THE MINI-MUNSTERS (1973), THE MUNSTERS' REVENGE (1981)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

In this review I ragged on Rob Zombie for not being able to get right the relatively simple formula-comedy of the 1960s sitcom THE MUNSTERS. But I also mentioned how poor almost all of the other iterations were, with the exception of the one theatrical film that followed the series' cancellation, a movie that had the sense to use a director and three writers who had all worked on the regular show.

Wikipedia states that the one-hour MINI-MUNSTERS special was crafted for an episode of THE ABC SATURDAY SUPERSTAR MOVIE as a potential "back door pilot" to an animated series, but nothing came of it. While such a series wouldn't have been good, it probably wouldn't have been any worse than the same-year launch of a MY FAVORITE MARTIAN cartoon by Filmation. Nevertheless, a lot of the live-action MUNSTERS writers were still around and surely any of them could have done better than the script produced by journeymen Arthur Alsberg and Don Nelson. Maybe those worthies were selected simply because they'd worked on both live-action sitcoms and animated TV shows, or because the pay was too low to attract anyone else. I tend to blame them for the slack script, since director Gerard Baldwin had worked on genuinely funny cartoons for Jay Ward, like BULLWINKLE and GEORGE OF THE JUNGLE.

Despite the confusing title (MINI-MUNSTERS refers to a band organized by Eddie Munster) the main characters are largely the same as in the live action show, except that Eddie is now a teenager, Marilyn is AWOL and only one performer from the old show contributes voice-work: Al Lewis as the indefatigable Grandpa. Alsberg and Nelson apparently thought they'd inject a little topicality re: the 1973 energy crisis, for the conflict involves gangsters who forcefully take over a gasoline company-- which sounds counter intuitive to say the least. Eddie and two teenaged cousins from Transylvania become embroiled with the gangsters when the teens acquire a hearse as a transport vehicle and Grandpa whips up an invention that allows the car to run on music. When the mobsters find out, they think the new source of fuel threatens their profits and they try to seize the invention. Oh, and the hearse is haunted with the ghost of the mortician who owned it. It's all very by-the-numbers, with Grandpa, Eddie and Eddie's cousins getting most of the jokes while Herman and Lily play second fiddle. The special's only merit is that the animation style isn't as bland as that of the then-standard look of Hanna Barbera or the aforementioned Filmation, but it's not memorable either.

It makes a little sense that the showrunners of MINI-MUNSTERS, a cheap Saturday morning cartoon, didn't bother to hunt down the best talent possible. But the people who green-lighted THE MUNSTERS' REVENGE were trying to appeal to the nostalgia of an adult TV audience. To that end, the production company  not only assembled three of the principal actors from the sixties show-- Al Lewis, Yvonne DeCarlo, and Fred Gwynne-- they also reputedly paid Gwynne big bucks to reprise the role of Herman Munster, since the actor was far from sanguine about the effects of said role on his subsequent career.

So how did Alsberg and Nelson get the writing assignment AGAIN? Well, there's no knowing what sort of negotiations went on behind the scenes of REVENGE. But I noticed that, prior to REVENGE, the two only shared producer credit on one other project, the 1972-73 teleseries BRIDGET LOVES BERNIE, and then filled in the rest of the seventies decade scripting undemanding fare like HERBIE GOES TO MONTE CARLO. Possibly the two writers actually used their MINI-MUNSTERS credit to push for their participation in REVENGE, not only as writers but also as "co-producers" (whatever that might mean).

If anything, the script they produced for REVENGE is even more dire and condescending that that of MINI-MUNSTERS. It starts with the First Family of Fright visiting a wax museum in their unspecified city, where they see statues of many famous monsters, like the Hunchback and the Gill Man-- and also of themselves. Or rather, four of them: Herman (Gwynne), Grandpa (Lewis), Lily (DeCarlo), and Eddie (KC Martel). This time out Alsberg and Nelson allow for a Marilyn (Jo McDonnell) to keep the nostalgia fires burning, and she takes a photo of the other four with their wax-statue doppelgangers. All five members of the family are blithely incurious as to why anyone would make statues of them, given that they are not, in their own little world, celebrities of any kind.

The little old statue-maker is no clearer as to his motives for duplicating the Munsters, but his duplicates aren't just statues, but ambulatory robots, meant to be sent out to commit crimes. Doctor Diablo, a bargain-basement super-villain if ever there was one, is tediously played by a mug-happy Sid Caesar, and not only does he not explain why he ripped off the images of the Munsters, he takes his sweet time getting around to revealing his master plan, such as it is. I *think* the various petty robberies committed by his automatons are test runs for a museum-theft. Why Diablo decided to set up his operation in a wax museum, and how he enlisted his coterie of assistants are things not to be contemplated. He also never uses his Lily and Eddie effigies for anything, so who knows why he made them at all.

Diablo only uses his Herman and Grandpa robots to commit crimes, with the result that only the two of them are pursued by the local police. Like their robot duplicates, Lily and Eddie don't have anything to do and are usually just seen sitting around the Mockingbird Lane house with their Cousin Phantom (Bob Hastings), who's supposed to be some funhouse-mirror version of the Phantom of the Opera. So most of the movie is about Herman and Grandpa running around getting into assorted fixes, probably to justify the hefty salary given Fred Gwynne. But once again, although Gwynne and Lewis still play off one another well, the jokes reveal how little Alsberg and Nelson "got" the original show's form of humor. In fact, the new character of Cousin Phantom gets one of the few memorable bits, as he uses his "operatic" voice to shatter glass at a fortuitous opportunity.

The one consistent virtue of REVENGE is that the writers, perhaps as a consequence of downgrading Lily's forceful persona, upgrade that of Marilyn. In the sixties show she's just a standard pretty girl with no personality. This Marilyn is highly offended by the police coming after her beloved relations, and her fiery demeanor catches the attention of a handsome young cop named Glen (Peter Fox). The romantic B-plot of Marilyn and Glen at least has a decent narrative arc, sold in part by this Marilyn being somewhat more acerbic than her predecessor. She also infiltrates Diablo's lair by posing as one of the mad scientist's female robots and later steals a control device for the robots from one of Diablo's minions. But her good minor arc, though it comes closer to the model of the sixties show than anything else the writers attempted, doesn't really compensate for all the tedium of Herman and Grandpa messing around. 

I can't imagine that the telefilm earned stellar ratings, since it would be another seven years before the characters were revived for a second TV show, THE MUNSTERS TODAY, in 1988. This was in turn followed by two more TV movies, a busted pilot and the aforementioned Rob Zombie endeavor. The franchise may never have worn as well as THE ADDAMS FAMILY, but I suppose all those iterations at least put the First Family ahead of MY FAVORITE MARTIAN.