The Munsters - Season 1
The
Munsters DVDs
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Studio: Uni Dist Corp. (mca) Release Date: 08/22/2006
Amazon.com:
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 Father 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
