TERROR TEE-VEE: A Countdown to Halloween (Day 14)

THE MUNSTERS

Take the Universal Monsters and mash them into a family unit not unlike The Beverly Hillbillies (fish out of water) and hijinks ensue!  Enjoy the normal world as it reacts to the monster madness that is the Munsters.

Originally concieved by Universal Studios animator Bob Clampett, who worked on it in the mid-40s as a series of cartoons, the idea didn’t gain traction until the early 1960s.  Rocky and Bullwinkle writers Allan Burns and Chris Hayward brought a similar idea to Universal.  This was then assigned to Norm Liebman and Ed Haas, who wrote a pilot.

The make up is so good on this show that one assumes they had to turn up the acting to level 10 every day for the humor to translate.  Especially when one takes a look at the original pilot of the show, when the comedy and the delivery haven’t been worked out, its easy to see how the comedy could struggle to translate.

(Seriously, check it out—here’s the unaired Pilot with Herman’s original wife and the Eddie who just couldn’t get house trained!)

It’s the loveable charisma of Fred Gwynne, who brilliantly played Herman Munster, that truly carries the show.  Not that Yvonne De Carlo wasn’t excellent as the doting wife, or Al Lewis wasn’t great as the full of himself Grandpa, but it really is the strength of the main character that carries a show like this.

There were 70 episodes of the show in it’s short two year run (blame ABC’s BATMAN which was full color for its ratings drop), but there were some really good ones in that bunch.

My Five Favorite Episodes of The Munsters are as follows (I can only find three of them for your viewing pleasure here on the free interweb—the rest are on Netflix if memory serves):

“If a Martian Answers, Hang Up”

Season 1, Episode 18

has Herman tuning in his new Ham radio, when he picks up two of Eddie’s friends playing Spaceman on their walkie talkies.  He and Grandpa are convinced the antics are real and go out hunting spaceships.

“My Fair Munster”

Season 1, Episode 2

makes lovebirds out of both Herman and Lilly as they each accidentally take a love potion, becoming both seductive and irresistable.

“Zombo”

Season 2, Episode 22

features a jealous Herman who finds out his son, Eddie’s new hero is the host of a television horror show by the name of Zombo.  When Eddie wins a contest to go and meet Zombo in person, Herman tries to become just like Zombo to impress Eddie.

“Happy 100th Anniversary”

Season 2, Episode 6

Herman and Lilly each think the other has forgotten about their upcoming anniversary, so they both get part time work as welders at a shipyard.  Because they wear welder’s masks, they don’t recognize each other and yet they begin flirting.

“A Visit From Johann”

Season 2, Episode 26

brings in a visiting Dr. Victor Frankenstein IV, who brings along Johann, Herman’s “identical cousin” who is one of his great grandfather’s creations that’s less sophisticated than later models of the monster.  Herman volunteers to teach him manners and ways of the civilized world.  Meanwhile, Lily mistakes him for Herman and the hijinks ensue.

COUNTDOWN TO HALLOWEEN (Day 2): ZOMBO

An interesting note about Horror Hosts is that there are quite a few fictional ones.  Those appearing on shows within shows.  These guys always intrigue me because they always have to play up to the reality set within the original fiction.  Does a wacky sit-com world have wacky Horror Hosts or are they quite different—

more disturbing or twisted by that reality?

I ask this question because of Zombo.  I ask because the look of the guy is nearly as frightening as any TRUE horror character I’ve ever met on film—and he appeared on a hokey television show in the mid-60s!  He is on par with LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT’s The Man in the Beaver Hat played by Lon Chaney as far as straight up scary goes and yet, here he was on prime time TV with wacky shows like BATMAN and The Beverly Hillbillies!

Okay, maybe not quite as scary as this guy, but close!

And to screw with your mind a bit more, the actor who took up the role of Zombo was able to make him, this visual horror, funny and goofy and light and believably relatable to a kid.  Granted the kid in question was Eddie Munster and the show was the morbidly humorous...

