monster fan Rob Zombie has long held a special place in his heart for a 1960s sitcom “The Munsters,” from his prekindergarten days to later years as a rock star and filmmaker. He even built an exact duplicate of Herman and Lily’s creepy old place on Mockingbird Lane.
The construction project wasn’t just for fun, though: Zombie writes and directs “The Munsters,” arriving Sept. 27 on Blu-ray, DVD and on-demand platforms (with a Netflix release planned later this year). The horror comedy – with its latest trailer premiering exclusively at usatoday.com – delves into the early years of the beloved characters originally played by Fred Gwynne, Yvonne De Carlo and Al Lewis and introduces them to a new generation.
While little kids might not be ready for Zombie’s earlier R-rated fare like “House of 1000 Corpses” or “The Lords of Salem,” his PG “Munsters” is meant to be watched by all ages. “The movie is layered and weird, but it’s bizarrely innocent. I feel like it’s the perfect Halloween movie,” says Zombie, who likes the film to “a live-action cartoon.”
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The film leans heavily into the groovy, good-natured ’60s vibe – “I wasn’t trying to reinvent ‘The Munsters’ because I love it,” Zombie says – yet it needed a different approach to avoid being a two-hour version of a TVepisode. So Zombie focused his narrative on “everything they couldn’t or didn’t do on the show,” delving into the Frankenstein-style creation of lovably goofy Herman (Jeff Daniel Phillips), the love story between Herman and the bewitching Lily (Sheri Moon Zombie, the director’s wife and frequent star) and the ways her vampire dad, The Count (Daniel Roebuck), comes between them.
“Herman’s a complete knucklehead,” says Zombie, 57. “Lily’s always in charge and she’s almost like the straight person so that the knucklehead jokes work. And then The Count fluctuates between the two, thinking Herman’s an idiot but then somehow getting involved in his ridiculous schemes.
“You don’t start off with all the characters together (but) it’s that three-headed beast of all of them that I love.”
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Because the old show took place mostly inside the Munsters’ home, Zombie says his biggest job was “just trying to create an entire world.” But the classic house was a must-have. While previous reboots (like the 1988 to 1991 revival “The Munsters Today”) used different spooky residences, Zombie and his team crafted their meticulously detailed replica on the set in Budapest. “As much as I like being there, I had to come home at some point,” the filmmaker says.
The new “Munsters” features appearances from original stars Pat Priest and Butch Patrick (who played Herman and Lily’s niece Marilyn and son Eddie, respectively) as well as a slew of supporting characters from the old show, including Herman’s funeral-home boss Mr. Gateman (Jeremy Wheeler), Lily’s werewolf brother Lester (Tomas Boykin) and Uncle Gilbert, better known as the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Some fresh personalities haunt the movie, too, like Dr. Wolfgang (Richard Brake) and his assistant to him Floop (Jorge Garcia) – the guys responsible for giving Herman life – plus Mockingbird Heights real estate agent Barbara Carr (Cassandra Petersonaka Elvira).
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The trailer shows glimpses of these kooky folks, Herman and Lily’s colorful courtship and other classic “Munsters” shenanigans. The movie’s setting, however, is purposefully not contemporary. “Modern stuff and modern jokes date very badly and very quickly,” Zombie says. So scenes in Transylvania look like “it’s 1890 but they have cars and television sets” while America resembles the late ’60s when Zombie first fell for the OG “Munsters” as a kid.
He was drawn to the show’s marriage of vintage Universal horror characters with the sitcoms of the time: “If you don’t look at it and you just listen to it, it sounds like you’re watching ‘Father Knows Best,’ ‘Leave It to Beaver’ or ‘My Three Sons.’ The only thing that’s different is that they’re monsters.”
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Zombie’s fandom continued into his rock career – his “Munsters”-inspired debut single “Dragula” was a hit in 1998 – and he initially expressed an interest in making a “Munsters” movie in 2000 while working on his debut feature, “House of 1000 Corpses.” The rights were tied up with other producers, and “Munsters” bounced between various departments at Universal until it came back into play three years ago.
the heavy metal star, whose latest tour kicks off this week, wrote new music for “The Munsters” to go with the infectious ”60s theme song and found it “natural” to be making a family-friendly film for a change. “We never did anything that didn’t fit the mold of what ‘The Munsters’ is,” he says. “But actually I was surprised. I thought, ‘Oh, they’ll find some reason to say it’s PG-13,’ even though I couldn’t figure out what that would be.
“I didn’t want to get in there and turn it into some other thing. Sure, that could be weird and interesting, but it would instantly not be ‘The Munsters’ as far as I’m concerned.”
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism