Welcome, one and all, to the first ever "Reaction & Review Christmas Special". Yes, guys, with Christmas right around the corner, I think it would be appropriate if I covered a Christmas movie for this series. And for my first Christmas special, I have found a movie that would be perfect for this special. It is a made-for-television movie from 1996. That movie is "The Munsters' Scary Little Christmas".
Now, I didn't even know this movie existed until last year. And when I first laid eyes upon it at one of my local video stores last year, I really wanted to check it out. However, due to various other things, I didn't get a chance to pick it up. And I didn't find it again until I found a copy of it at Big Lots, of all places, where I picked it up for only $5. So, I'm kinda happy about that. At least, I hope so, anyway. I'll have to see the movie before I can actually say it was worth picking up.
Now, for those of you who don't know what "The Munsters" is, and you don't watch a lot of classic TV, "The Munsters" was a sitcom from the mid 60's that ran for only 2 seasons. Personally, I loved it. The characters were amazing, the show was really funny, and I loved both seasons. It's a shame that it only ran for 2 seasons, because I would've like to have seen more of it. But that's more of a personal thing. Now when someone brings up "The Munsters", most people are going to think of another show involving a family of horror characters such as "The Addams Family". And, for me, I always preferred "The Munsters" over "The Addams Family". Just because, I watched "The Munsters" first, and grew more of an attachment towards them. Not that there's anything wrong with "The Addams Family", I just have a bias towards "The Munsters", but that's just me.
Now, something's a little weird here. As I was reading the back of the DVD case, just to get an idea of what I'm getting myself into, one sentence caught my attention, and I want to read to you this very first sentence.
"Get ready for some holiday spirits as the first family of fright celebrates the season in the quirky and hilarious 2-hour TV movie, The Munsters Scary Little Christmas!"
Upon reading that, I checked the official runtime of this movie. And according to this DVD, the actual runtime is 1 hour and 31 minutes. Now, the reason why this is important is because if you're going to advertise this thing as a two hour movie, then why is the official runtime of this movie off by about 30 minutes? Now, this could mean one of two things.
One: Either the people that put this DVD out made a misprint error when they were trying to sell this thing as a two hour movie. Or two: They cut over a half an hour of footage for whatever reason. I don't know. But if the latter is the case, then I want to know what they cut out in order to put this thing out on DVD.
Now, I may be reading too much into that. The real question I want to know, beyond the questionable doubt that this is a 2 hour movie, is this movie going to be entertaining at all? I certainly hope it will be, because, after all, I am a fan of "The Munsters". But the only way I'm going to find out the answer to any of these questions, is if I shut up, and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out, "The Munsters' Scary Little Christmas".
6 minutes later
OK, I know it's been a while since I've seen "The Munsters", but I don't recall the door knocker ever talking. In fact, seeing it actually talk is just really odd. Mind you, I'm not complaining about it. But the fact that I'm seeing it talk just threw me off a little bit, you know?
14 minutes later
...Well, I never thought I would see Herman Munster exposing himself to artists to try and earn money. That was...kinda messed up. Funny, but definitely not something I was expecting.
10 minutes later
You know, guys, I would love to have a Randolph the Rabid Reindeer Christmas decoration hanging above my door every year, so that way it can spray dog foam on people. That just sounds fucking hilarious and awesome.
19 minutes later
So instead of putting Santa to sleep, the elves literally turned Santa into a fruitcake. I never thought I would get to say that, guys. That is...kinda morbid.
19 minutes later
You know, guys, I think this is the first time I'm seeing Herman dressed up in something that isn't his usual attire. Granted, it's just a leather jacket, but hey, at least it looks sorta cool.
The Review
Well, guys, that was "The Munsters' Scary Little Christmas". Let me shut that off...OK. Let's start with the one thing I was wondering about before I even started the movie. And that is the 2 hour runtime.
