Addams Family or the Munsters?

a piece of fluff discussion for a friday.
have a mai tai and forget contoversies...

so anyways, i think morticia addams has it over lily munster in so many ways.

and gomez addams is a randy oddball whereas herman munster is kind of a crybaby.

i do have to admit the munster mobile was a bit cooler though ~ being a george barris creation...

Grampa and his Drag-u-la from the Munsters was my favorite character and car out of the two casts. Bloody mary in my tiki mug this morn.

Grampa and his Drag-u-la from the Munsters was my favorite character and car out of the two casts. Bloody mary in my tiki mug this morn.

blood mary works, and is certainly appropriate to this topic :)

Mmmmm....Morticia

Great topic JohnnyDollar!

I have mulled this over, and while there are aspects of the Munsters I fine ineresting...the hot rod car and the dragon under the stairs...it's less intelectually stimulating that the Addams, kind of a forced humor.

So many subtle things in the AF were wierd...Just having them all together was very curious...Uncle Fester was hilaroius.

Strange in retrospect, the sense of propriety in day to day lives has been so lost that many of thier anitics (Trampoline, stockmarket stuff in the house, fish tank, trimming the pedals off roses..) have lost the humor...and wouldn't be surprizing in real life.

Chas Addams the cartoonist who drew the AF was a pretty wierd guy hisownself.

I always felt The Addams Family was a far better show.

The Munsters was just your typical dysfunctional family sitcom. A lot of bickering and whining for laughs. The Addams Family was a tight family unit that always showed love and respect for each other.

no doubt, the addams family has my vote, even tho i love the munster too.

but, i have to say that the BEST ACTOR out of all that cast members of both shows is

FRED GWYNNE (Herman Munster).

the big lug as scared/giddy little school girl act is comic genious!

On 2004-10-22 08:26, Tiki Chris wrote:
no doubt, the addams family has my vote, even tho i love the munster too.

but, i have to say that the BEST ACTOR out of all that cast members of both shows is

FRED GWYNNE (Herman Munster).

the big lug as scared/giddy little school girl act is comic genious!

What he said... I loved both Fred Gwynne and Al Lewis (Grandpa). They were also great in "Car 54 Where Are You?"
Thank goodness we have both.

Addams Family all the way.

Chas Addams had SUCH a twisted sense of humor! ("well, go tell your brother you'll murder him right back!") I have a book of his collected cartoons - right up there with Edward Gorey ("A is for Amy who fell down the stairs, B is for Basil assaulted by bears.")

I like both shows, but there is something special about the relationship between Morticia and Gomez. And I loved Jackie Coogan as Uncle Fester.

The Addams Family, by far.

But I do love the Herman & Grandpa characters from The Munsters.

My high school physics teacher looked just like Herman Munster. Creepy....

Shhh! I used to have a secret crush on Lurch (Ted Cassidy)...

[ Edited by: DawnTiki on 2004-10-22 12:10 ]

I think uncle fester is great. In fact I made a sculpture of him. see http://www.tonynatsoulas.com/images/busts/unclef.html
I sold it to a guard that works at San Quentin. Tony

[ Edited by: dipnat on 2004-10-22 17:10 ]

I would choose the Addams Family. True the Munsters had a bad ass car or two, but being as rich as Gomez, I could have my own hot-rod hearse made.

Here's an interesting story about a family in my neck of the woods.
http://www.texastwisted.com/attr/munstermansion/

I went to their house-warming party a few years ago. It sucked hard. But I did get to hang with Grandpa.. THE Grandpa! But a two drink maximum sucked so I left and hit the local pub with my lodge brothers.

http://www.munstermansion.com/

I also think the dude in the show "eveyone hates raymond" looks and sounds like a young Fred Gwynn.

-one man aspiring to be everyone’s favorite unkle.
http://www.unklejohn.com

My Tiki Lounge http://unklejohn.suddenlaunch.com/index.cgi

[ Edited by: Unkle John on 2004-10-22 23:36 ]

as a kid, i thought lurch was played by james coburn.

[ Edited by: Tiki Chris on 2004-10-23 06:18 ]

On 2004-10-23 06:15, Tiki Chris wrote:
as a kid, i thought lurch was played by james coburn.

Thats hilarious! Poor James Coburn....

Munsters fans can currently download the Musters 'At Home with' album from:
http://www.danacountryman.com/munstersfile/Album.html

Trader Woody

The Addams Family made regular appearances on my TV rerun viewing schedule as a youth, but I just couldn't seem to get into the Munsters. I do remember though our family going out to see the Munsters movie when it played at the drive-in.

What is odd that both shows appeared in 1964, and only lasted two years.

The Addams Family had the more memorable theme song - just try singing out those first 4 duh-duh-duh-duh notes in a room without having somebody clapping in the next two notes. (The Green Acres theme has a similar 5 note start)

But the Munsters also had a great theme song - a wild instrumental that was covered on many LPs of that era, and worthy of inclusion on the set-list for any surf-rock group.

Vern

Tiki Chris
I thought the same thing about Lee Marvin... Ben Rumson and Lurch? Could there be a more complete actor?

