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| he doesn't even have make-up on his arms in the promo pic |
Watched: 12/13/2024
Format: Amazon
Viewing: First
Director: Ian Emes
As a kid, I liked The Munsters better than The Addams Family. I even have a core memory of running from our family kitchen to the living room around age 3 because I heard The Munsters' theme song on TV, and I didn't want to miss the show. But as a high schooler, thanks to the Addams Family movie, I watched the Addam's Family TV show and converted.
Because both feature characters rather than, say, trying to replace Dick Van Dyke on his eponymous show, both shows have seen swings to return to glory from their initial runs by re-casting or bringing back the same actors. Munsters, in particular, usually looks cheap, off and wrong. Somehow, Addams Family has landed two great live action films, one good animated film, and a musical popular with families and amorous politicos. Munsters got a universally derided feature film in 2022 that no one saw.
If you don't remember, The Munsters was a very 1960's comedy show that borrowed some of Universal Monsters concepts, rejiggered them, and asked "what if they were a family unit living in Southern California?" Like most 1960's shows, it only lasted about three seasons, but that doesn't mean it didn't survive in reruns, a favorite of kids. Somehow, those reruns had an outsized influence on pop culture, and sixty years later, we still know Herman and Lily Munster better than almost every other 1965 show except maybe I Dream of Jeannie.
This 1996 movie is a 90 minute reminder that The Munsters worked modestly well as a 30 minute show with a laugh track doing a lot of heavy lifting. And that TV movies in the mid-90's that were not prestige affairs could be a slog (and which I almost never watched).
The most exciting thing about this thing is the cast. You put Ann Magnuson in something, I am going to give it a go - and they made the former Bongwater vocalist Lily, which was actually solid casting. But it also had Mary Woronov, who *also* has a fascinating career in Hollywood and the arts - here playing the uptight neighbor. Just a couple of weeks ago I mentioned Sam McMurray has been in *everything*, and, indeed, he is Herman. Grandpa is played by Sandy Baron, who Gen-X'ers will know as Jack Klompus on Seinfeld. Eddie was played by Bug Hall, a former child actor who is busily milkshake-ducking himself on social media in 2024. Marilyn is played by Elaine Hendrix, one of those very 1990's faces you will eventually realize you know from Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion.
Of the recognizable characters, everyone was clearly given VHS tapes of the original show and told "imitate that". So the TV movie has the weird effect of looking like an amusement park take as actors do their best impressions of other actors' performances of these characters, and do... okay?* But clearly the direction given was "do not make this your own. You are a Munster, and we know who the Munsters are." Which is a curious take on the other side of two wildly popular Addams Family movies that are in the same spirit, but very different takes on the same characters.
What's weird about this movie is that it feels like it was intended to be an hour-long thing and someone said "whoops, we meant two hours" and so the plots are piled in on top of each other, higgledy-piggledy. (a) Eddie has no Christmas spirit and must get it back (b) Herman must earn money for Eddie's presents so he gets his Christmas spirit back (C) Lily and Eddie set up a macabre holiday display and Mary Woronov doesn't like that, and (d) Santa is accidentally transported to the Munster's basement laboratory and Grandpa needs to get him back to the North Pole, and (e) the elves are in rebellion and want a vacation so they accidentally transmogrify Santa into a giant fruit cake. And, oh yeah, Marilyn has to realize she is attractive to men, though the show and every man on the show ogle her constantly. This is a study in The Male Gaze.
Nothing really works or lasts long enough for you to care. It's both too much and not enough.
And yet... it drags. It drags so bad. It's insane. Every shot feels like it has a beat of silence at the start and end of a line. People just ramble. I'm kind of sad and bored just thinking about it. And mad. Because I think someone, somewhere along the lines swung for the fences on this thing with the script, and someone who didn't get it came along and asked that this be filmed in a week, and just hired the first warm body the could find to shoot it and someone else to edit it.
Look, this is a movie that literally has Santa turned into a literal fruitcake**, and ends with a reindeer-less Santa having his sleigh pulled by a motley crew of possibly gay bikers. This movie should have been a riot. But not a single joke lands. I laughed exactly once, when someone asks Eddie "what is it, Wolf Boy?" as if they're speaking to Lassie. I am in the bag for this cast, and yet... the fact they didn't bother with full make-up on Grandpa or Herman is maybe a sign of how things were going on set. Whenever Herman shows up, people scream and run away, and by the 25th time that happens, you may be ready for that to stop and wonder how he does anything in this world.
What's wild is - they seem to have some classic sets or made new ones, and they also managed to (spoilers) bring together a merry band of classic monsters for the end of the movie, from The Invisible Man to the Mummy to Phantom of the Opera and Quasimodo.
In 1996, we're still in a period where genre is unserious trash when it doesn't need to be, and something like this was made as a lazy laugh by producers rather than an attempt to do something people might enjoy or want more of. This film on Fox during a Tuesday in late December when most shows had gone into re-runs and the hint of novelty might bring people in for an hour, at least. But one wonders if The Suits or the director just didn't understand the mayhem that this movie was trying to be, didn't get The Addams Family movies' sensibilities (likely) and were trying to force 22 minutes into 90, all at the same time.
Usually movies don't need laugh tracks, but this sure seemed to need it.
*this blog is not a place where you will find criticism of Ann Magnuson, but she also has her Lily Munster down pat. It's eerie.
**in a jarring bit of 90's-ness, also tucks in a homophobic "fruitcake" joke
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