We Need the Humour of ‘60s Sitcom ‘The Munsters’

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

All this week I’ve been trying to catch up on my writing projects, especially my upcoming short story collection. I had lost a lot of writing time while I was in the hospital for several weeks. So for the past week I’ve been mostly writing the first draft of a story I want to include in the book. I’ll keep you updated on the collection but in this post I want to talk about Rob Zombie’s upcoming movie reboot of the 1960s sitcom, “The Munsters”. And I can tell you right now that I probably won’t be seeing it when it releases. 

Some of you, especially if you’re a fan of popular movie monsters of the mid 20th century like me, are probably familiar with “The Munsters”. It was a TV sitcom about a family based on some of Universal’s classic monsters such as Frankenstein’s monster and Dracula. The series ran from 1964 to 66. During that same year that it was canceled, a movie directly based on it called “Munster, Go Home” released in theatres. In later decades, a few made-for-TV movies based on the sitcom came out and then in the late ‘80s a series reboot was syndicated titled “The Munsters Today”. 

As you may have heard, Rob Zombie, the director of violent and gory horror films such as “The Devil’s Rejects”, is planning to direct his own movie based on “The Munsters”. There’s been a lot of controversy around it because “The Munsters” TV show was about a loving family of monsters who, although had their strange ways, never hurt anyone even though people naturally feared them because of their looks. 

I was reading another blogger’s article that praised the upcoming movie for the gory and violent details that many anticipate being in it. I found this so dishonoring toward a show that brought so much good-hearted humour and optimism to audiences in an era that was itself generally optimistic. So I responded to the post as quoted below. Some changes I made were the omitting of typos and information irrelevant to this post, and correction of a misspelling. (Boy, I hate auto correction!).

"We all have a right to our own preferences and I respect yours. I, myself, definitely do Munsters and I definitely do not do Rob Zombie.  . . . In this time of violence, pervasion perversion of culture, and out-right hatred, we need optimism similar to that of the era that The Munsters was born out of. While it spoofed the darkness of classic horror films, it broke the stereotype of monsters by depicting the family as loving. I'm not saying Rob Zombie's films are bad (although I never liked them), but I am saying that I don't see him doing near the job that the original Munsters series did, a job so badly needed today. That said, I don't see his version being much more than a movie with simply the Munsters logo and title attached to it. I'll be skipping that one."

We’re in an age where Hollywood perverts past culture. It does so because so much of society demands it, especially US society. People in this country like to be shocked by the content in film and television rather than be delighted by good storytelling in the two. The shock includes graphic violence, disgusting acts such as peeing in public, and the down-talking toward groups of real-life people. They have no concern for how the other characters or people in real life will get hurt. As long as it gives them the satisfaction of shock, that’s all they care about. Hollywood capitalises off of the desires of audiences no matter how unethical or hurtful those desires are to others. 

“The Munsters” TV series of the ‘60s didn’t do these things. It promoted healthy humour, even if that humour was a little dark (it’s a family of monsters, after all) and an optimistic lifestyle. In a time when masses of people are being shot for senseless reasons and where hate speech is spewed almost everywhere in some form, we need the light-hearted humour of “The Munsters” and the optimism of the time period it grew out of. But with Rob Zombie directing that film, his style of movie-making is very likely to go in a direction that is not “Munsters”. I can’t say for sure because not enough details of the movie have been given yet, but it will probably be only one more that adds to our violent and crude culture. So, most likely, as I said, I’ll be skipping that one. 

Because I’m so behind on my projects, I haven’t been posting too much on my Patreon page either. Because of that, if you join now, for the rest of this month you’ll get free access to past posts that only members can see. 

Fellow writers: What have you been working on? Everyone: Are any of you fans of “The Munsters” and, if so, what do you think of the upcoming Rob Zombie movie? Please feel free to leave your answers in the box below.

Until next time . . .