Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-review by Prof. Popinjay

-As my usual goal with my non-reviews is to introduce readers to old movie gems they might have missed, I debated whether I should do a treatise on the Munsters at all. Who hasn’t heard of them? Then I met a guy who hadn’t heard of them. Go figure. Did he live under a rock or are these just not streaming? Are the family of lovable classic monsters no longer relevant?
-It’s an old black and white sitcom with cheesy macabre jokes that are admittedly kind of stale by modern standards. But each episode gets at least one genuine guffaw out of me so I’m happy. More fascinating to me is the history behind this show. This two season show was a phenomenon for a while! Merchandise was selling like hot cakes. Hot cakes are things that once sold like fidget spinners. Fidget spinners are trendy little items that sold like ubermatic-space-warp-o-phones.
-Yes, The Munsters is a product of its time and the humor has always been a bit tongue-in-cheek but it’s a charming bit of Americana and Fred Gwynne and Al Lewis as Herman and grandpa respectively are a comedy team that should not be missed.
-In addition to the show, I also viewed The Munsters full length films “Munsters, Go Home” and “The Munsters Revenge”. “Go Home” held up well with the show. “Revenge” was just bad. It would have been at least tolerable were it not for a classic universal Phantom of the Opera character cringingly singing in every other scene. It was a dead horse of a running gag they just kept beating over and over again. The characters in the scene hated him, the cast hated him, and the audience hated him… assuming there ever was an audience. He should have crawled back into his sewer to gawk at debutante ingénues.
What I have not viewed as of yet are two other feature films Call of the Munsters and The Munsters Scary Little Christmas. I’ve heard, even with a completely new cast, the Call of the Munsters holds up with the spirit of the old show even while it is jarring to see different people play the parts. The Christmas movie is supposed to be a sequel to Call but the part of Herman Munster is switched out yet again and it fails to keep up. I find this strange when compared with a similar show in The Addams Family which has switched out actors constantly throughout the years and justice was done more often than not. This may have something to do with Addams Family getting it’s start as a newspaper comic prior to film whereas The Munsters was well established by Fred and Al both of whom are hard to replace.
-In other Munster news we have a new Munsters show in the early 90’s that was hot garbage and a weird halfway serious and darker take on the show in 2012 called Mockingbird Lane staring a normal looking guy as Herman Munster instead of an all out Frankenstein’s Monster look alike and EDDIE IZZARD as Grandpa Munster! I had to check it out just because of that! The humor was less tongue in cheek and more macabre but it still didn’t appeal to me in the long run. This show seemed more for the Audience of Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
-I do recommend seeing the original show at least as a history lesson and it is frequently genuinely amusing. Fred Gwynn and Al Lewis are a joy and their careers before and after The Munsters are just as fascinating. I highly recommend seeing Gwynn in the Cotton Club and My Cousin Vinny. Al Lewis political career is astounding to boot. Feisty to the end was he.
–As I understand it, Mr. Rob Zombie is working on a new Munsters movie. Given the track record of Munster replacements, I’m not getting my hopes up. Stick with the original. Just don’t binge watch it like I did. Small doses.