31 DAYS OF HORROR 2022 - Day 1: THE MUNSTERS (2022)

 They're back. Hooray...?

THE MUNSTERS is a fondly-remembered black-and-white TV sitcom that ran for two seasons (1964-1966), just before all network programming made the leap into color, and it has since seen a a number of attempts at revivals, all failures. If you were a kid who grew up in the 1970's and early 1980's, a generation raised on (and sometimes by) old teevee reruns, you are likely very familiar with THE MUNSTERS and its comedic look at the daily life and struggles of of a family of Transylvanian monsters (of the classic Universal horror cycle mold). It was a standard '60's sitcom whose sole distinguishing characteristic that set it apart from its brethren was its monster angle, with competitor (and better series) THE ADDAMS family running at the same time and for just as long, but that show was about the family being very strange and eerie, in some cases undefinable, while the Munster family could have been just any other suburban clan of their era. Nonetheless, THE MUNSTERS holds a dear spot in the hearts and minds of many in my generation, so when it was announced that Munsters uber-fan Rob Zombie would be writing and helming a modernization of the show as a film, there was a good amount of anticipatory buzz surrounding it. Zombie is best known for crafting '70's grindhouse-flavored, ultra-violent/gory, and ultra-profane horror pastiches and remakes that many in the horror fandom community love, but that I remain indifferent to at best, or outright despise at worst. I have not seen all of Rob Zombie's films, but, to me, HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES was a flimsy and derivative attempt at copying the tone and atmosphere of the classic 1974 THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, while THE DEVIL'S REJECTS was just an exercise in shock and offensiveness for the sake of shock and offensiveness. And do not get me started on his appalling and utterly unnecessary remake of the original HALLOWEEN. That said, I am clearly not a fan, thus it was that I had no faith whatsoever that Zombie would deliver a Munsters update that would appeal to me, despite the fact that he wears his love for classic horror in general and the Munsters in particular on his sleeve.

Sooooo... 

I watched Zombie's 2022 take on the Munsters on Netflix and nodded off three times before I was even twenty minutes into it, so I backed up to where I left off before I began to crash. I eventually managed to watch it through, solely for the purpose of writing about for this year's round of essays, and if not for this project's sake I would have turned it off and gotten on to what passes for my life.

 

 There's no actual plot structure to speak of, so what we get is three acts of incidents that eventually come together to tell the stories of:

• Herman Munster's creation (for those who don't know, he's Frankenstein's monster, only as a lovable goofball) and rise as Transylvania's hot new rock star/standup comedian
• Lily, the lonely vampire daughter of Count Dracula, looking for love and falling hard for Herman, who reciprocates her feelings
• The Count's immediate snobbish hatred of Herman and his efforts to find (or create) someone that he deems as more suitable for his daughter
• Lily's shady brother Lester and his dealings with a vengeful Romani woman to whom he owes money
• The courtship of Lily and Herman, conveyed by a dating montage (which, cheesy though it absolutely is, is quite sweet)
• Lester tricking Herman into signing away the deed to Dracula's castle, thus facilitating the family's move to Hollywood, and their purchasing of the familiar spooky house at 1313 Mockingbird Lane

All of those elements coalesce (sort of) into a dull, overlong mess that has the look and feel of a cheap '90's Nickelodeon kid's show. (It even sort of looks like it was shot on video, which was not the case.) When the film reached the point where Herman is created, I just wanted it to be over, but that was only around 25 minutes into a 110-minute feature. 

In more detail than the bulleted list, the main focus of the narrative is on the love story, while what would normally be the central conflict gets relegated to a barely-there sub-plot that the characters never really have to strive to overcome. What happens is Lily's werewolf brother, Lester — played by a black actor who portrays him as a shiftless hustler who hits up his relatives for money and gets in trouble with shady schemes, plus he's seen as a drunkard who occasionally talks in a "blaccent;" I was not amused — owes big money to a vengeful Romani elder (who was briefly married to the Count ages ago), who only agrees to let him live if he can get Count Dracula to turn over the deed to his castle to her so she can turn the place into a casino. The Count pretty much tells Lester to fuck off when he suggests selling to the crone, so instead Lester tricks Herman into signing away the property. In most other stories, the protagonists would face the eviction as an impetus for beating the old woman at her own game and getting their home back, but in the bad writing hands of Rob Zombie they put up no fight whatsoever and instead move to Hollywood, where they take up residence in the familiar spooky house at 1313 Mockingbird Lane. And when they get to California, after buying the home they are flat broke, so Herman gets his job with some undertakers (instead of his hoped for gig as a Hollywood hunk). Then, before Herman even has his first day on the job, Lester shows up after winning a fortune in Vegas, of which he gives Herman a cut for his part is granting the gypsy the castle, thereby saving Lester's life. The Munsters are now rich, and then the film very abruptly ends, like there was another reel that someone forgot to include in the finished film.

None of this is funny in the least, and what attempts are made at comedy fall flat as the bits go on for far too long. (Lily's date with NOSFERATU's Count Orlock was interminable.) Its visual palette is garish and distracting, which was apparently intentional, though takes me right out of the story. (It would have been more visually effective in black-and-white.) Until the story shifts to California during the last fifteen minutes, everything looks like a Universal horror back lot if designed as Pee-Wee's Playhouse or as faux Tim Burton aesthetics.

