Definitely Addams Family. For a family of kooks and weirdos, they exuded class, grace, and charm. The Munsters, though, were just low-rent monster movie escapees. The Addams Family was corny, the Munsters was just dumb. And, puh-leeze, Lily Munster was such a wanna-be compared to Morticia.
“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy
Maybe if Hollywood had made a feature film about the Munsters your opinion would be different.
Besides, didn’t the Munsters have the cute blonde relative who would make appearances every now and then?
D’oh
Yeah, if by “now and then” you mean “in every episode.”
Rich
Gotta go with The Addams Family, for all of the reasons explained. Also, they sprang from the mind of Charles Addams, a purveyor of some of the finest dark humor ever.
Waste
Flick Lives!
Doubtful, since I like the Addams Family movies about as well as I like the Munsters.
“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy
Depending on your definition of “feature film,” Hollywood may have already made some of the Munsters. There’s been at least one movie which I believe was a made-for-TV pile of waste, and I think there may have been more. I haven’t seen either of The Addams Family movies, but the few minutes I saw of the Munsters TV movie could not have been better than either one, no matter how bad they were.
Rich
The Munsters are more in your face ha ha type humor. The Adams more sublte.
I vote for Munsters. But did anyone else notice how really beautiful Carolyn Jones was. (that was Mrs. Adams right?)
Addams - John Astin was brilliant. The Munsters are only tolerable in B&W.
Face it:Gomez is cool,Morticia’s a hotty,and Fester is the quintessntial uncle.
ADDAMS, ADDAMS, ADDAMS!
Loved the dancing on the movies
Ditto the arm kissing
& Cousin IT
As far as I can tell, the only thing the Munsters have on the Addams family is that they were first. One of the rare times a concept rip-off actually produced a superior program.
Those who haven’t seen the Addam’s Family movies, you are missing out on a stylistic, wicked treat! And the sequel is actually better than the first!
The Addam’s Family TV show was brilliant, too. John Astin is a comic genius, and they showed great foresight to let his natural humour show through the character, helping define a family that wasn’t merely scary, just marvellously eccentric.
The Munsters had no subtlety, that’s all.
Damn! I put apostrophes all through that! Doggone it!
Please ignore them. No apostrophes. Okay? It’s all an illusion…
Well, damn! I need to start checking my facts before I post. The Addams Family debuted a week or two before the Munsters. Please ignore my previous post.
Two words: Cousin It.
One more: Thing.
Yer pal,
Satan
And one more: Lurch.
BTW, there was a modern Munsters series on TV just a few years ago, called The Munsters Today. It made the old black-and-white Munsters episodes look like cinematic classics by comparison.
The one thing the Munsters did have going for them was that their theme music had baritone saxophones in it.
I’m not flying fast, just orbiting low.
Ok…I’m reviving an old post here, but I just gotta say, Grandpa Munster kicked ass. He was way more sinister and twisted than Fester. Ok…maybe its time to put down the bong and go to bed…
Jon
Addams’ cartoons first appeared in The New Yorker, IIRC. The Munsters were over the top, while the Addams Family had a little more restraint. The Addams family members weren’t even monsters in my book, just extremely odd humans (with the exception of Thing). The show also allowed Jackie Coogan to have a little something in the bank, after having been a child star in the very early days of Hollywood and having his parents rob him blind.
The Munsters were clearly based on classic monster characters and were just drawn broader. That being said, Ed Wynn (a Yale graduate) did a pretty good job with the material as Herman Munster, and Al Lewis was good as Grandpa. The Munster’s also had a great car.
As an aside, my brother used to have a bulldog named Pugsly Addams. And Blossom Rock, who played Grandmama Addams, had a terrific name.
There was at least one Munster “real” movie, as I believe Misanthrope was slyly suggesting, Munster, Go Home. It was in color (while the TV series was black and white) and used most of the original cast:
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0060726
I seem to recall another Munster movie, but the IMDB doesn’t list another feature film. It does list six hits for TV shows, though.
Despite a talented cast, the Munsters was pretty lame. The Addams Family, as noted, was based on the macabre cartoons of Charles Addams, and the TV series was at its best when it duplicated those cartoons. Stringing them together into even a semi-coherent plot was the trick. I’m glad that the first movie, at least, also went back to Addams’ cartoons for its humor, rather than having it second-hand by way of the TV show.
But for my money, a better way of evoking humor from monster families isn’t to try and build a plot out of linked cartoons or a family constructed, Frankenstein-like, from bits of horror movies. I prefer the straight-out parody of Young Frankenstein
Since this is in Great Debates…
Munsters. The Adam’s Family, though it efficiently skewered the foibles of the Average American Family, did not contain the relevant social commentary contained within the Munsters.
The Munsters were the first interacial (Frankenstein and Vampire) TV couple and their struggles to be accepted by society at large have great relevance even today. The father figure was not truly clumsy, but weighed down by the worry that his peers would not accept his alternative-lifestyle based family. This fear of non-acceptance caused a pathological nervousnous manifested through his awkwardness and loud inappropriate laughter when in social situations. That his neighbors did tolerate him and his mixed race family is an inspirational message to us all.