Product Description
-------------------
Have a howlingly good time with the First Family of Fright in
this collectible Complete Series that includes all 70 classic TV
episodes and the two frighteningly funny feature-length movies.
Reunite with the wonderfully weird Munster Clan: "working stiff"
Herman, mom Lily, wacky Grandpa, the unusually normal Marilyn,
and little Eddie. Plus, now see the episode "Family Portrait" in
spookily spectacular full color for the first time ever. With so
much Munster mayhem, your whole family is sure to have a scream!
Bonus Content:
The Munsters: Season One:
* Bonus Episode - Unaired Pilot
* The Munsters "Family Portrait" Episode Color Version
*
The Munsters: Season Two:
* America's First Family of Fright
* Fred Gwynne: More Than a Munster
* Yvonne De Carlo: Gilded Lily
* Al Lewis: Forever Grandpa
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Season One
It has its own stormy weather and fire-breathing housepet named
Spot, but the mansion at 1313 Mockingbird Heights is otherwise
like any other American sitcom home. This is the address of the
Munsters, the family that for two seasons, 1964-66, found a
permanent place in pop culture--if not "monster" success.
Developed by Leave It to Beaver team Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher,
the series was a standard sitcom (complete with the same awful
canned laughter), except that the Ward Cleaver character was a
reanimated corpse.
Dad Herman (Fred Gwynne) was a Frankenstein's monster, mom Lily
(Yvonne DeCarlo) and Grandpa (Al Lewis) were vampires, and son
Eddie (Butch Patrick) a little wolf-boy. Munster niece Marilyn
was inexplicably normal, which prompted much worry from the other
members of the family (she was played in early episodes by
Beverly Owen, who left to get married, and then by Pat Priest).
The plots revolve around typically tortured sitcom situations:
Herman must lose weight to fit into his old Army uniform, Herman
has insomnia, Herman takes dance lessons from a crooked
instructor. (As that list would suggest, 6'5" Fred Gwynne's
wonderfully agile slapstick and Borscht Belt comedy made him the
center of the show.) What distinguished The Munsters from her
Knows Best was the Universal horror-movie lineage and the
ghoulish one-liners (the latter growing a bit tedious after a
while). The three-disc DVD has all 38 first-season episodes in
excellent transfers, a 15-minute pilot with different actors as
Lily and Eddie, and no extras or commentaries. High points
include "Hot Rod Herman," which features the tricked-out Munster
Koach and Drag-u-la (boss wagons both), and "Eddie's Nickname,"
the one where Grandpa gives Eddie a potion that causes the boy's
beard to grow (a weirdly memorable image, if you're a kid). The
show was either pure kiddie farce or a radical comment on the
absurdly unreal world of sitcoms. Either way, if you grew up with
them as an alternate TV family, you can't help but have warm
feelings for the Munsters, as clammy as they are. --Robert Horton
Season Two
The second and final season of The Munsters seamlessly carries
on the sardonic picture of family life painted in the
monster-comedy's first year. Family head Herman Munster (Fred
Gwynne) continues to vacillate between thick-headedness and
intellectual posturing. His wife, Lily (Yvonne DeCarol), has her
feet on the ground, even if her daughter-of-Dracula looks skew
her idea of beauty and grace. Grandpa (Al Lewis), the irascible
vampire, spends his time concocting mad inventions and
criticizing Herman. Young Eddie (Butch Patrick) goes to school
and acts like any other kid except, well, he isn't. And lovely
Marilyn (Pat Priest) is still stuck with low self-esteem,
convinced by her Uncle Herman, Aunt Lily and Grandpa that she's
an unattractive woman who es away potential suitors. In the
opening episode, "Herman's Child Psychology," Herman disastrously
attempts to convince Eddie not to run away from home by acting as
if his son's behavior is no big deal. The very funny "Herman, the
Master " finds the big man taken aboard a Russian submarine,
where the undersea comrades assume he must be some sort of
strange fish. "A Man for Marilyn" concerns Grandpa's ridiculous
effort to turn a frog into a handsome boyfriend for Marilyn, an
experiment he assumes must have worked when a good-looking guy
turns up at the Munster home. (The fellow is there because he
assumes Marilyn is being held against her will by monsters.) "Big
Heap Herman" is a particularly silly but enjoyable story about an
Indian tribe that has been awaiting the arrival of a god who
looks, of course, like Herman.
Along with seasons one and two on The Munsters: The Complete
Series are a couple of post-TV series, theatrical movies of
differing quality. In Munster, Go Home, Herman discovers he's the
new lord of Munster Hall in England. Crossing the Atlantic with
his family to cl his inheritance, Herman is met with hostility
by the would-be heirs (played by Terry-Thomas and Hermione
Gingold) and a plot to eliminate him from a car race. While the
film takes something away from The Munsters by placing them in
foreign territory, Munster, Go Home is still a lot of fun. Less
so is the cheap-looking The Munsters' Revenge, a 1981 potboiler
in which Herman and Grandpa are charged with crimes committed by
robot monsters from a wax museum. Hard to watch and kind of
greasy-looking, Revenge is instantly forgettable, even with Sid
Caesar's participation. --Tom Keogh