As posters reading “Alice Cooper for President” appeared on video screens behind him, Cooper made his decades-long plea for votes, singing, “I’ve never lie to you/ I’ve always been cool/ I wanna be chosen.”

That was, in terms of current events, the highlight of Cooper’s performance during the Freaks on Parade Tour at the Pinnacle Bank Arena on Saturday.

Cooper, the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer who invented “shock rock,” is a masterful showman of the old-school variety, never losing his goofy nature until the end of the set — “Alice Cooper is finally speaking to you,” he said before introducing the band during “School’s Out.”

That led to one of the largest theatrical productions in rock history, using props, costumes and other characters to tell stories that began with a giant newspaper hanging at the front of the stage that read, “Banished in Nebraska… for acts against humanity.”

A Jason-esque horror movie slasher played during “The Man Behind The Mask”, Alice’s boa constrictor was draped over his shoulders and wrapped around his left arm holding the microphone in “Snakebite” and “Feed My Frankenstein” brought a giant version of Mary Shelley’s monster onto the stage.

Cooper has had great bands since the Alice Cooper Band broke through in the early ’70s. Five decades later, he’s got a three-guitar ensemble led by Nita Strauss, who showed why she’s considered one of the world’s best guitarists by tearing into Vai-Satriani country on a solo that gave Cooper time to get into that aforementioned straitjacket.

Singing the tortured “Ballad of Dwight Fry” from his knees, Cooper was then led away and guillotined by Marie Antoinette, played as always by Cooper’s wife, Sheryl Goddard, who paraded around the stage with his severed head. It’s hardly shocking these days, but it’s certainly fun to watch.

Cooper, whose rock music has a lot of roll, managed to cram most of his big hits into 65 minutes. I would have liked to hear “Under My Wheels,” but unfortunately there was no room for anything from his last two albums, which pay tribute to his old home base of Detroit and talk about life on the “Road.”

But so it goes in the double bill he shared with (I might add) his protégé, Rob Zombie, who embraces horror in rock music and, for 25 years, in films he writes and directs.

Zombie also has giants walking around the stage – a few aliens, a demon or two, a robot and the devil, who made an appearance in “The Lords of Salem,” the title cut from one of his pictures.

But Zombie’s show was largely shown on a dozen video screens, two showing the musicians at work, the others set up across and directly behind the stage and showing clips from Zombie’s films and other videos, such as shots of Charles Manson, Rev. Jim Jones and serial killer Richard Ramirez greeting the audience at the opening of “Demon Speeding.”

An hour later, vintage clips of topless dancers filled the screens during “Thunder Kiss ’65,” one of the White Zombie numbers that sent the crowd into a frenzy, while “More Human Than Human” sent the mosh pit in the center of the dance floor into a frenzy.

The shaman-clad Zombie stomps, kicks and jumps on the video monitors at the front of the stage. He’s a much more conventional performer than Cooper. Towards the end of the show, he really gets the crowd going, admonishing them to put their phones down for three minutes and threatening to play the last few songs acoustically if he doesn’t get a louder response.

Zombie’s music is much heavier than Cooper’s, with chest-rattling bass over a hammering, thick guitar mix, which resonated with the crowd of 7,500 or so in the arena on Saturday.

It’s hard and honestly a bit pointless to say who was “better”. Both received loud, long ovations at the end of their sets. For me, Alice was the most entertaining as always, because he doesn’t take himself too seriously and because of the old-school show that I’ve seen a dozen times before — and which never gets old.

Cooper and Zombie were preceded by Filter and a very loud Ministry on a night that presented 3½ hours of rock in about five hours, making for a bang for your buck show that received rave reviews from those around me and on social media immediately afterwards.