When it was first announced that Rob Zombie would be adapting the classic TV series The Munsters as a movie, there were understandable fears. After all, the man behind House of 1,000 Corpses and the ultraviolent 2007 Halloween reboot undertaking a monster-flavored sitcom adaptation seemed like an odd fit. Then the trailers for the movie hit and a new set of concerns arose as they seemed, well, bad. Now the movie has arrived, though, and those who sit down to watch it on Netflix or Blu-ray are in for a wild, surprisingly enjoyable ride.
Believe it or not, Rob Zombie’s Munsters isn’t a bad movie. In fact, it’s quite good and not at all the movie I expected it to be. Instead, it’s ’60s-era camp baked into the silliness of a sitcom shot against a beautiful and colorful backdrop.
The Munsters is the riskiest thing Zombie has done as a filmmaker, trading in his dark and grisly horror tales (and the animated madness of El Superbeasto) for a genuine comedy, albeit the kind of comedy we don’t see all that often anymore. Instead of updating The Munsters, the director has fallen back on what made the original TV series work when it first debuted in 1964. This is a nearly two-hour film that is silly, goofy, pleasantly overacted, and almost surreal in how ridiculous it gets.