I asked at the start of this Reaction & Review why was this movie advertised as a two hour movie, even though the official runtime was only an hour and a half long? Well, after watching this movie, I can tell you this movie was definitely a misprint. Because this movie does indeed run at an hour and a half. And I think I know why. Since this was a made-for-TV movie, I'm going to assume it was 2 hours on television because of commercials. That's literally the only way I could imagine this thing being a two hour movie. If that's the case, then why did Universal, the company that put out this DVD, advertise it as a two hour movie? If they were planning on adding in the commercials on the DVD, then that would've been a fucking shameful way to advertise this movie as being two hours. Now thankfully, that isn't the case. But I seriously wish that Universal would've been a little more honest in putting out this movie without the two hour advertisement. And I'm kinda thankful that this thing wasn't two hours long, because, excluding the commercials, if this thing ended up being two hours, then this movie would've suffered from pacing issues. So, let's actually talk about this movie, shall we?
Writing in this movie is pretty good. It's basically an hour and a half long episode of "The Munsters", but with Christmas being involved. One thing I was curious about, going into this movie, is how well does this thing hold up to the TV show from back in the day? And it does it really, really well. Now, there might be those who have never seen "The Munsters" TV show from back in the day and might not understand some of the references or about who these characters are. And, to be honest, you really don't need to in order to watch this movie. Because there is a quite a bit of character development within this movie. It's not ultra deep, but you really don't need it for a show that was originally a sitcom. Everyone of the Munster family gets enough time to shine, so no one here feels left out or they don't get enough time on camera. And for a story centered around Christmas, it works really well.
So basically, the story is about Eddie Munster, the only child of the Munster family, who is not feeling the Christmas spirit because they moved out from their home of Transylvania. And the rest of the Munster family decides to hold a Christmas party in the style of Transylvania, so, that way, Eddie could get into the spirit of Christmas. So we see them trying different ways, such as Herman trying to raise money by taking on different jobs, so that he can buy Eddie some toys. We also get to see Lily Munster, along with Eddie, decorate their house for a home decorating contest against their next door neighbor. I will talk about their neighbor in a bit. And then we get to Grandpa Munster, who is trying to make it snow above their house. And somehow, he ends up transporting Santa Claus, who is trying to stay on schedule, and his two elves. And because of this unintentional screw-up on Grandpa's part, they try and get Santa's help to get Eddie Munster to find the true spirit of Christmas. Now, even though this kind of story has been told many, many times before, it does work. And unlike the monstrous amount of movies from the Hallmark Channel, this movie actually does show a lot of heart. Well, at least in terms of what you have to work with involving "The Munsters".
Now, as I said, the writing here is pretty good. But there are also quite a bit of side plots going on, and this is where my issues with the writing are going to come into play. Because there are couple of side plots that don't end up really going anywhere. One of them involves Marilyn, who is the only member of the Munster family who looks like a normal human. She's out mailing invitations to relatives from parts of Transylvania for the Christmas party. And during this, she comes across this dude on a motorcycle, who's name I can't remember, that ends up falling for her. And it doesn't work because, he's only in the movie for a few scenes. And by few scenes, I mean he shows up for about two or three near the beginning of the movie, and doesn't appear again until some where during the last half hour of the movie. I mean, if you wanted to establish a relationship between him and Marilyn, wouldn't you want to have him in the movie more often? It would make more sense to give him more screen time, but then again, it might've taken away time from the actual plot of the movie, so maybe it was a good thing he wasn't in the movie too much. After all, he didn't really have much of a character to speak of with the few scenes that he's in.
Another side plot that I wanted to get to was the home decoration contest. So, as I mentioned earlier, we have Lily and Eddie Munster decorating the house for the house decorating contest. And the person that they're going against is their neighbor Edna. When I first saw her, I thought she was going to play a bigger role, because we see her spying on the Munster's house as it's slowly gaining more attention from the people running the contest. And I thought she was going to find some way to sabotage their house in order to win the house decorating contest 6 years in a row. But..we don't get that. Instead, she really doesn't play much of a factor, aside from one part. And it's when she's handed the fruitcake that Santa Claus was turned into by his elves. When she tries to put the knife into the fruitcake, the judges of the house decorating contest, who were invited over by Edna, start to think she's nuts because the Santa fruitcake starts to act on his own will, while Edna's trying to control it. Afterwards, she then returns the fruitcake back to Lily, who originally gave her the fruitcake. And, like I said, she really plays almost no factor after that, ultimately making her arc kinda pointless.
