A family of friendly monsters have misadventures, never quite understanding why people react to them so strangely.A family of friendly monsters have misadventures, never quite understanding why people react to them so strangely.A family of friendly monsters have misadventures, never quite understanding why people react to them so strangely.
- Awards
- 5 nominations
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Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe first season opening credits were an outrageous parody of the opening credits of The Donna Reed Show (1958), which always began with Donna Reed lovingly passing out lunches to her departing family members as they left the house one by one. Yvonne De Carlo, as Lily Munster, did the same thing.
- GoofsThroughout the series, in most scenes featuring flying bats or levitating people, the wires are visible.
- Crazy creditsThe episode titles are shown on screen following the opening credits sequence. Even in modern sitcoms, this is rare.
- ConnectionsFeatured in The Wonder Years: Buster (1991)
Featured review
Monstrously good series
"The Munsters" was filmed at the Universal-Hollywood lot, where the original monster movies of the 30's and 40's featuring Frankenstein's monster, Dracula, Wolfman etc,were made. By the 1960's it was felt these creations(makeup copyright still owned by the studio)were ripe for spoofing(well they had actually already been in comedy films with Abbott and Costello a few years earlier)."The Munsters" could have been terrible-its easy to get this sort of thing all wrong, witness the appalling 80's remake "The Munster's today"; but this series works beautifully.It's not the scripts-though there are some great lines,they are often not especially outstanding. What makes the show so good is the cast, particularly Fred Gwynne as scary, hopeless, lovable Herman-what a performance he gave! Despite all the makeup he can do wonderful things with his face,and that gentle cultured voice coming out of the monstrous Herman-taking any line-often a very ordinary one, and making it totally hilarious. Herman, with his easily punctured vanity, childish tantrums and booming laugh, is one of the great comic creations. A word of appreciation too for Al Lewis, the vampire Grandpa, whose mad scientist Count comes over like a third rate vaudeville magician from New York (he even works as a stage magician in one episode!),and who enjoys nothing more than insulting his clueless son in law, Herman. The rest of the cast are fine, though Yvonne DeCarlo as Lily was given little else to do but be shrewish with Herman as the series went on. Another fortunate thing was that in the mid 60's,when the show was made, there were many marvelous character actor/comedians in Hollywood, and lots appear on the show, such as Frank Gorshin, Neil Hamilton, Jessie White, John Hoyt, Louis Nye(his TV horror host character, "Zombo", is actually scarier than any of the Munsters)and best of all Paul Lynde, who shows up twice as the Munster family doctor,and has some classic comedy moments with Herman. One of many highlights is Herman doing a cod "Ginsberg" style poem in front of an admiring beatnik audience in "Far out Munster". A treat, a show which should live forever.
helpful•66
- zippgun
- Jun 6, 2005
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- Meet the Munsters
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- See more company credits at IMDbPro
- Runtime30 minutes
- Color
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