DVD Review: MUNSTER, GO HOME! / Earl Bellamy (1966)
December 23rd, 2008 by Scott Marks
Photo credit: Marky Munster
Munster, Go Home! (1966)
Directed by Earl Bellamy
Written by Joe Connelly, Bob Mosher and George Tibbles
Starring: Fred Gwynne, Yvonne DeCarlo, Al Lewis, Butch Patrick, Debbie Watson, Terry-Thomas, Hermione Gingold, John Carradine, Robert Pine, Bernard Fox, Cliff Norton, Arthur Malet and Richard Dawson
Running Time: 96 min.
Photographed by Benjamin J. Kline in 
Rating: 
My first screening of Munster, Go Home! came, as it did to all Mockingbird Heights maniacs my age, on the bottom half of a double bill with the Don Knotts dud The Ghost and Mr. Chicken. (The film had not performed as well as expected so the worried studio immediately reissued it as part of a TV theme combo.) This would be the first chance audiences had to see America’s first family of fright in color and I couldn’t descend the El platform steps and turn the corner fast enough to get to the decrepit Howard Theatre.
This was not the first time Herman, Lily and the gang were committed to color stock. (Neither Universal or CBS would pay the extra $10,000 per episode needed for color, so the show was subsequently filmed in black and white.) In 1964, Universal presented CBS with a 16 minute color demo reel in response to what they saw as the nation’s growing monster mania. A decade earlier, the studio had sold its film library to television and their classic creatures from the 1930s saw a resurgence in popularity. Suddenly, monsters became fun and television smelled potential sitcom material. Ray Walston’s “Uncle Martin” was the first out-of-this-world jester to hit the airwaves and My Favorite Martian became a surprise hit of the 1963 season. The fall ‘64 roster saw no less than four supernatural sitcoms. Bewitched led the way followed by The Addams Family, The Munsters and the all but forgotten My Living Doll which starred Julie Newmar as a sexy robot opposite hopelessly sexist Bob Cummings.
The Munsters’ presentation that Universal put together for CBS execs was shot on existing sets and used discarded music from a Doris Day picture as its theme. Fred Gwynne, Al Lewis and Beverly Owen all made the cut, but the CBS brass insisted on recasting the role of Herman’s wife, “Phoebe,” played by Joan Marshall. They felt Ms. Marshall bore too close a resemblance to Carolyn Jones’ “Morticia Addams” and she was replaced by on the skids movie star Yvonne DeCarlo. Both Gwynne and Lewis’ insecurity began to show. Would a seasoned movie star pack a lot of ego or, even worse, outshine the boys? Ms. DeCarlo was perfect in the role of “Lily Munster” and the actors later admitted they were wrong in their initial assumptions.
Gone, too, was Happy Derman, a monstrous little tyke whose one note interpretation of Eddie Munster didn’t bode well. Popular child actor Billy Mumy was the original choice for Eddie Munster, but his parents wouldn’t agree to the extensive makeup it would take for their son to become a little wolfboy. Next up, Happy Derman whose sole shot at Munsterdom is preserved on the two DVD set The Munsters: America’s First Family of Fright, a must for all collections. Happy looks like a little Larry Talbot after the third transformation dissolve. He walks hunched over, bares his fangs and teeth and speaks in growls. Butch Patrick, the boy who would be “Eddie,” remembered his predecessor: “Happy Derman wasn’t very happy. He was the meanest little kid I’d ever seen.” He is a thoroughly off-putting little creature and, with all due respect to Butch, one I would have gladly spent two seasons watching.
Conceptually,The Munsters is little more than The Donna Reed Show, a typical sixties sitcom about a wholesome suburban family, played in greenface. God damn if the show doesn’t continue to make me laugh to this day due in large part to the perfect teaming of Gwynne and Lewis. They had previously worked together on the NBC sitcom Car 54, Where Are You? and their pairing as a Yiddish Grandpa Dracula and his seven-foot green, goyish son-in-law redefined genius.
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Tags: Al Lewis, beverly owen, DVD Review, eddie munster, Fred Gwynne, Grandpa Munster, happy derman, Herman Munster, Lily Munster, marilyn munster, munster go home, munster go home review, pat priest, THE MUNSTERS