Growing up in the early eighties, ‘60s syndicated TV surprisingly made up the majority of my morning and after-school viewing diet. It’s where I discovered my love of superheroes with Adam West’s campy take on Batman, and my passion for sci-fi and horror with Lost in Space and The Munsters. While a TV show does make some revenue during airing due to ads, syndication is where the bulk of the money is made. See, after a show has run for about 80 episodes, give or take, it can then be syndicated, or licensed to local networks and run daily. Since the show is already produced at that point, everything from syndication is pure gravy. Why that is important here is the primary reason Munster, Go Home! (1966), which just hit Blu-ray thanks to Scream Factory, was produced was to re-introduce the syndication audience to a show that had long since been cancelled.
The Munsters (1964-66) was created by Allan Burns and Chris Hayward, who up to that point were best known for writing on The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show and co-creating Dudley Do-Right. Where nowadays 6-10 episode seasons are considered the norm, season one of The Munsters totaled 38 episodes. Season two clocked in at a more modest 32. The show was a riff on Leave it to Beaver’s wholesome family comedy formula, mixing in the Universal Monsters aesthetic.
Fred Gwynne (Car 54, Where Are You?) starred as Herman Munster, the patriarch of the family, who was a riff off of Frankenstein’s monster. The matriarch Lily Munster was a vamp, quite literally, played by Yvonne De Carlo (The Ten Commandments), and her father was basically Dracula, played by Al Lewis. While Yvonne and Fred would try to distance themselves a bit from their ghoulish counterparts over time, Al fully embraced his role as Grandpa Munster till the end.
No nuclear TV family would be complete without a young boy and teenage girl. Eddie Munster (Butch Patrick) was a young werewolf, and Cousin Marilyn (Beverley Owen [ep. 1–13]/Pat Priest [ep. 14–70)]/Debbie Watson [Munsters, Go Home]) was the “black sheep” of the family. The gimmick here was that cousin Marilyn looked like Marilyn Monroe, and because she was a Munster, she didn’t realize that they were monsters and she was the normal one.
The running gag would be her bringing guys to meet her family and the guys running away scared; she thought it was her, not her family. That was actually the crux of the first 13 episodes until Owen was replaced with Pat Priest; the show then refocused on the family’s misadventures, primarily Herman and Grandpa, who would every week get themselves into some trouble, only to get out before the runtime was up. The Munsters, contrary to their appearance, were a very happy and functional family unit, and the show was about how the outside world continually misunderstand them, whereas The Addams Family was the complete opposite.
The Munsters was cancelled after their second season thanks to declining ratings due to color adventures of Batman. The cast reunited for their feature film debut — well, everyone except Pat Priest, who was replaced by Debbie Watson, who was about to launch a show of her own. It was shot in color, which was a first, since the original TV show was all black and white. We got to see The Munsters leave 1313 Mocking Bird Lane after Herman inherits an English estate, becoming “Lord Munster.” This turn definitely amps up the fish out of water formula as the family travels to England to claim his inheritance. Of course, after arriving we discover a plot by Herman’s extended family to kill him off for his title. The film then culminates in a race, with Herman racing the iconic casket on wheels that Rob Zombie wrote a song about, Drag-u-la, to defend the family honor while avoiding numerous attempts on his life.
Which made me wonder, if Herman is technically Frankenstein’s Monster, can he even be killed?
If you’re a fan of the show, the film is essentially is a 90 minute Herman and Grandpa episode, which I am not going to argue about. It was written and directed by series regulars and is as squeaky clean as its small screen counterpart, so it could also run on TV. The strangest thing about the film for me was seeing all these characters in color, since the original costumes and looks were originally designed for black and white, which was cheaper to film at the time.
Everyone here is given a new color look for the film, for better or for worse, that took some time to get used to. The humor and writing still hold up surprisingly well, since this is after 80 episodes and the cast and writers knew these characters inside and out by now. Fred Gwynne and Al Lewis get the lion’s share of the spotlight with the new Marilyn, slowly coming up to speed throughout the film. The race sequence at the end is filled with some great old-school gags that made this ever more bittersweet, since they didn’t make another feature film.
The next time we would see The Munsters would be 20 years later in the made for TV special The Munsters’ Revenge. Scream Factory has included the special, which has Herman and Grandpa trying to prove their innocence after they get blamed for a series of crimes committed by robot doppelgängers from the local wax museum. For Universal Monster geeks, Gillman shows up as one of the wax museum monsters, while the family is visited by a Lon Chaney-eque Phantom of the Opera character. I mean between that and seeing Herman Munster being called a “honky,” The Munsters’ Revenge is worth a watch, but is definitely a bit rough around the edges.
Also included is a new commentary on Munster, Go Home with Eddie himself, Butch Patrick, and Rob Zombie. I still remember that episode of MTV: Cribs where Zombie showed his enormous Munster, Go Home poster he had hung in his entryway. That commentary was probably the primary reason I went for this upgrade, to hear Zombie geek out with Butch as they discuss the show and his career afterwards. They definitely had a good rapport, and Zombie pulls some interesting factoids from our favorite wolf-boy.
For fans that already have the Complete Series DVD set that came with both Munster, Go Home! and The Munsters’ Revenge, this is definitely a worthy upgrade. Both films are presented in HD, with The Munsters’ Revenge getting a brand new 2k scan. The transfer here is so good on Munster, Go Home! that I started to notice when someone would smudge the makeup on their hands on items they were handling or it how it would start to wear off in certain areas during scenes. But that aside, it still held up surprisingly well even under that kind of clarity, thanks to its built in campiness paired with the show’s usual ghoulishly funny one-liners. This package only makes me echo Rob Zombie’s sentiment during the commentary — why isn’t the show available on Blu-ray yet? I guess Scream might be testing the waters here, so keep that in mind. If you want to see more Munsters in HD, pick this up.
