The Munsters

This is in my opinion a departure from Rob Zombies movie career and a throwback to his music videos, animated sequences, and stage shows. Cuts, vibrant contrasting colors...a comic book splash page brought to life. I think we saw some of this in The Lords of Salem, but a little more art house serious. Does it work? Maybe. It's not an easy watch, but it is great Halloween atmosphere, maybe on in the background at a party. No offense to Mr. Zombie but in my opinion he peaked at The Devils Rejects. But I did not see that filthy dirthouse magic in 31 or 3 From Hell. I'll give it a 6 because it's neat and looks amazing.

Well, that sucks. No, not the movie. I just wish it had.

I love 10/10 star movies as equally as I do 1/10 ones. For every The Silence of the Lambs there's The Room. The Birds to Birdemic. Since I had very little interest in this - so much so, I did NOT at all know this movie even being made until the trailer dropped in July, I watched the enormously hated trailer. My eyes even got big because I wanted to see the disaster unfold in front of me.

So, I guess you could say I was disappointed with how not bad it was. Great? NO. Good? Eh. Depends. How bad of a fan are you of the classic 1960s sitcom? On a scale of 1-10, are you a 100? You might be the target audience!

This is the prequel tale of Herman Munster's creation and meeting his soul mate, Lily with her grandfather in tow. Through some sitcomish hijinks, the Munsters are bankrupt and need to, well, just tell jokes and accident their way through to the end credits segment.

Right. Well, I didn't hate it. Sure, some scenes and a ton of jokes didn't work, but this was written, shot and acted like it was just an overlong episode from 1964. This, sadly was not modernized whatsoever. I would've loved if it took the route of The Brady Bunch from the 90s or even The Addams Family, same decade. So, you'll have to accept this humor and style is solely from the mid-60s.

Once that was established early on, I accepted it and admittedly, I chuckled throughout and even busted out laughing a couple of times. The first and one I remember the most was Herman's intro and the piano. Totally caught me off guard.

What's really missing is the children. But this sounds like it was Rob's advertisement for a sequel which would produce the children. Though, it still worked as the introduction of the leads.

I did love how Rob owned the bright colors, Dutch angles and other sitcom tricks of the past decades. Plus, a ton of the background props and signs totally cracked me up.

This is only recommended for those DIE-HARD OG 60s Munsters fans or people who can accept this basically is that series in a nutshell and not freakout on how un-modern it is.

***

Final Thoughts: The show was a favorite of mine in syndication as a child in the 80s. Used to watch this back-to-back with The Addams Family and loved both equally. I truly admired even though these were both sitcoms about fish-outta-water macabre families, they were truly different in tone. So, I appreciated both for their own styles.

I'll be honest, the second i saw the obviously out of place title card - my heart sank a little. I interpreted it as a sign of things to come, and i wasn't entirely wrong.

While i did enjoy some aspects of this film, it felt so tonally off, and it wasn't helped by certain cinematic choices. It feels like it tries too hard with the visual humour when the strong suit of The Munsters has always been subtle humour with an alternate take on modern life, but Rob Zombie's choice to structure the film as a cartoon come to life just feels like an unnecessary step to take since you're dealing with what're essentially Universal horror monsters. The transitions are incredibly jarring and they really take you out of the moment, and since they're so frequently spaced throughout the film and get worse with each one it really feels like the film never even has a chance to get going. Which is only made worse but the strange pacing of the plot and and a very sudden ending that comes out of nowhere.

As for the cinematic choices, not concerning transitions, the green lighting is so disheartening. It's unbelievably overused and it takes so much away from some of the more beautifully detailed sets. I can't really think of why it's used so much, other than perhaps as an homage to the green skin of the black and white characters that was always hinted to in the sixties show, but when you have actors caked in colourful makeup the lighting just comes across as another unnecessary presentation choice.

It's not always pleasant to look at and the jokes don't always land, but it does have it's enjoyable moments - such as Richard Brake's overly campy performance channelling Vincent Price from his B movie performances in the Roger Corman 'Poe' movies - yet it's hard to justify the film's existence on that basis since it doesn't have much to offer fans of the source material, and i honestly can't see this depiction of the characters appealing to a new generation of fans.

There have been numerous attempts to reboot this series since the 1960s (and not to doom this movie to failure just yet), but none of them have been successful in their attempt at rebooting the property. However, it still feels as though it has been done better, and on more than one occasion. In 1995, Fox's Halloween TV special "Here Come the Munsters," was a delightful reiteration of The Munsters which provided the family an origin and was effective in spawning another sequel and being as close to the original series as you could get. And more recently the Halloween special in 2012, "Mockingbird Lane," provided the family with a much darker edge that they desperately needed to settle into a new century, and sadly this reboot did fail. But in comparison - especially as Tim Burton's "Wednesday" series is soon to be released - i do think a more serious and darker take on The Munsters is what would have been needed in 2022 instead of a rehash of the original show which just exists as a queer vanity project for a hardcore fan of the show.

I am a huge fan of The Munsters and Rob Zombie's but sadly this just felt a little off to me. And maybe it's just because i really wanted to like it, but can't avoid it's abundantly obvious flaws.

I will give it another chance, since it does have a certain appeal, and i may bump it up to three stars depending on how i like the film when i watch it in black and white. Nevertheless, on a first watch for a big fan, I'm completely split down the middle.

So, just to start off, I am a Rob Zombie fan. I don't like all his films, but I respect when he swings for the fences and gets a win. Some hits and some misses.

I went into this wanting Rob Zombie to pull a rabbit out of his hat and blow everyone away.

Pros: the sets are really cool. Whoever designed them and anyone that worked on it should feel proud. They look awesome. I'm kinda jealous. If I ever made a movie, I'd love to use them. The lighting was cool too. I know the garish green and purple highlighting will bother some people, but I kinda dig that sort of stuff. And the acting actually wasn't bad either. Everyone was trying really hard with their respective performances and trying to be campy.

Cons: there is something really off about the movie I can't put my finger on. The editing feels "slow" or "delayed" maybe? I can't explain it but maybe some tightening up was in order. The music (or sound effects rather) are trying to imitate the old 60's show. And it doesn't work. They could've hired someone to compose a memorable score and it would've been a lot better. And finally... the film is boring. It feels like it's three hours long. It's really not funny. Rob should have hired another writer to polish things up. Play to your strengths.

There are things that could've been enhanced and the movie would work soooo much better. I'm afraid to say, I think this one's a miss.

I always preferred The Munsters over The Addams Family. After hearing a lot of negative reviews about this film, I still decided to watch the movie. Of all the negative rants I have read, the reviews missed one major problem- The cast doesn't have the wit to pull this film off. It's just meh for me.

The original cast (Fred Gwynne, Yvonne DeCarlo and Al Lewis) could run rings around the dialogue given. The new cast seems to not want to bother turning in a performance.

The film has too much of a TV movie feel. It might work well for children but not fans of The Munsters

I can see why Universal chose not to release this film to the theaters.