This has got to be the weirdest Christmas movie I have ever seen. – Will
Eddie is homesick for Transylvania during the holidays but starts to get his spirit back when Grandpa accidentally transports Santa to their home in California.
Directed by – Ian Emes
Written by – Norm Liebmann, Ed Haas, Allan Burns, Chris Hayward, Ed Ferrara, Kevin Murphy
Starring – Sam McMurray, Ann Magnuson, Bug Hall, Sandy Baron, Mary Woronov, Ed Gale, Arturo Gil, Mark Mitchell, Jeremy Callaghan, Elaine Hendrix, John Allen, Noel Ferrier, Patricia Howson, Alan Zitner, Daniel Kellie, Michael Hamilton
I love The Munsters but this is unfortunately not The Munsters, at least not like I remember them. Without any of the original cast members involved, although it’s understandable since this film was created in 1996, it’s just not the same thing. You can’t beat Fred Gwynne as Herman Munster or Al Lewis as Grandpa Munster but once you get through that the film isn’t all that bad. I can at least say that Elaine Hendrix is a gorgeous Marilyn Munster!
Seems that Eddie (Bug Hall) is homesick for Transylvania during the holidays and the family decides they have to give him the kind of Christmas he’s used to. Herman (Sam McMurray) works on getting him the Marquis de Sade Torture Chamber toy he wants, Grandpa (Sandy Baron) is trying to make it snow, Lily (Ann Magnuson) is going to decorate the house with Eddie and enter the local homeowners association contest and Marilyn (Elaine Hendrix) is sending out invitations to their family to come and visit for Christmas. Grandpa blows things up in the laboratory as usual and winds up teleporting Santa to their house 2 days before Christmas. Now it’s up to the Munsters to make sure that Santa is back on track to deliver all those presents on Christmas Eve. They’ve got their hands full as two elves that were with Santa when he got teleported decide that they want a vacation and wind up turning Santa into a fruitcake.
Meeting Santa manages to get some of the Christmas spirit back into Eddie.
Despite the fact that these aren’t the Munsters that I remember, the spirit of the show is still in there. The house is decorated in particularly spooky fashion with a snowman meeting his maker in the guillotine on the lawn, a giant spiderweb covered in Christmas lights above the front door and of course Herman’s childish love of everything that only results in everyone screaming and running in terror from him. The actors manage to capture some of the feeling that the original actors gave the characters but the story is pure Munsters mayhem right from the start.
All the classic aspects are there. Grandpa screwing up everything in the lab, Marilyn thinking she’s the ugliest one in the family but somehow still getting a boyfriend, Spot still lives under the stairs and everyone in the neighbourhood still running in terror when Herman comes around. They succeed in bringing the concept of the Munsters back to life and manage to cook up a story that keeps with the theme of the original show. I’d prefer to stick to a half hour episode of the original show though and things never seem to work out right when you take 30 minutes and stretch it to 90 minutes, no matter how great the show is.
Herman hops on the sleigh with Santa to help deliver presents.
What makes this one really entertaining is that it’s so freaking weird. The Munsters alone are pretty strange but when their family shows up and there’s a mummy, the hunchback, the phantom of the opera, Gilman, a werwolf and some witches things get even more strange. Throw in a gang of bikers that wind up pulling Santa’s sleigh since his reindeer are in the North Pole and he’s in California and you have the most odd Christmas special ever. It’s quite possible that the absolutely gorgeous Elaine Hendrix caused me to forget anything about this one that was bad.
If you’re looking for a Christmas story that’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen before then look no further. The Munsters’ Scary Little Christmas will deliver a story you’ll never forget and Marilyn should light the fire for the guys out there. This is one that you have to see to believe, it’s just too bad that they didn’t put this one together when the original cast was still doing the show because that’s the movies only downfall.
Under the marquee – Will
If this was the movie they played on Fox back then, I remember recording this for the rest of the family. Of course we didn’t have the most techy stuff available, so we ended up using only of those huge old-school ‘just a sliver smaller than a bazooka’ VHS camcorders on a tripod pointed at the TV. Other than it being Munsters, the only thing I remember about it was a scene where Herman talks to his inner child/split personality/whatever and I had to cross the room to get something to drank’. I couldn’t make it behind the camera (crap was in the way, packaging for x-mas decorations and the like) so I dashed past the camera. This just so happened to be the exact moment Herman ‘snapped out of it’ with a whoosh so it added a nice three dimensional effects to the footage