended walking scenes and dialogue that feels like it was written during a dental procedure.
Of course, Dr. Pardee eventually discovers the truth, poisons the doctor with his own formula, and stands by as everyone gets what’s coming to them in slow-motion jungle justice. Except no one really cares, least of all the audience.
Characters: Sentient Mannequins in Safari Wear
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Dr. Alix Pardee is meant to be our smart, skeptical heroine, but she reacts to horrific science crimes with the emotional range of someone discovering they’ve run out of ketchup. Bower tries — she really does — but the script gives her less to work with than a napkin in a rainstorm.
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Dr. Bill Fleming has a God complex and a hairstyle that screams “secondhand Ken doll.” His performance is what happens when you combine monotone exposition with the ethical sensibility of a Bond villain who’s recently discovered yoga.
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Victor the Oil Tycoon/Game Hunter is apparently hunting superbeasts to relax, which is the kind of rich-guy insanity that passes for plot in this movie. He’s the kind of villain who probably writes Yelp reviews for endangered species sanctuaries.
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Vic Díaz as Officer Diaz is back again in his usual role: shady authority figure in a tropical horror film. The man was a genre unto himself, and here he’s phoning it in from across the archipelago.
Direction: Jungle Fever Dream With a Hangover
George Schenck directs this like a man who heard about suspense secondhand. The pacing is glacial, the jungle scenes are endless, and the action — when it finally appears — is about as exciting as a medium-stakes game of bingo. Schenck has no idea how to frame tension, much less maintain it. The “Superbeast” transformations are about as terrifying as watching someone struggle to open a peanut butter jar.
The editing is similarly brutal. Scenes cut in and out like they’re being handled by a drunk projectionist. The score seems confused about what kind of film it’s in — is this horror, adventure, sci-fi, a pharmaceutical ad gone wrong?
Themes: Ethics, Evolution, and Egregious Exploitation
There’s a kernel of a great idea here: tampering with genetics for the greater good, the dehumanization of criminals, science as moral playground. But Superbeast treats these weighty ideas with all the seriousness of a late-night infomercial. The movie tries to force-feed us its half-baked philosophical musings while forgetting to be scary, thrilling, or remotely coherent.
And that “Superbeast” label? It’s barely earned. The mutants look more like guys who fell into a bin of expired prosthetics and had to improvise.
Final Act: Jungle Justice and the Slowest Chase Scene Ever Filmed
When the final hunt begins — our scientist turned monster being chased by the oil baron with a gun — the film almost, almost gets interesting. But it quickly collapses into a jungle shuffle punctuated by dramatic stares and shots of sweaty men stumbling through foliage like hungover Boy Scouts. By the time the film climaxes with a bridge explosion and a shrug of a finale, you’ll feel like you’ve been trapped in the Philippines with these people for real.
Final Verdict: Superbad
Superbeast is a tedious, confused, morally queasy jungle horror that wants to be deep and disturbing but lands somewhere between laughable and sleepy. If you’re craving low-budget mayhem with just enough of a sci-fi edge to fake intelligence — and you’re already out of beer and self-respect — then this movie might fill 92 minutes of your life. Otherwise, leave it where it belongs: buried in the jungle of VHS bins and forgotten programming blocks at 2 AM.
Rating: 1.5 out of 5 broken syringes
Because nothing says science-gone-wrong like a film that forgets how to be entertaining halfway through the synopsis.
