Moving Pictures

Rob Zombie’s ‘The Munsters’ film is a terribly beautiful love letter to small screen monsters

BY JOE NOLAN, FILM CRITIC

Rob Zombie claims that he grew up watching nine hours of television a day in a 2005 interview with Conan O’Brien. All that small screen time — and a babysitter who’d let him watch violent adult films — sparked Zombie’s love of dark humor and bloody horror, inspiring the shock rock aesthetics of his musical projects and the intense imagery in his own horror movies. If you picture little Bobby Cummings (Zombie’s birth name) being blasted for hours by a cathode ray tube in small town Massachusetts in the early 1970s, his new reboot of The Munsters makes complete sense. But it’s a step that’s caught a lot of critics and fans by surprise judging from the film’s abysmal ratings on Rotten Tomatoes. The shock of Rob Zombie making a PG prequel to a silly sixties sitcom seems to be making it hard for audiences to see the film on its own terms. And it’s their loss because Rob Zombie’s The Munsters is a visually audacious, very funny romance that tells the story of how Lily and Herman Munster first met. And it's a love letter to that small screen where little Bobby first found The Creature from the Black Lagoon, White Zombie (the Bela Lugosi film Zombie named his first band after), and that lovably weird family at 1313 Mockingbird Lane.

The Munsters opens with the Frankenstein-like story of the creation of Herman Munster — he’s supposed to have the brain of a genius but a mishap at the morgue results in Herman receiving the head of the genius’s idiot brother, a hack comedian named Shecky Von Rathbone. Herman’s not very bright, but he has a showman’s flair and he becomes a minor celebrity when he turns a disastrous debut on Good Morning Transylvania into a surreal spotlight for his stand-up stylings. Lily is a single young vampiress — only 150 years old — who lives with her father, The Count. When Lily sees Herman on television, it’s love at first sight and the pair meet backstage at one of Herman’s gigs with his band The Punk Rods at the Zombie-a-Go-Go. Herman is head over heels for Lily, but when she invites him to the castle for dinner, The Count vows to keep the ghastly goof away from his precious Lily.

Zombie’s take on The Munsters retains the series’ wholesome humor with lots of gags based on the creepy characters playing it straight in the midst of their spooky, surreal surroundings. The original series debuted in 1964 and was black-and-white like all television of that era. Zombie wanted his film to be black-andwhite as well, but when Universal refused he went to another extreme, drenching his movie in vibrant, saturated colors, making The Munsters look like a live-action cartoon. I want to watch this movie multiple times just to stare at its over-the-top palette, topnotch make-up and costumes, and Zombie’s signature unhinged camerawork.

The Munsters’ is also brimming with horrible little Easter eggs for horror movie fans to feast on: The cast features Zombie movie regulars like Jeff Daniel Phillips as Herman, Sheri Moon Zombie as Lily and Daniel Roebuck as The Count. Cassandra Peterson — better known as buxom horror movie host Elvira, Mistress of the Dark — plays a real estate agent, and '80s scream queen Dee Wallace (The Howling, Cujo) plays a TV announcer on Good Morning Transylvania. The movie also includes lots of shots of horror films playing on television sets including Abbott and Costello meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Universal classics like The Mummy.

It’s not unusual for a Rob Zombie movie to get mixed reviews before garnering a cult following, and The Munsters will likely find its audience the shock of a — gulp — family-friendly Rob Zombie film wears off.

The Munsters is streaming on Netflix

Joe Nolan is a critic, columnist and performing singer/songwriter based in East Nashville. Find out more about his projects at www.joenolan.com.