For years, White Zombie frontman Rob Zombie has been showing the world where his bread is buttered. Highly influenced by horror and grindhouse cinema, his music often referenced his passion for the macabre. So who better than the Rock and Roll Hellbilly to dip his toe in the realm of moving pictures. Starting with his debut film House Of 1,000 Corpses, a homage to the Tobe Hooper slasher The Texas Chainsaw Massacre about a family of murderous cannibals kidnapping unsuspecting travelers, Zombie’s foray into directing has been hit or miss with critics. Always willing to push the boundaries of good taste, it was both odd, yet maybe not so surprising to hear that he is putting his own spin on a classic television staple The Munsters.
The Munsters, which ran from 1964 to 1966, told the story of a friendly family of monsters who try to fit in with polite society to hilarious results. Based loosely on Universal’s classic monsters, the family is headed up by Herman, a Frankenstein-esque monster with a heart of gold, his vampire wife Lily, her science obsessed father Grandpa, Herman and Lily’s werewolf son Eddie, and their niece, a beautiful (human) girl named Marylin. The show has gone down in television history as a fan favorite with its witty jokes, oddball storylines, and memorable characters. Reminiscent to a similar show which spawned a film franchise, The Addams Family, The Munsters seem rife for a different spin during this age of nostalgia-based properties. Funny enough, this is not the first time The Munsters have been brought back in some form. Several made-for-tv films have been made over the years, along with a reboot of the series in 1987 entitled The Munsters Today and another swing in 2012 called Mocking Bird Lane, starring Eddie Izzard as Grandpa and Jerry O’Connell playing Herman. Neither was met with much fanfare.
But what will this new Rob Zombie helmed film look like given his track record for hardcore gore and brutality in his movies? Unfortunately, little more than a few Instagram posts by Zombie has been our only clue as to what we are in for with this (and I’m guessing here) gritty remake. With only a handful of photos posted, his take seems, so far, to be fairly similar in vision to its original iteration. One of the first pics is a sculpture of Herman’s flat-top head, complete with deep scars, a caveman-like browline, and thick staples across the skull. The look tends to lean toward the Universal produced Boris Karloff Frankenstein Monster from 1931, which was also the inspiration for Herman as well.
Zombie also shared a potential wardrobe sketch of Lily in a nightgown complete with her purple and black color scheme along with an intricate spiderweb pattern embroidered on the tattered frock. There is an artist’s rendition of what Lily will look like in the piece, though the only casting listed on IMDb is Rob Zombie’s wife Sheri Moon Zombie, who has appeared in all of his films since the beginning of his directing career. Suffice it to say, her being cast as the matriarch of the monstrous brood is not off the table. Other pictures include a dirt hill which will be the location where The Munster’s creepy abode will sit on Mockingbird Lane along with another photo of a half-finished wig adorned with Grandpa Munster’s black and grey striped hair.
As reported by Variety, Zombie also posted a blueprint on Instagram of The Munster house complete with the post:
So, now we know a shooting location and that Rob Zombie’s love of the project might just be his saving grace in terms of keeping the heart of the original intact. But let’s not jump the gun just yet. This film is still a ways off.
With the less than stellar animated version of The Addam’s Family from 2019 and its sequel slated to hit theaters on October 21, 2021, Hollywood tends to take old concepts and grind them down to a corporately safe nub, ruining the very fabric of why they were worthy of a remake in the first place. Hopefully, Rob Zombie will take a queue from past blockbuster remakes similar to his own the way Barry Sonnenfeld did with the live-action version of The Addam’s Family and Addam’s Family Values back in the early ’90s. My one wish for The Munsters, however, is that we get a glimpse of Herman’s casket-shaped race car, The Dragula. It would only be appropriate given Rob Zombie made a hit song by the same name in 1998. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
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