How Rob Zom­bie put his own spin on a tele­vi­sion classic

Rob Zombie’s The Mun­sters harks back to a peri­od in Amer­i­can tele­vi­su­al his­to­ry – the mid-1960s – when, to match coun­ter­cul­tur­al atti­tudes that were emerg­ing on America’s streets, there was an efflo­res­cence of pop­u­lar com­ic series that sub­vert­ed the received val­ues of the times.

Over three live-action series from 1966 on ABC, William Dozi­er let a live-action Bat­man (played with ham­my dead­pan by Adam West) hilar­i­ous­ly attempt to main­tain order in a world of psy­che­del­ic colours, camp­ish sen­si­bil­i­ties and the ever-under­min­ing pow­er of irony – and before that, not one but two rival shows decen­tred the normies and squares while priv­i­leg­ing the freaks: David Levy’s The Addams Fam­i­ly (1964−66) for ABC, and Allan Burns and Christ Hayward’s The Mun­sters (1964−66) for CBS.

Both these shows took a typ­i­cal sit­com for­mat (indeed The Mun­sters came from the pro­duc­ers behind CBS’ Leave It To Beaver), but focused on a fam­i­ly of goth­ic denizens who try to fit into – and are often hor­ri­fied by – the con­ven­tions and mores of con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­can soci­ety where they have decid­ed to make their home and castle.

Both shows also derived their basic premise from Charles Addams’ car­toons for The New York­er (1938−1964), but where the char­ac­ters in The Addams Fam­i­ly were lift­ed straight from the car­toons, the mem­bers of the Mun­ster fam­i­ly were mod­elled more direct­ly on the ​‘Uni­ver­sal’ mon­sters – a vam­pire, Frankenstein’s mon­ster, a were­wolf, a fish ​‘crea­ture’.

Over the pass­ing decades since these shows first aired, The Addams Fam­i­ly may have left more of a cul­tur­al imprint, not least because of its reimag­in­ing in Bar­ry Sonnenfeld’s fea­tures The Addams Fam­i­ly and The Addams Fam­i­ly Val­ues and the recent Net­flix spin­off series Wednes­day – but dur­ing their orig­i­nal tele­vi­sion runs, The Mun­sters was the more pop­u­lar show, with high­er Nielsen rat­ings. Until it start­ed haem­or­rhag­ing view­ers to Bat­man, it was huge.

That was then, this is now – although it is impor­tant to note how obsessed Zombie’s fea­ture is with the Six­ties. Where oth­er recent reboots of TV series – like Bet­ty Thomas’ The Brady Bunch Movie, Raja Gosnell’s Scoo­by-Doo, and Phil Lord and Christo­pher Miller’s 21 Jump Street – have tak­en a post­mod­ern approach to their source mate­ri­als, Zom­bie remains painstak­ing­ly true to the orig­i­nal and makes no attempt to update it, in what is more affec­tion­ate recre­ation than satir­i­cal pastiche.

What is new here is the film’s pre­quel sta­tus. Where Grand­pa in the TV series often rem­i­nisced fond­ly of his old days back in Tran­syl­va­nia, that is where this ori­gin sto­ry begins, as the Count (Daniel Roe­buck) – not yet a grand­fa­ther – tries to mar­ry his daugh­ter Lily (Sheri Moon Zom­bie) off to the rat-fix­at­ed Orlock (Richard Brake) of Nos­fer­atu fame, only to see her instead falling mad­ly in love with new(ly made) kid on the block Her­man (Jeff Daniel Phillips), whose trust­ing naïveté even­tu­al­ly leads to them los­ing the fam­i­ly cas­tle and hav­ing to seek new for­tune in America.Τhere, togeth­er with their man/​bat ser­vant Igor (Sylvester McCoy), they move into a dilap­i­dat­ed old man­sion in Mock­ing­bird Heights

Her­man is a Frankenstein’s mon­ster rean­i­mat­ed by mad sci­en­tist Dr. Wolf­gang (also Brake) from the stitched-togeth­er parts of var­i­ous zom­bies and cadav­ers – but Wolfgang’s numb-skulled assis­tant Floop (Jorge Gar­cia), sent to get the brain of recent­ly deceased genius astro­physi­cist Shelly Von Rath­bone, instead snatch­es the cere­bel­lum of the Shelly’ broth­er Shecky, a ter­ri­ble stand-up come­di­an, and so Her­man, with his love for pub­lic per­for­mance, his end­less reper­toire of awful dad jokes and his gen­er­al idio­cy, is as dis­ap­point­ing a son to his father Wolf­gang as to his father-in-law-to-be the Count.

The irony here is that, while the Count sees Her­man only as a moron­ic clown, the old vamp is him­self allied by his grum­bling schtick to a Borscht Belt come­di­an – and indeed Roe­buck has a dual role in the film, also briefly play­ing actu­al come­di­an Ezra Mosh­er (seen on a tele­vi­sion vari­ety show). ​“This is just a bunch of corn­ball hooey!”, com­plains the Count – and while he is not wrong, he him­self is mak­ing a con­sid­er­able con­tri­bu­tion to the hok­i­ness of it all.

“It’s a freak­show out there!”, Her­man will exclaim, once he has seen the hor­rors of Amer­i­can sub­ur­bia in the cold light of day. ​“Every­one can’t be as for­tu­nate as us,” Lily will reas­sure him, both exploit­ing and invert­ing the sort of home­ly bro­mides that pep­per sit­u­a­tion come­dies, ​“It’s what’s inside a per­son that counts.” What’s inside Her­man, of course, is an assort­ment of parts pil­fered from mul­ti­ple corpses – but his undoubt­ed ingen­u­ous­ness and big-heart­ed­ness are reward­ed with karmic good fortune.

Mean­while at the very heart of The Mun­sters is the rela­tion­ship between Her­man and Lily – and a romance to rival that of Gomez and Mor­ti­cia Addams, both ever swoon­ing and ever sol­id amid all the sur­re­al ambi­ent chaos in either Tran­syl­va­nia or under the Hol­ly­wood sign. In cast­ing Sheri Moon Zom­bie in a prin­ci­pal part here, as he has in all his films, and in show­ing Lily’s meet-cute with an out­sider musi­cian and their sub­se­quent hap­py mar­riage against all odds and naysay­ers, Zom­bie has sent a love let­ter not just to a near-for­got­ten TV series, but to his own wife, refash­ion­ing the orig­i­nal Mun­sters as their own freak­ish love sto­ry in a con­ser­v­a­tive Amer­i­ca whose val­ues they par­o­dy. This is the cou­ple – both cou­ples – being and doing what they love, and it would take a gen­uine mon­ster to crit­i­cise them too harsh­ly for this. Just do not expect any of the excess or deprav­i­ty asso­ci­at­ed with Zombie’s oth­er films, as this tru­ly is a fam­i­ly affair.

The Mun­sters is released on Collector’s Edi­tion DVD and Blu-ray by Medi­um­rare Enter­tain­ment on 9^th Jan­u­ary 2023.