I loved 'em both, but I have to admit the Munster's car episodes really won me over. I even had models of The Munstermobile and Grandpa's dragster (Dragula). When I was a kid I was such a fanatic for anything by George Barris or Ed Roth.

Does anyone else remember when Grandpa Munster was teaching Eddie to make Go-Go pills (or was it Go-Go Juice?) in the basement laboratory?

Hey rememeber whe Batman and Roblin where climbing up the side of a building and a window opened and it was Lurch?

good times.

As for the comparison, I'll have to say I like parts of both. I actually prefer Lily Munster to Morticia, I think Gomez Adams is so suave he is supercoll, Grandpa Munster is way better than the grandma on teh Adams, as for siblings eddie Munster is better than Pugsly and Wednesday combined.

Munsters. The Munster Theme alone wins the debate for me. But I do think it is a bit of apples and blood oranges to try and pick a favorite.
TG

Tiki Gardener...on the topic of Oranges, Nobody loved Oranges more than Louis XIV, His Orangerie at Versalles was built in the shape of a "C" twelve hundred feet around, and was the scene of garden parties and masked balls. His gardeners learned how to parch the trees to a point near death, and then dramatically revive them into bloom in planned cycles. This kept the King in blossoms throughout the year.

Not Tiki, but not bad for a bloke back then

Munsters!

Darn, darn, darn, darn, darn!!

I was in love with Herman as a kid, I wanted a fire-breathing dragon to live under my stairs. Plus, in Vegas they have Munsters slot machines that play the "Munster's Theme" while playing. Herman always pays me well, thank you very much and the Munsters Theme is so much cooler than the finger snapping Addam's Theme. Gotta stand by my man Herman.

Love em both, but if I were to pick one I'd have to say the Munsters. I soooo wanted a Wolf man doll to sleep with when I was a kid just like Eddie M. I love Thing from the Addams Family too; I bet he could mix up a mean cocktail. The one thing I didn't like from Addams was cousin It, He just always gave me the creeps when I was a kid. I never could understand him either.

A fellow horror movie buff tells me the Creature from the Black Lagoon made an appearance on the Munsters as a relative. Would anyone know if this is true?

As most of you probably did, I watched both the Munsters and the Addams Family as a kid. I have to give the Munsters the edge because they had the cool cars. I had Revell models of the Munster Mobile AND the Dragula. Were my favorite models back then. Wish I still had them...

TTK

I thought Herman Munster (Fred Gwynne) had departed this mortal coil. But I see that he is alive and well and running for President of the United States (look closely and you can see the bolts in the side of Kerry's neck)...

Before all the Democrats in here get all fired up - I'll go on record as saying I don't like either of the choices we are being "given"... so don't go there!

TTK

Toi the peopel talking about the Munster's cars...

George Barris, the man that made the Munster Coach and Dragula still has a shop in Burbank called Barris Customs. George Barris was also teh man that gave us the original Batmobile from the old TV Show as well as the newer ones from teh more recent movies.

Right you are Sam - George was responsible for just about every custom car used in ANY TV show during the 60's and early 70's. And his cars became great model kits - I had several as a kid.

Glad someone else is hip to GB history!!!

TTK

MUNSTERS for me, mostly because the Addams family was not ever picked up by our local UHF rerun stations here in the 70's.
Much like the Batman & Green Hornet comparison, where we watched Batman but never got to see G.H.
Now with cable, I can watch them all and if there is a marathon.....I'm screwed.

As a kid I never understood the dynamics of the Adams Family. The Munster's on the other hand were easier for a young mind to comprehend - Dad was a Frankenstein, Mom was a vampire, Eddy was a werewolf, etc. As I got older I tried watching the Adams Family and it still didn't "click" for me. Also, the guitar driven Munster's theme is so much cooler than the goofy Adams Family theme! Adding that with the Barris custom cars my vote is definitely with the Munster's!

JohnTiki

Aloha from the enchanted Pi Yi Grotto in exotic Bel Air Maryland!

[ Edited by: johntiki on 2004-11-16 22:06 ]

On 2004-10-28 17:04, johntiki wrote:
Also, the guitar driven Munster's theme is so much cooler than the goofy Adams Family theme!

Although I am a big fan of of Surf Rock which was the heart of the Munsters Theme, I gotta say, whenever I heard the Adams Family Theme I could not help but snap my fingers along to it.

I just wanted to say that IO think it's adam shame that the last movie Raul Julia made before he died was the Strrefughter movie. It would have been so much cooler if he went out as Gomez Adams. I was really against them doing a third Addams Family movie after raul Julia's death. I never saw it but I had no interest in seeing someone else in that role. For someone to fill those shoes you would need someone really smarmy enough. Out of teh people who are out ther now I think the only person who could fill those shoes is Antonio Banderas, and I am not an Antonio Banderas fan at all, but I thought he was teh only right choice for Zorro and I actually think he would be teh best fitted person to step into the Gomez Adams role. Of course if there was a new Addams Family movie I think thit should focus on Wednesday Addams, cause that way we get to stare at Christina Richie for an hour and a half.