By Geno McGahee
In 1964, the TV show “THE MUNSTERS” was launched and despite it not going for many seasons, it grew a following and led to many returns in many forms. One of the returns was a 1996 made for TV movie, “THE MUNSTERS SCARY LITTLE CHRISTMAS”, and it definitely did not have a lot of money behind it.
Eddie Munster (Bug Hall) isn’t happy with the move to Los Angeles that his family has made, and I have to say that most holiday films that take place in California I do not like. I’m a New Englander and one of the things that we have is a snowy cold Christmas. I hate paying for heating and shoveling snow, but it feels like Christmas here, dammit. California Christmas is just not Christmas to me. It’s my problem, I know. I’ll try not to hold it against the Munsters too much.
Dealing with bullies and a new home, Eddie is depressed, but his parents, Herman (Sam McMurray) and Lily (Ann Magnuson), are determined to make it right. The family gets together and comes up with some ideas to make Christmas feel like a Munsters Christmas and they all have ideas. Marilyn Munster is played pretty well by Elaine Hendrix, but one of the strange casting choices was Sandy Baron for Grandpa Munster. He was not right and I guess he did his best, but he just wasn’t good. The makeup wasn’t good either. They forgot his neck.
The idea to invite all of the family to big holiday party is agreed upon and they have some awesome family members, including a mummy and a werewolf. Another idea that Lily comes up with is to team up with Eddie and compete in a house decorating contest, but Mrs. Dimwitty (Mary Woronov) won’t let them win easily. She has won for the last five years and wants to win again, for some reason. Woronov is one of the best things about this film. She puts everything into this one.
I typically hate Christmas movies with Santa involved. I know, it doesn’t make much sense, but it takes a really good film for me to say “I’m glad they brought in a Santa character.” Not only do we get Santa in this, but we get two REALLY annoying elves. Grandpa puts out a snow spell but it backfires and is transports Santa and the elves to the Munsters’ home. We do get some humor, mostly due to Herman Munster insisting on sitting on his lap.
The elves want to stop working so much and make it with some California babes, even noting that they have fake boobs. It brings up a good point though that isn’t often touched upon. Who do elves fuck? I would hate to think that their entire lives are making presents for children and nothing more. As much as I hated these elves in this movie, it brought up a good point. Let the elves go and get some Santa! I guess the assumption was that elves have zero sex drive. That was my assumption. Don’t act like you don’t think about the sex drive of elves.
As with most movies like this, the point is to save Christmas and the film races to that attempt. Santa teams up with Herman and the elves to deliver gifts and we get a couple of funny moments thanks to McMurray’s performance.
One of the best moments of the film is the family party at the end with all sorts of horror characters including the Mummy, Wolf Man, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Phantom of the Opera and some weird guy with bad hair and long arms. The star of the show was the Mummy. This film might have been a 10/10 if they kept him in it the full time, especially if he was dancing.
THE MUNSTERS’ SCARY LITTLE CHRISTMAS is better than I anticipated. With such an obviously low budget and big shoes to fill, I was ready to say there are two hours of my life I’ll never get back, but it did OK due to the performances of the cast. Most of the cast put their hearts into this film and it shows.
Overall, you could do worse and if you like THE MUNSTERS, you might enjoy this one. It tried to stay true to the source material and do its best with limited resources.
