The Munsters' Revenge

The Munsters Revenge was a nice return for the original family. I'm not a big fan of TV reunion movies in general but The Munsters Revenge was great.

Herman and Grandpa were back accused of a crime they didn't commit. They had to prove their innocence and there were some nice scenes along the way particularly when Herman and Grandpa were in the police station.

Oh yes, and there's a few villains in the film as well which adds to the enjoyment. This film did have similarities to Carry On Screaming from 1966 and it was just as amusing.

Now when is someone going to release this onto DVD?

A sad, sad sight indeed is The Munster's Revenge. The Munsters are brought back one last time(Fred Gywnne received a huge paycheck to come back to the role of Herman Munster)in this made-for-TV movie about a pair of wax replicas of Grandpa and Herman that are robots "terrorizing" the city as preparation for a robbery of a mummy's stash at an exhibit. With the police on their heels, the two elderly television icons try to find out who is actually behind the crimes in order to clear their names. We get to see them dress in drag as waitresses(a minor highpoint in the film), grandpa turns into a bat with attached wire a couple times(one time even flying to Transylvania with Herman somehow invoking his frequent flyer miles I guess), and a most annoying relative "the Phantom" constantly sings and breaks glass ad nausium! What is most sad is hard to pinpoint: is it that Gywnne(especially) and Al Lewis look so haggard in every scene and so indifferent to the material. Is it the hokey costumes of the robots that have that school production values look about them. Maybe it is the ridiculous script. Sid Caesar's crazy, mostly unfunny antics. Or perhaps it is seeing something which brought me joy and fond memories as a child being treated to a super K-Mart fashion makeover. At any even, the result is decidedly disappointing and silly even for Munster standards. As for the rest of the cast, Yvonne De Carlo is adequate in a most vacuous role(though showing more cleavage than usual for a woman of her years and experience). K. C. Martell makes an ever-so-not affable Eddie Munster. Jo McDonell is an attractive Marilyn. Bob Hastings as the aforementioned Phantom looks and acts and speaks in the most absurd manner. The film has a real cheap feel about it even for a made-for-TV movie.

As many others have said, this is a very lame movie with stale jokes, poor production values, a bad script, and almost no laugh track. It's a shame that Lily didn't have more screen time, and a shame that Butch Patrick, Pat Priest, and even Beverly Owen didn't at least have cameo appearances. It was a reunion movie, they should have been in it. Instead they focused on characters that had nothing to do with the original series. Sid Ceasar's performance was awful, actually offensive, and the Phantom of the Opera only made the movie worse. Still, it's the last time we get to see the original Munsters, Grandpa, Herman, and Lily, so as a true fan I'm glad they made this movie. I wish it could have been good, but it's better than nothing. I purchased seasons 1&2 as a set from Walmart for $19, which included this movie and "Munster Go Home". It's a great deal.

What this film needs is a laugh track, but even with that we've got a missed opportunity on our hands. Still in all, it's a treat to see the family reunited (especially considering how much Fred Gwynne despised his role). It's still nice to see Herman and grandpa getting into those same old jams, but what's with that Eddie? Should have had Butch Patrick return as the now-grown son.

Following the success of the (awful) Gilligan's Island TV movie reruns, a number of TV movies were made in the 1980's reuniting casts from classic shows. Most of these movies completely missed the boat as far as recapturing the humor that made the shows so special. THE MUNSTERS REVENGE is among the most disappointing because it goes for a Laurel and Hardy-type comedy style that really wasn't in the original series. Yvonne De Carlo, a wonderful comedienne and essential to the series, is completely wasted - she has less time here in this 90 minute movie than she did in any single 30 minute episode. And since the roles of "Eddie" and "Marilyn" in this movie are nothing more than cameos, what was the point of making them younger and recasting them? With very little rewriting, they could have used Butch Patrick and Pat Priest. Although seeing some of the Munsters spooky relatives was a nice touch, I didn't enjoy Sid Caesar as the hammy mad scientist mainly because there's too much of him and not enough of the underused Munsters (ironically that very year, 1981, Caesar's old partner in comedy, Imogene Coca, was also inappropriately cast in a major part in a TV movie reunion RETURN OF THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES). Another strange inexplicable bit at the beginning of the film has the Munster family represented as wax figures at a local horror wax museum. Why would they be in there when they are supposed to be a "typical" (if strange) American family, not famous monsters? This was the last Munsters project featuring the original cast in their roles, there was an awful revival of the series in the late 1980's with a completely new cast and a 1990's TV movie which featured DeCarlo, Lewis, Priest, and Patrick in cameo roles as a family dining.