I’m going to double down on my earlier comment: yikes, this looks pathetic.
There’s so much to wonder about here, from the ensemble of literal nobodies they assembled for the cast to the fact that if there are no kids in the movie, what the hell will they call Grandpa Munster? And speaking of which, can we address the fact that even though Rob Zombie keeps going on and on about how they’ve recreated the iconic look of the original show exactly, they have given Grandpa Munster–a character who has never once-boasted facial hair–a full blown handlebar mustache?
I just can’t get over how weird it is for there to not even be a passing nod to it being there. It’s like if Gary Cole showed up in The Brady Bunch Movie with a beard down to his waist, and no one once acknowledged it.
I really can’t get over how much the guy playing Herman Munster sucks.
Here’s Fred Gwynne doing the “Herman crashing through the door bit” from the Munsters season 2 intro. It’s six seconds of expert comedic characterization and timing. Herman breaks through the door, but his immediate reaction is worry, indicating that wasn’t what he meant to do. Then he shrugs and laughs it off before walking out of the frame. We immediately get an idea for who Herman Munster is: a big goofball who might be clumsy but has a big heart and isn’t afraid to laugh at his own expense.
Now let’s compare this same bit to the Rob Zombie version.
What the fuck is this? Is Herman Munster having a stroke? He just storms through the door with one pink raised laughing like a spaz. How can you fuck up this exact same thing this badly when the whole point is you’re trying to recreate it exactly? This is a porn parody caliber performance.
Although that all said, this bit in the trailer never ceases to get me cackling.
Blasphemy, I know…but The Munsters was pretty terrible. If it was on in the afternoons after school it was time to go outside or flip over to the Brady Bunch of Gilligan’s Island. I didn’t really like Addams Family either, but at least it has some wit to it.
Even so, I’m baffled this got any money spent on it. Well, from the looks, maybe it didn’t have any money spent on it.
I don’t feel strongly about the source material, except to say that most of the original cast were total pros and the new cast is amateur hour. I never wanted the Brady Bunch or Addams Family back either, but those actually are really fantastic 90s film interpretations of the source material. There’s no reason in theory the Munsters couldn’t do the same with the right people at the helm. But obviously, Rob Zombie is not that guy. I mean, this somehow manages to look worse than the last Munsters revamp:
I believe it’s their origin story (about Herman and Lily getting courting and getting married) so of course there’s no kids. So by setting it before the kids were born, they saved 40% of their salary budget!
If you’re going to then say “if they’re not married why are they coming out of the house from the TV series, where they were married and had kids” all I can say is… uh… Rob Zombie!
Yeah, this is me. I watched the heck out of the show in syndication, but I didn’t really care about it much. It was just on when I came home from school. Oddly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single episode of Munsters Today.
I think a Munsters reboot/revival movie could totally work. You can either go the wink and nudge route like the Shelley Long Brady Brunch movies, or you can do it straight with a lot of modern effects like the Raul Julia Addams Family movies. But I have no idea what this is. It looks like Rob Zombie was given a couple thousand bucks and the opportunity to film a license-holding bit like the infamous Roger Corman Fantastic Four movie or any of the latter Hellraiser sequels.
That trailer looks like a Glenn Danzig movie. I’ve seen bits and pieces of Zombie’s other stuff, and it at least looked technically competent. What…happened here?
Oh yeah, for sure it doesn’t make sense. Having it make sense would require someone to actually think about this, and it’s pretty certain that didn’t happen.
Oh my god–that’s the actual trailer? It’s like a sub-MadTV quality parody. I’ve seen much better production values on RedLetterMedia’s Best of the Worst.
Yeah, seems like he fell into the trap of literally remaking the TV show, with the inevitable dire results. Contrast this to the excellent Addams Family movies (and musical, also quite good), which stay true to the core of the material while doing their own thing.
