User Reviews

The Addams Family - the contemporary of this show - was more about a wealthy family that seemed not quite human in spite of very human looking members. They did have some family members such as cousin It that seemed decidedly not human - covered in hair ( He seemed to be all hair) and speaking in gibberish.

The Munsters were different. They depended upon a salary to keep food on the table - or whatever it was that nourished them. One time, when Lily wants to buy a gift for Herman, she figures the only way their budget can handle it is for her to work nights as a welder. But the Munsters appeared decidedly non -human. Herman (Fred Gwynne in his most famous role...I wonder how he felt about that?) looks like the Frankenstein monster as he was seen in the movies. Lily (Yvonne DeCarlo), his wife is either "The Bride of Frankenstein" (I guess in this reality those two kids work things out) or a daughter of Dracula. What weighs heavily in favor of the Daughter of Dracula is that her father (Al Lewis), known as Grandpa, is definitely a vampire, but he is also a mad scientist. Eddie, Herman and Lily's son, looks like a miniature wolfman. Finally, there is cousin Marilyn who looks like your classically beautiful and completely human blonde. She is blind to the weirdness in her family, and the rest of the Munsters feel sorry for her because she is unattractive by their standards, and that means it will be difficult for her to find a husband - still a huge milestone in 1960s America for a young woman.

Too late to make a long story short, the Addams family is a normal looking family that is spooky, the Munsters are a spooky looking family that wants to be normal, and considers themselves normal. When the PTA or the school administration comes over to talk about their son, they are very interested and produce their best spider cookies. When Herman's boss pays a visit, played to perfection by the -by that time - rather prune faced emotionally embalmed John Carradine , the whole family is at attention. They NEED Herman's salary. Just like the Clampetts in The Beverly Hillbillies, they always misunderstand every interaction with the "normal" world.

Two matters of interest. This show seems to be a bit of a knock off of "Car 64 Where Are You?" since Fred Gwynne and Al Lewis were in that show playing people of similar disposition, except they were entirely human and they were cops. The other point of interest - Marilyn should be attracting normal guys. But the one time she does attract a suitor who wants to elope with her, his interest is entirely financial, and pertains to a formula for turning water into gasoline that Granpa invented. Is this show telling us not to judge a book by its cover? That someone who "looks" different, maybe even scary by our own standards, may be the most decent person you will ever meet? I don't know. Could be.

Like a bunch of other shows from the 1960s, The Munsters hardly gets the attention it deserves today. Even back when it was new, the show was mostly overshadowed by its always more successful rival; The Addams Family. I'll give credit where it's due. Addams Family is still a good show, but it's not on the same level of hilarity The Munsters is. To be honest, I hardly laugh at the Addams Family, but this show has a lot of moments that are hysterically funny. While being similar in style to its biggest competitor, The Munsters focuses on a family of 5 monsters who view themselves the same way as any american family, and are thus confused whenever people run away in fear from them. The family consists of Herman Munster (Fred Gwynne), his wife Lily (Yvonne de Carlo), son Eddie (Butch Patrick), Lily's father, Grandpa (Al Lewis) and Marilyn (Pat Priest), Herman's niece. The majority of funny moments the show has are derived from the fact that the main characters are not human beings, with Herman being Frankenstein's monster, Lily and Grandpa being vampires, and Eddie being a werewolf. Funnily enough, Marilyn is the only member of the family that is a normal human, leading to her relatives labeling her the "ugly duckling." Originally planned to be a color show, The Munsters was changed to black and white at the last minute because the producers wanted it to resemble old Universal horror films such as Dracula and Frankenstein, which I think was an overall prudent choice. Because the show's main characters are either undead or some other type of monster, you might get the wrong idea that The Munsters is just a horror show that only focuses on trying to creep out its intended audience, but no. It actually has a great amount of variety when it comes to its storylines. There's too many funny episodes to get into here, and you'll need to watch them yourself to see why they're hilarious anyway, but believe me when I tell you that no two episodes are alike. One of the best the show has to offer is the one where Herman and Grandpa build Eddie a go-kart for his birthday, and Herman wants to give it a test drive before the day arrives to see if it works. The ensuing footage remains one of the funniest things I've ever seen in my life. The family also owns a cuckoo clock with a raven inside, which pops out occasionally to say "nevermore", an obvious reference to Edgar Allen Poe. One thing I never realized is how this raven is voiced by Mel Blanc. While I think The Munsters is a great show full of funny moments that retain their hilarity for decades, the show isn't an exception to somewhat bad writing. For one thing, I never was able to understand why Grandpa is called Grandpa by everyone in the show. Not only does this imply he doesn't have an actual name, but the only character he's a grandfather to is Eddie. Another thing I didn't really like is how the intro of the show eventually changes. The first intro is actually a parody of the Donna Reed show, in which Reed makes loving gestures towards all the members of the cast and kisses them as they walk past her. Lily does the same thing in the first opening sequence. I would have liked to see The Munsters keep that intro, but it didn't. On top of all the positives I've listed, The Munsters also has a (much) better theme song than The Addams Family, and it really goes with the show's macabre style, while also sounding like surf music. Overall, The Munsters is one of the 1960's best shows, and features great acting from Gwynne, de Carlo (who was the only truly famous actor there), and the others. It's just sad it's always been shoved to the side in favor of an arguably less funny show. It's also unfortunate how Batman ultimately took down The Munsters, as the show was still well rated in 1966, but it couldn't keep up with how much of a phenomenon Batman was, and was thus cancelled.

