The Munsters

The Munsters is a 1960's TV comedy show depicting the home life of a family of monsters. The show was a satire of both traditional monster movies and popular family entertainment of the era, such as Leave It to Beaver. It ran concurrently with the The Addams Family. Although the Addamses were well-to-do, the Munsters were a more blue-collar family. The Munsters also had higher Nielsen ratings than The Addams Family.

The show aired at night once a week in black-and-white on the CBS Television Network from September 24, 1964, to May 12, 1966, for 70 episodes. It was cancelled after ratings dropped to an all-time low due to the premiere of ABC's Batman, which was in full color. The Munsters has continued in syndication ever since. It was popular enough to warrant a clone series and several movies.

The family, while decidedly odd, consider themselves fairly typical working-class Americans of the era. Herman, like many husbands of 1960s, is the sole wage-earner in the family, though Lily and Grandpa make (short-lived) attempts to earn a little money from time to time. While Herman is titular "head of household," it is Lily who actually makes most of the decisions.

Despite superficial similarities of eccentric characters incongruent with their communities and a generally gothic look, this and Addams Family have some differences in the style of series, and the characters. Overall, the characters of The Addams Family were eccentric people with a gothic look, while the Munsters were a regular, blue-collar family of legendary monsters.

The costumes and appearances of the family members other than Marilyn were based on the classic monsters of Universal Studios films from the 1930s and 1940s. Universal produced The Munsters, as well, and thus were able to use these copyrighted designs, including their idiosyncratic version of Frankenstein's monster for Herman. Other studios were free to make films with the Frankenstein creature, for example, but could not use the costume and makeup originally created for the 1931 Universal Studios film, Frankenstein.

While its humor was usually broad, the series was visually sophisticated, particularly for a mid-sixties sitcom. The Munsters' home was a burnt, crumbling Gothic mansion, riddled with smoke, filthy with dust and cobwebs. Rich, shadowy photography echoed James Whale's expressionistic Frankenstein films, emphasizing the family's ghoulishness. The moving camera (a rarity in television comedies even today) often paused on busy compositions, focusing on multiple characters amid detailed settings.

Automobile customizer George Barris built two cars for the show: "Munster Koach", a hot rod built on a lengthened 1926 Ford Model T chassis with a custom hearse body. It was 18 feet long and cost almost $20,000 to build. Barris also built the DRAG-U-LA, a dragster built from a coffin, which Grandpa used to win back "The Munster Koach" after Herman lost it in a race. (According to Barris, a real coffin was, in fact, purchased for the car.) In real life, Yvonne De Carlo drove a Jaguar sedan fitted with custom-made "spooky" ornaments, for example spider webs on the rims. She had to give up on it, as the car was repeatedly vandalized by fans hunting for souvenirs.