★ 7 / 10
**_The second Munsters movie, fifteen years after the
Wuchak
**_The second Munsters movie, fifteen years after the first_** Herman and Grandpa are taken into custody in Los Angeles with the crimes they’re accused of…
**_The second Munsters movie, fifteen years after the first_**
Herman and Grandpa are taken into custody in Los Angeles with the crimes they’re accused of verified by several eyewitnesses. They trace their troubles to the owner of a wax museum (Sid Caesar).
“The Munsters’ Revenge” (1981) is the second and final Munsters movie to feature the three key cast members, Fred Gwynne, Al Lewis and Yvonne De Carlo. Eddie is played by a lookalike actor since the original actor was obviously too old by this point.
Meanwhile Marilyn is played by the third actress in the role, blonde Jo McDonnell, who happens to be the best actress in the part, at least up to this point (I haven’t seen the two Munsters movies from 1995 and 1996). Marilyn’s role here is bigger than usual and Jo is a highlight. At one point, she even disguises herself as the wax museum’s resident cave girl (played by Rachel Sorteberg).
Other highlights include Herman’s inadvertent destruction of a police precinct and what happens to Igor when he & Grandpa visit the latter’s old haunts in Transylvania, not to mention what happens to the Pharaoh’s mummy at the end. Then there’s newbie Cousin Phantom (of the Opera). As with the TV series and first movie, “Munster, Go Home!,” it's the charm of Gwynne & Lewis and their camaraderie that makes anything with them in it amusing and endearing.
I favor this flick over the first one simply because there seems to be more entertaining highpoints. Speaking of which, don’t miss out on Rob Zombie’s underrated origin movie from 2022, which I loved.
It runs 1 hour, 36 minutes, and was shot at Universal Studios in the Los Angeles area.
GRADE: B
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★ 5 / 10
The Munster's Return But Forget To Be Funny
aesgaard41
I'm a big fan of Classic TV. The majority of modern television shows is nothing compared to the timeless quality of Classic Television like "Bewitched,"…
I'm a big fan of Classic TV. The majority of modern television shows is nothing compared to the timeless quality of Classic Television like "Bewitched," "Gilligan's Island," "Hogan's Heroes" or "The Munsters," so when I was a kid and first watched "The Munster's Revenge," one of the first of several television reunion movies from the Eighties, I was more than overjoyed and exceptionally impressed, but just a bit upset that neither Butch Patrick or Pat Priest (or even Beverly Owen – the original hotter more exemplary Marilyn) would be allowed to return. Childhood tends to mask quite a bit, and with adulthood, I can see the stuff my teenage past self failed to recognize. For one, the plot is horrible. The writers obviously have never seen the series. What made "The Munsters" so remarkable wasn't that it was a family of monsters; it was the fact that it was a family of monsters living like a regular family and dealing with ordinary problems like paying the bills, problems in school and the local crime rate. What affected the Munsters in their later movies was that they started having strange and bizarre adventures, and that's just what the movie suffers from. The plot about robotic wax figures terrorizing town is a very weak concept, and what makes it that much more weak is that the characters are weak shadows of themselves. Fred Gwynne, Al Lewis and Yvonne DeCarlo can wear the costumes again, but the spirit is gone. They just don't have the energy they used to in the original series plus their characters are a bit askew. Since when did Grandpa yodel to turn into a bat, and since when did the police much less the public accept the Munsters existence? One of the biggest recurring gags in the series was that everyone, police and gangster alike, winced or freaked out at the sight of Herman, but here, not so much. Even more odd, Eddie has aged a few years and looks nothing like he once did, and the actress playing Marilyn, as attractive as she is, looks as if she has gotten younger! Even worse, "Uncle Phantom Of The Opera" (played by Bob Hastings – the same actor who joined Mel Blanc in voicing the Raven) definitely belongs in the category of the Lazy Hollywood Writers Category; even the Wolfman and the Creature from the Black Lagoon were named Cousin Lester and Uncle Gilbert in the series! Over all, the movie is a nice look back, but the movie has too few laughs, and the best scenes (Howard Morris AKA Ernest T. Bass as Igor back in Transylvania is a cast coup!) are too few and far apart. The movie really drags on the scenes involving the police and Sid Caesar's criminal plot away from the house. The best thing that should have been done would have been taking several of the original scripts and putting them together as a movie. Simply put, "The Munster's Revenge" is proof you can't go home again.
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70%
AUDIENCE
· 500 ratings
5.9/10
1.5K
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As a kid before i've watched any of munsters TV show, i saw this. Old cast, silly storyline, but tons of fun. They just don't make movies and shows how they used to anymore :(