The Munsters pretty much ran alongside The Addams Family, and there seemed to be room in the 1960s for two TV sitcoms that had the edge of macabre and all, and something the kids could watch after coming home from a hard day at school and so on.

Anyway, it's interesting to see how The Munsters and The Addams Family have worked their way through pop culture over the past six decades, because wow, that's when both series debuted, goodness, that long ago.

I must admit I haven't seen any of The Munsters TV movies and I haven't seen the Rob Zombie movie reboot but still it does live on in pop culture.

Fred Gwyn did some amazing dramatic work. Most today only remember him as the judge in My Cousin Vinny. It's sad that many know him from this awful, unfunny, hackneyed series. Imagine being remembered for bad makeup making bad jokes as a 10th rate Frankenstein imitation.

Yvonne DeCarlo also played some great dramatic roles, was a lovely leading lady opposite Rock Hudson and others. Here she's made into an awful Vampira knockoff.

It was a blatant attempt to imitate the far superior and actually funny Addams Family. "How can we cash in the Addams? Let's make a family where Frankenstein's the father and Dracula's the mother. Wolfkid instead of Wolfman."

A 10 year old could have come up with a better show, and 10 year olds and younger were the only ones to briefly watch it. There was zero laughs for the entire short run of this piece of junk. Never has a show needed a laugh track more.

Addams Family has two great film remakes. No one will ever remake this. No one, not even the ones who made this series, thinks highly of it. The high reviews come from those seeing with nostalgia colored glasses.

I thought I'd give it a try as an adult. Now that I've seen it again I'm sorry to report that this show is really poorly written. I enjoy a lot of old shows and more specifically old radio shows. So I'm not just someone comparing older shows to what's done recently. That being said I found myself wondering "have these writers ever even heard a joke before? Much less written one." If it weren't for the insane amount of canned laughter I might not have even realized that these things that were said were supposed to be jokes. The episode where the father goes to town to purchase a car for his daughter is particularly confounding. One has to wonder if a script was even written or if they were thinking "we'll just speed up the camera and have someone fall down a lot". I watch it gawking at the screen trying to comprehend how the people that were involved in a delightful show "leave it to beaver" spawned this misguided "comedy".

The prime series from 1960's lore along with The Adams Family both arrived at the same time. What is amazing is that as CBS and ABC battled for ratings, this one turned out so well. There are times where Gomez Adams (John Austin) is too pretentious. Herman Munster (Fred Gwynn) is just the right kind of oblivious.

Fred is so much more lovable because of his experience on Car 54 Where Are You? as the straight man for one Gunther Tooty (Joe E. Ross). Fred brought fans from that show over here and showed he could dead pan humor even better than he did at times with Ross.

Yvonne De Carlo was an amazing talent doing everything from blockbuster Hollywood films to this. Even though she is in her 40's on this series she is still quite a dish and her interactions with Fred are a lot of fun. I can still hear her saying "Now Herman.."

Al Lewis is the ultimate Grandpa. Actually a year younger than Yvonne De Carlo and 3 years older than Fred, it is easy to buy him as being much older than the others. That is because he is a great actor. Long after this show he would run for Governor of New York State. He was a seriously popular candidate. Here he is a lot of fun.

Butch Patrick and Pat Priest/Beverley Owen were the kids, and got a lot of experience from working with these veteran actors in the cast. The guest stars read like a who's who of TV actors from the 1960's and 1940's and 1950's films.

This series along with The Adams have become a couple of TV's cult classics. There is no wonder why, they were the first ones to come along and exploit the horror comedy genre on TV. They bridged the monster movies of the 1930's to 1960's and then kept the genre alive for a movie revival after they went off.