THE MUNSTERS' SCARY LITTLE CHRISTMAS (1996)

 

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

In my review of HERE COME THE MUNSTERS, I speculated that producer John Landis might've had some impact on that telefilm being a better iteration of the MUNSTERS franchise than anything since the sixties. But the second TV-movie from the same production company is not much better than THE MUNSTERS' REVENGE, except in terms of sharing HERE's level of production values. So I guess Landis wasn't responsible for the improvement.

With the exception of a nosy neighbor played by Mary Woronow, none of the cast returns from the 1995 effort. Unfortunately the best one can say is that some of the replacements are adequate, such as Elaine Hendrix subbing for Christine Taylor as Marilyn. But none of the newbies get much story-material with which to exercise their talents.

Almost all of the Munsters are anticipating Christmas, but Young Eddie is depressed because he misses the way the family celebrated the holidays in Transylvania. Herman and Lily get the idea to hold a big party and invite all their monster friends from the old country-- a Gill Man, a mummy, and so on. But these monster-mash characters don't show up until the end of the flick.

Cutting past the unremarkable subplot of Marilyn finding a new beau, the solution to Eddie's problems is set into motion when one of Grandpa's wacky inventions malfunctions. The machine teleports Santa Claus and two of his elves into the Munster house, but without any way of sending the pivotal architects of Christmas back to the North Pole. To make things even more complicated, Santa gets changed into a fruitcake and the elves run off, hoping to get laid.

Because the plot is so weak, SCARY has to be padded with lots of incidental comic business, some of which involved the aforesaid nosy neighbor and some of which involved Herman taking side jobs to make more money for presents. One of the few times the writers manage to dovetail plotlines takes place when Marilyn's boyfriend leads the Munsters to the hiding-place of the elves, who make it possible for Santa to get un-fruitcaked. By helping Santa get back on track for his Xmas run, Eddie recovers his holiday mojo and everyone is happy except the nosy neighbor.

Though there are a few of the slightly grotesque jokes seen in the previous telefilm-- Eddie wants a "Marquis de Sade" toy-- SCARY's overall humor is vanilla and forgettable. I might even rate MUNSTERS' REVENGE over SCARY, simply because the sheer dumbness of the 1981 reunion-flick makes it more memorable.