 The standout in the cast is Daniel Roebuck as Count Dracula, who, unlike in the original show, is never once called "Grandpa," presumably because this is an origin story and Eddie, the werewolf son of Herman and Lily, is not in the movie. (My bet is that they were saving him and cousin Marilyn for a sequel that will likely never happen.) Roebuck nails Al Lewis's take on the original Grandpa, basically Dracula as an old Jewish man, but he adds his own personal flair to give the character some extra undead life. I have enjoyed Roebuck since his memorable turn ad Biscuit in Penelope Spheeris's DUDES (1987), and I always welcome him whenever he turns up.

Jeff Daniel Phillips essays Herman, and he has the thankless task of doing so from withing the towering shadow of Fred Gwynne. Say what you want for the original series, but Gwynne's Herman is indelible and iconic, truly one of the classic characters from 1960's television, so doing an impression of that performance would have come off as merely an imitation. Instead, the 2022 Herman is given the brain and personality of a bad Transylvanian standup comedian (who was devoured by an irate heckler), hence him cracking an endless series of dad jokes. Phillips gives it his all and can at times capture the childlike charm of Herman, but overall I just feel he was miscast. Gwynne's Herman was childlike and goofy, but he was also imposing due to Gwynne's height and basso voice. Though bulked up via costuming, Phillips still somehow managed to look a tad underfed as Herman (not his fault), and his voice, though occasionally capturing some of the original Herman's tones, is too off-puttingly high-pitched to be emanating from a hulking man-made monster. Perhaps that was meant to a funny disconnect between body and voice, but it just does not work.

 

And I get that she's the director's wife and he loves her and all, but Rob seriously needs to stop placing Sherri Moon Zombie in prominent roles in his films. The bottom line is that she simply cannot act, never could, and his serial infliction of her upon the audience borders on a hate crime. Her Lily has no discernible personality, so how are we supposed to fall in love with her along with Herman?

We also get a number of minor characters played by faces familiar to horror and sci-fi fans, including Cassandra Peterson, aka Elvira, as a Californian real estate agent, 

 

  

 

Catherine Schell, fresh out of retirement and best remembered for her role in MOON ZERO TWO (1969) and as the alien shapeshifter Maya on SPACE: 1999, as the vengeful Romani elder,

 

 and Sylvester McCoy, the Seventh Doctor on DOCTOR WHO, as the Count's servant, Igor, who late in the film gets transformed into a bat (as per the old show). 

 

Plus a ton of creatures of the night in Transylvania, which is framed as more or less a nation comprised mostly of monsters. I could get with that as a comedy on its own, but, alas, budget restrictions required the monster makeups and costumes to look like they came straight from a local Spirit Halloween mall store. Worst offender: Uncle Gilbert, a holdover from the old TV show who is one of Lily's relatives and also used to star as the Creature from the Black Lagoon in those 1950's movies. 

 

 

 Lily's Uncle Gilbert.

 

His costume consists of an immobile mask and slip-on Creature hands, and I swear I have seen better replications of the Gill-Man at Halloween parades over the years. 

 

 

I assume it was supposed to be funny and campy but, speaking as a Creature fan, it just made me sad to see him reduced to looking like something out of a 1960's DOCTOR WHO serial. In fact, DOCTOR WHO's Sea Devils from 1972 outstrip Uncle Gilbert by light years, and they happened fifty years ago! 

A Sea Devil and the Third Doctor (1972). It may have been an immobile mask, but at least some effort was put into it, unlike what was done with Uncle Gilbert.

I was always an Addams Family guy when it came to the great Munsters/Addams fan divide over the TV shows, so I have no great love for THE MUNSTERS. I always felt it took an idea with great potential and did nothing with it other than "monsters live a mundane early '60's sitcom family life," so I had no emotional/nostalgic investment in this film. With that said, this movie's origin story for how Herman and Lily met and fell in love offered nothing to get me invested in the characters, despite familiarity with their 1964 templates, and it doesn't even feature all of the main characters. As previously noted, there's no Eddie or Marilyn, presumably with them being saved for a sequel that is guaranteed never to happen, though we do get Spot the dragon as a pup.

 

I have no idea if this was originally intended for a theatrical release, but if it was, it would have been a major league box office bomb, gone in a week or less, so dumping this onto Netflix for streaming was probably the wisest strategy. Who was this made for? Adults are likely to find it too childish, while kids will have no idea why the fuck their parents sat them down with it. I mean, what kid of the 2020's will get the bit during the courtship montage where Lily and Herman do a karaoke rendition of the 1965 #1 hit "I Got You Babe" while costumed as Sonny and Cher?

 

No, you have not gone mad. This actually happens.
 

Sonny and Cher were on the very last legs of their relevance as a duo act as far back as 1976, so what member of today's audience under the age of fifty will even know who the hell they are? And as for people of my age or older, I cannot speak for the rest of you, but I have had an active hatred of that song as a dreaded earworm since I was in my earliest years, so having it foisted upon me in an already miserable movie was just too much icing on a triple-layer cake of dog shit.

I have not seen all of Rob Zombie's films but of those that I have thus far endured, this ranks as the worst of what I have seen from him. Just awful. I finally finished it after watching it in short bursts that allowed me to tolerate it. It's awful, though I have obviously seen worse, and I cannot in good conscience actually recommend it. The cinema of Ed Wood my be utterly devoid of talent and coherence, but at least I find those films to be entertaining in spite of their utter incompetence, so those I would wholeheartedly recommend. That said, I do want people who are familiar with the original Munsters to see this for the sake of comparison. Just be prepared and have lots of strong libations and other-than-nicotinal smokeables close at hand.