THE MUNSTERS!

Played as harmless and goofy as hell by Louis Nye,

a great comedic actor with tons of credits to his name and talent,

Zombo was the Horror Host for young Edie Munster.

 

Eddie (Butch Patrick) is under the spell of Zombo (Louis Nye), the host of a television horror show. Herman (Fred Gweynne) feels neglected by Eddie who hasn't got time for his dad anymore and is jealous of Zombo. When Eddie has won a contest and gets to go to the studio and meet Zombo in person, Herman tries to become just like Zombo so Eddie will consider his dad a hero again.  And so the humor ensues with the entire episode of this show below!  Enjoy Zombo in all of his fictional glory…

Sometimes the power of a performance, the strength of a concept makes a strong enough impact on the audience that it causes tributes many years later...

And then there are the odd homages in Horror Host characters like...

ZOMBOO!

Still not as scary as Eddie's TV friend, is he?

THE COUNTDOWN TO HALLOWEEN: DAY 12

(BOOB-TUBE BLOOD-SUCKERS: PART 2)

So where was I?  Oh yeah, SALEM'S LOT...

the television adaptation of Stephen King's epic vampire novel.

It was great and for a television show in the late 1970s trying to be scary--it succeeded.

Moving on, or should I say back, one cannot mention vampires or the supernatural without mentioning the Dan Curtis daytime drama, DARK SHADOWS!  Now I'm not a huge fan of this series mainly due to the general format of soap operas' extremely decompressed storytelling.  The kind of thing that tends to bring some viewers back for the next thrilling episode only to have that episode merely be filler for the Friday cliffhanger, well, you get the picture.

Nevertheless, everyone seemed to like DARK SHADOWS a helluva lot more once the mysterious vampire, Barnabas Collins came to town!

Thus, the cult following began and the show kept taking on stranger and stranger twists and turns.  Fans couldn't seem to get enough of the gothic romance mixed with horror--until some storylines that didn't sit right with the viewers and once the movie wasn't successful.

After 5 years and over a thousand episodes, it faded away like a wampir in the daylight.

Only to be resurrected years later

(though for a mere handful of episodes)

In Episode 12 of the first season of BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY, our hero must face off with, perhaps, the strangest of all television vampires--the Vorvon!

That's right, kiddies, A SPACE VAMPIRE!

Unlike your average blood-sucking fiend, this guy is an energy drainer, he sucks the life essence out of his victims.

Poor Buck Rogers can't convince anyone that the guy's real, even as the creature makes it clear that all it wants is our lovely Wilma Deering for breakfast (and, honestly, who didn't?)!

Is it the way he uses his pinky, the link sausage earlobes or the furry monobrow that most terrifies Wilma?

Hmm...

The pubic hair monobrow?

Ah, I see!

Anyway, a strange and twisted episode enjoyed very much by this viewer at the time!

Next up is probably one of the most obvious vampires to make this list, it's your grandpa...

Grandpa Munster, that is!

One part Dracula, one part mad scientist and completely vaudeville, Al Lewis' Grandpa Munster set the table for many of the plots of the series.  If he weren't scheming or inventing or just plain trying to get away with something, there would be some fairly boring episodes of  THE MUNSTERS.

And the perfect straight man (woman, actually) for his hijinks was his own daughter, who is herself one of the undead:

Yvonne DeCarlo as Lily Munster had to play it straight for both Grandpa and Herman and she did it seamlessly, all the while keeping her home as dusty and dingy as possible!

Finally, the first vampire most kids meet is a friendly guy who happens to love to crunch numbers more than the necks of his victims...

The Count!

And with that, we end Part 2 of our focus on those vampires we invite right into our homes without thinking twice about it, those monsters that come right in through our televisions!

Stay tuned for Part 3 tomorrow night, same bat time, same bat channel!

