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The Munsters (PG, 110 mins) Directed by Rob Zombie ***
Robert Rodriguez is the only director I can think of who started out making action movies, but who is possibly even better at making blockbusters for kids and teens.
Rodriguez made his bones with hyper-violent and funny-as-hell westerns and horrors – and he still makes them to this day. But he also parlayed the skills and verve he brings to his R-rated material into the brilliant Spy Kids franchise – four films so far, with maybe more to come – and also The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lava Girl, which I reckon deserves every bit of its cult following, even if it died a critical and box-office death on release.
But Rob Zombie is not Robert Rodriguez. Zombie is a musician and band leader who cut his teeth on music videos. His second feature, The Devil’s Rejects, even found a distributor down here at the last bus stop on Earth – and got a rave review from me and many others when it turned up in 2005. Back in the days when sneaking a hip-flask into a midnight screening was a thing (sigh), The Devil’s Rejects was a high-water mark of stoner-slasher heaven.
Zombie has gone on to make eight feature films, including a well-received brace of Halloween reboots.
But I don’t know if anyone saw Zombie as a director of an adaptation of a beloved children’s TV show. Even if that show was the 1960s’ The Munsters.
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Jeff Daniel Phillips plays Herman in The Munsters.
The Munsters reworks a couple of storylines from the TV show, while functioning as a kind of prequel to the series. Mostly it follows what happens when Herman Munster – the Frankenstein’s monster of the Munsters – is created with a brain from a departed comedian, and not the comedian’s science-genius brother.
What follows is about as nonsensical and madcap as you would expect – this is an adaptation of a 1960s children’s TV show after all – but also good-natured, cartoonishly paced and – occasionally – even a bit funny.
Zombie and his cast – regulars Sheri Moon Zombie, Jeff Daniel Phillips and Daniel Roebuck are all here, as well as Sylvester McCoy (Doctor Who, The Hobbit) and Welsh character legend Richard Brake, who was once the guy who shot Bruce Wayne’s parents in Batman Begins and also played The Night King in Game Of Thrones. (Seriously, somebody should make a documentary on Brake)
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It’s clear that The Munsters has been a labour of love for writer-director Rob Zombie.
If you’re a grown up with ridiculously fond memories of the TV show, then The Munsters might just get you right in the funny bone. Or, if you have a couple of under 12s running around the house with a taste for costumes, high camp and the innocently macabre, then The Munsters might be a treat for them too.
This has clearly been a labour of love for Zombie. And I’m glad that he got to do it. But I also hope, now that The Munsters is made, that Zombie gets back to what he is best at. And also that somebody in Wellington decides to start running midnight horrors again.
The Munsters is now available to rent on iTunes.
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