Now, from the summarization I gave, it really seems like the filmmakers were trying to add in content that didn't really need it. And after kinda talking about it, I could totally see why this movie was marketed as a two hour movie. And it is very possible that there was more to this movie, but it might've been cut so that it could fit into two hours. Now, I could be totally wrong on that, and it might end up being bullshit. But it is slightly possible. However, I still believe it was because of commercials. Whether that is the case or not, as I said, I am quite happy to see that the final product on DVD didn't go to two hours. So, even though Universal lied about this thing being a two hour movie on the back of the DVD case, I can say that it's a lie that I'm willing to forgive them on, because this movie would've dragged on, had the two hours been a thing.
So, beyond all of that, the writing is still pretty good, especially for a Christmas movie involving The Munsters. What about the acting? Well, seeing as how this thing was released in 1996, it's obvious that none of the original actors from the show reprise their roles. However, we do have a cast that play these characters rather well. Sam McMurray nails the character of Herman Munster, in terms of mannerisms, and in how the character acts. Granted, he's never going to be as good as Frank Gwynne was, when he played Herman, but it's still decent enough. I will say that Ann Magnuson plays a great Lily Munster. I would even say she plays it as good as Yvonne De Carlo did back in the day, so I have to give a ton of praise to Ann Magnuson's performance here. She was great. I wasn't a fan of whoever played Eddie Munster at first, but he slowly started to grow on me, and ended up turning in a halfway decent job. And mind you, I say that, because child actors normally turn in terrible showings by default. But he was able to make it work, after I was able to get use to his acting. And everyone else turns in a rather good showing, even if the two characters I mentioned didn't have either enough time or didn't really have much of a role throughout the movie. So yeah, guys, acting here is pretty good.
Now we move on to special effects. The only thing I can think of that had CG, besides sparkle dust, was the door knocker. And the CG on it is OK. There's nothing ultimately wrong with it, it's just really odd that I'm still thinking about the door knocker talking, when it never did that in the show. But that's just a really minor complaint. Then we get to the makeup effects on all of the Munster's, save for Marilyn. And the makeup effects are really solid, but some of it looks little..iffy. What I mean by that is, you will have some characters like Herman and Grandpa looking awesome. And then we get to Eddie Munster, where it looks as though as some of the makeup doesn't look properly applied on him. Now, this may be because this is the first time I'm seeing the Munsters' family in color. Well...second time, actually. There was one exception where, if you saw the un-aired pilot episode, they were also in color. And what's weird about that is, you can totally tell there was tons of makeup applied to all of the Munsters' in that pilot. But here, some of the makeup doesn't feel as though it's applied properly. And, to an extent, Lily Munster seems to have that problem. Now, I am happy to see that she has that eye shadow like she did in the show, but the rest of it looks...kinda off. Now again, that may be because I'm watching them in color, because "The Munsters" TV show from the 60's, barring the un-aired pilot episode, was black and white. So that might be me complaining about nothing. But I still feel that it was worth bringing up. But everything else in terms of makeup effects looks great.
Our sets here are great. And seeing the Munster household in full color looks awesome, which I'm totally happy about. Camerawork here is pretty good, in terms of made-for-TV movie standards. Because when you're watching a TV made movie, you're never going to experience high quality picture when it comes to these types of films. But still, I can praise the camerawork for looking as good as it does here. The lighting is well lit. The sound-mix is mixed well. The score is pretty good, too, especially because there is a Christmas rock version of "The Munsters" theme song. And that sounded amazing. The rest of the score is good, too. But it's that remixed theme of "The Munsters" that really stuck to me.
Ultimately, when all is said and done, am I able to recommend "The Munsters' Scary Little Christmas"? If you're a fan of "The Munsters", and you've never seen this movie, go ahead and check it out. You'll end up adoring this thing. And even if you've never seen the TV show from the 60's, I would still say go ahead and give it a watch. You'll probably find something good out of this. And who knows? If you wind up enjoying this movie, then it might motivate you to watch the TV show, which I may do after I finish putting this episode together. I had said before that I wanted to watch this thing since last year, and after missing out on this movie back then, I'm totally happy that I was able to get to watch this thing, and it was totally worth the wait.
Anyway, guys, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all in the near future. Peace.
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