MONSTER-MONTH: COUNTDOWN TO HALLOWEEN (Day 3)

For our third focus on Frankenstein's Monster, we must take a closer look

at the most benevolent of the Frankenstein Monsters, Fred Gwynne's

HERMAN MUNSTER!

(Click to Frankensize)

The comedicaly gifted Fred Gwynne was an actor, author and artist, but he left his mark as Herman, head of the Munsters family.  His version of the Monster was, in a word, goofy.  And it was that goofiness, that childlike awkwardness that would endear him to his audience.  If he weren’t so harmlessly goofy, his temper tantrums and larger than life expressions may’ve come off as scary to the intended audience.  He was, after all, a huge presence with all of the padding and heavy boots strapped to his six foot five inch frame topped off with green make-up and neck bolts, the seven foot tall Herman Munster could’ve been a true terror.

Of all the post-Karloff Monsters, Fred Gwynne’s comes the closest to the classic Universal look--in fact, it is so similar that a few adjustments to the make-up (darkening under the eyes, furrowing of the thick brow and an expressionless stare) and one could easily see Gwynne as a serious Frankenstein Monster.  I mean look at this expression here and tell me that it doesn’t project “sinister”:

(Click for Frankensize)

Anyway, as I was saying, THE MUNSTERS’ Herman was safe in attempting to pull off the universally known look of the UNIVERSAL PICTURES’ Frankenstein Monster because they were also owned by that very same picture company.  No threat to the copyright and so they had a free pass.

FIVE FRANKENSTEIN FUN FACTS:

1. Gwynne’s Monster had one brown eye and one chartreuse.
2. Herman Munster was a fan of Huckleberry Hound and Pat Boon albums.
3. Herman Munster was built in Germany by a Dr. Frankenstein, but was adopted at an early age and raised in Shroudshire, England by a family named Munster.
4. The idea of a family of funny monsters was first submitted to Universal Studios in the late 1940s by animator Bob Clampett, who wanted to make a cartoon series.  The project wasn’t developed until the early ‘60s, when ROCKY & BULLWINKLE writers Burns and Hayward submitted a similar treatment.  Norm Liebman and Ed Haas wrote the pilot script, “Love Thy Monster” when it was still undecided if the show would be live-action or animated.
5. Herman Munster is a U.S. Army veteran of Wrold War II.

Citations...

http://www.munsters.com

http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0028728/quotes

(Click to Frankensize)

This is an interesting final note--the test pilot for THE MUNSTERS that was never used.  Interestingly, it was shot full color (the show itself doesn’t even use color, but for the test pilot they go with color?).  Nonetheless, it is an unfinished, unpolished dress-rehersal where the interaction between the characters, their make-up and the tone of the show is  sampled.

It comes off as darker, by far, than the final product.  Perhaps more in the vein of THE ADDAMS FAMILY than they wanted.  Yvonne De Carlo’s Lily Munster does not appear, instead Herman is married to a Vampira look-alike named Phoebe played by Joan Marshall.  Eddie in this piece is played viciously by Happy Derman--surely his take was a little too scary for what the show was to become.

Neat stuff, check it out...

Gwynne retained fond recollections of Herman, saying in later life, "... I might as well tell you the truth. I love old Herman Munster. Much as I try not to, I can't stop liking that fellow."

(Click to Frankensize)

As you may or may not know I do enjoy the heck out of the old horror films that Turner Classic Movies provides we humble viewers with every October, so I will be including (when I can remember it) listings of the night’s treats and boy are there a few grand ones on tonight:

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

8pm

THE MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM (1933)

9:30pm

DOCTOR X (1932)

11:00pm

MARK OF THE VAMPIRE (1935)

12:15am

HOUSE OF DRACULA (1945)

1:30am

ZOMBIES OF MORA TAU (1957)

2:45am

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968)

4:30am

I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (1943)

And one more thing...?