In the 1960s, there were only two shows in town that featured monsters living in suburban areas. “The Addams Family,”This is a story about a group kooks with normal looks and wealth that allowed them to pursue strange interests. “The Munsters,”About a working-class band of unmistakable beasts whose outward appearance offered a comical contrast to their complete normalcy.
After their sitcom, The Addams Family has enjoyed great cinematic success with animated and live-action movies. But Hollywood hasn’t been quite so kind to The Munsters. The original hit show was a much bigger success than it is today. “The Addams Family,” but they’ve never been cinematically rebooted for the big screen. (Not counting series spinoffs). “Munster Go Home!”1966.
And even though there’s a brand new feature-length “Munsters” movie from heavy-metal superstar and cult favorite grindhouse director Rob Zombie, they still haven’t.
“The Munsters” is a new live-action comedy arriving straight-to-video and bearing a remarkably low-fidelity aesthetic that’s more reminiscent of “The Big Bad Beetleborgs”There are more “House of 1000 Corpses.” It’s bright, it’s friendly, it’s inviting, and it’s so disarmingly silly one would be forgiven for scratching one’s head and wondering if the director was some other “Rob Zombie” you’ve never heard about, unrelated to the guy who brought you “The Lords of Salem.”
But here’s the thing about Zombie: He may have changed his aesthetic for “The Munsters,”This silly film fits perfectly into his filmography. His films are love notes to the monstrous and underappreciated media filled with disturbing and strange characters who watch old TV shows and silly movies. “The Munsters”This is the type program that the Firefly family uses “The Devil’s Rejects”Their grisly world is given a healthy grist by wearing watches. If Dracula, Dracula’s daughter and the Frankenstein monster can find familial bliss in a world that doesn’t understand or appreciate them, why can’t everyone?
Zombie’s “Munsters”The movie is a PG-rated and dorky tribute to the original series. This provides a long backstory for the characters we love and know. We see the creation of Herman Munster by Jeff Daniel Phillips. “Satanic Panic”) in a plot point liberally cribbed from “Young Frankenstein,”The mad scientist Dr. Wolfgang (Richard Brake), “Barbarian”Floop (Jorge Garcia) is sent by a distraught Floop. “Hawaii 5-0”) to get a brilliant brain from the morgue, only to find out too late he returned with the brain of a hack stand-up comic instead.
Herman, who combines his old vaudeville jokes to punk-rock music with his tired vaudeville humors, becomes something of a local celebrity. This attracts the interest of Lily (Sheri Luna Zombie), who falls in love with his innocent charms. To the dismay of her father, Daniel Roebuck (the Count), all this happens. “3 From Hell”), who hates Lily’s new boyfriend and keeps trying to set her up with more desirable men, like Orlock from the movie “Nosferatu”Brake also plays the role.
The plot of “The Munsters” finds Herman marrying Lily but swiftly signing away their posh Transylvanian castle to her ne’er-do-well brother, a werewolf named Lester (Tomas Boykin, “Allan the Dog”They are forced to think about moving to Hollywood to start a new life in the American suburbs.
“The Munsters”It is a wonderfully realized production with amusing production design, and art direction by Juci Zurdi.“Hab”Hedvig Kiraly (“Escape Room: Tournament of Champions”They make the most of a very limited budget. Zombie’s film either looks like an expensive music video or a modestly-priced Halloween Horror Nights funhouse, and cinematographer Zoran Popovic (“Clean”) blasts bright and weird colors at every single corner of those sets.
It’s the kind of film you’d expect to see on a television set in the background of any other Rob Zombie film, or on the giant screens behind Zombie as he unleashes heavy-metal riffs about death and sex in front of a cheering crowd. What it’s not, sadly, is a particularly good movie to watch without other distractions at hand.
“The Munsters” is amiable enough, but Zombie seems content to merely hang out with these characters in their Transylvanian world, to the point that the actual story — the one about Lester betraying the family and forcing them to move — gets shoved off into the corner, to be dealt with only in the final act. The film doesn’t even so much end as it just stops, with a final plot point giving everyone a happy conclusion that, oddly, doesn’t even match the starting point of the series.
The film is packed with attempts at humor, but the jokes rarely land; when they do — usually from either Garcia’s sidekick character or Phillips’ likable delivery — they earn a hearty guffaw. It’s Phillips who emerges as the film’s greatest bit of casting, not just capturing the vibe of Fred Gwynne’s original performance but also finding a somewhat more youthful, romantic, wannabe-celebrity attitude for Herman that’s distinctive without feeling unfaithful. Sheri Moon Zombie is the most prominent character in all Zombie productions. However, Phillips is given less material to make a character.
It’s rather telling that Zombie seems completely uninterested in getting the Munsters to suburbia until the very end of the movie, and that Cousin Marilyn, the one conventionally human member of the Munster family, is nowhere to be found. The fact that their werewolf son is absent is a lot more understandable, considering the film is technically a prequel. Zombie doesn’t seem to care about the Munsters in contrast with conservative reality or even as a meaningful part of it, despite their superficial dissimilarities.
Zombie wants to live in a world that is peaceful and eccentric. This means they don’t have to worry about being ruled by the norms. The appeal is understandable, but it doesn’t make for much of a movie. Even by sitcom standards, the story is dull and lacks contrast with old-fashioned Americana. This robs the story of much of its humor.
“The Munsters” is a love note to the characters from the sitcom but not their trappings; there’s more to “The Munsters”He seems to have forgotten that. Zombie’s film, though clearly sweet and well-intentioned, seems only partially formed, a Frankenstein monster with only half the parts.
“The Munsters”Universal Pictures Home Entertainment releases the premieres on Blu-ray and DVD Sept. 27, 2012.