Since the dawn of time man has wondered many questions, but since last week when Universal studios announced a reboot of the Munsters, I’ve only had one. That is can The Munsters even work in a modern context? Hopefully Rob Zombie (who was named as Director and screen writer) won’t make the same mistakes of the past. But if he doesn’t this blog may serve as proof that I am the man to bring the Munsters into the 21st Century.
The biggest shadow over the Munsters franchise is the idea that it’s just an Addam’s family knock off. But this is a false statement for 2 reasons, firstly the Munsters was in production first with two different unused pilots. The first was a five minute short using minimal animation (similar to Mr Magoo, Gerald McBoing-Boing or Rocky and Bullwinkle). The second pilot actually has the same script as the broadcast pilot, but had to be retooled. The script, Herman, Cousin Marilyn and Grampa were going in the direction of the Munsters are a nice family who happen to be horror movie monsters whilst Eddie was a feral wolf child and Phoebe had little to no screen presence. After the pilot Eddie was recast and made to be more of the standard sitcom kid and Phoebe was replaced with Yvonne De Carlo as Lily who using her Hollywood film experience dominated the scenes. With Lily as the strong matriarch of the Munsters family this gave Herman room to become a child like doofus and for Grampa to join him in his Hi-jinx.
Unfortunately, retooling the pilot delayed the release of the Munsters and ABC’s horror-comedy based on Charles Addams comic strip made it to the air first. With both shows being the same on a surface level, both being set in a mansion, filmed in black & white and featuring an unusual family. They got lumped together, even though they’re different takes on the same idea. The Munsters are a standard sitcom family who are also monsters (a subversion of the Universal monsters). That Addams are a normal family who act like monsters (a subversion of the sitcom). To illustrate this look at how both shows introduce their patriarchs (Herman and Gomez). Herman is introduced, opening the door for Marilyn at the end of her date. Marilyn date is scared off by the 7 foot tall Frankenstein monster who just opened the door. Herman then comforts Marilyn as the family try to figure out why Marilyn’s dates always end so badly. All the while oblivious to the fact that her family are the universal monsters, “poor cousin Marilyn” (which would become a catchphrase of the series).
Gomez is introduced with a big beaming grin, casually throwing his brief case away and declaring “Honey I’m Home” then to reveal he had “a great day at work, 3 of his clients were convicted guilty and ones about to get the death penalty”. The Addams won the battle of the ratings, (this being back in the days with 1 TV per household and no cable) by appealing to the counter-culture. The Addams subversive humour was subtle enough to go over the heads of children and network censors, who never realised that the Addams are inbred to the point of being insane, openly practice BDSM and often engage in cannibalism. Interestingly Al Lewis who played Grampa Munster was a lifelong socialist, so the Munsters being a working class family of immigrants and the Addams being aristocratic psychopaths was sub-text that he probably didn’t miss.
Any high concept piece of genre television made then was deemed as kids stuff. So with the Addam’s being the more popular show, it got more spin-offs like the crossing over with Scooby Doo and more animated versions that ignored the actual humour of the original. Well the original comic strips seemed to be “ha ha goths are going fishing”, further enforcing prejudice that the Munsters were fighting against. But with them as victors they stole more and more from the Munsters, or at least tried to. The most fondly remembered reboot is the Barry Sonnenfeld movies trying to cash-in on the success of the early Tim Burton movies (the Addams always resurface when a successful horror-comedy is made). The 90s movies where the Addams are now inhumanly invulnerable as well as seemingly trying to indoctrinate youths into Ayn Rand Objectivism so much that I wonder if they have an unseen cousin Scott who makes Dilbert strips.
Attempts have been made to reboot the Munsters, the first being “Munsters today” AKA how not to reboot the series. Monsters today is about the defrosted Munsters now living in the late 1980’s, but the only clue to them being the Munsters is in the theme tune because they sing “we’re the Munsters''. Fred Gwynne was offered to reprise his role as Herman and declined. Al Lewis who was still playing the character on Saturday mornings on a cable access show where he hosted horror movies (similar to Elvira but more family friendly) was never asked to be on the show (however this was lovingly parodied in Gremlins 2). The Munsters in Munsters today are everything that the originals weren’t: crass, crude, antagonistic and knowingly cruel to Cousin Marilyn. The innocence of the originals is replaced with active villainy. I genuinely think the makers of Munsters today wanted to make the Addams Family but couldn’t get the licence and went with the cheaper option instead. Monsters today is like a bad SNL sketch where the punchline is the fact the Munsters even existed.
Thankfully the next attempt Here Comes the Munsters was much better, it could’ve become a full fledged reboot series but behind the scenes problems lead to Munster’s Christmas. Munsters Christmas makes the opposite mistake to Munsters today, they made the world around them too cruel, it’s similar to the 90s Brady Bunch movie. Lastly we have 13-13 Mockingbird Lane, a stealth reboot, written by Bryan Fuller (best known for Star Trek Voyager and American Gods), directed by Bryan Singer and Eddie Izzard as Grampa. Fuller and Singer have both stated they got the balance between Horror and Comedy wrong, but to be honest it’s not the Munsters, it's a more a reboot of Dark Shadows (not that awful Tim Burton movie) or a prototype What we Do in the Shadows. For those who don’t know, Dark Shadows was a 60s TV show about the day to day life of a Vampire trying to hide the fact he’s a Vampire. The humour comes more from the mock soap opera, also Izzard’s take on Grampa I don’t want to tuck me in at night and read me a bedtime story like Al Lewis’ Instead I’d be hiding under the covers.
Of course I should address the smaller elephant in the room, there is a show that recreates the Munsters perfectly and it’s not called the Munsters. It’s called Vampirna, no joke, it’s almost the same, tackling prejudice and presenting monsters as just quirky people. So, yes proven The Munsters can work for modern audiences, provided that audience is pre-school girls…
But as for an adult or a wider audience we might be too cynical, the average sitcom family isn’t what it was in the 60’s. The Addams’s subversion became more the norm, although normalising horrible sitcom characters became mainstreamed by Seinfeld and then its as or more successful copies Frasier and Friends. It would be weird for the nicest family on TV to be Dracula and Frankenstein, but for the Munsters they have to be nice.
