I enjoy the look and atmosphere of The Munsters mansion more than the one in The Addams Family. And I love that there's a seemingly endless wind blowing around outside their house. I love the image of the many leaves being blown into the house whenever any of them are going in or out the door. Like I said, this show had a really great and genuine gothic atmosphere going on all around it, much more so than The Addams Family did IMO.
"Life IS pain highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something".
I look at it like the Addams Family was the rich, upper class, white collar horror family; while the Munsters were the middle working class blue collar horror family haha
shareI think the atmosphere of the home is perfect for the characters portrayed. The dusty, cobwebbed, dark and dingy environment lends to the macabre nature you would expect from them and it also has its comedic element; dust flying everywhere when the organ is played or when they get into bed. These people are centuries old. I doubt they had Pledge and Swiffers back then. Lol.
share^^^^^^^^ - Pledge and Swiffers back then....HAHAHAHHAHHHAHAHAHAHAHA
shareAt the risk of sounding like Cliff Clavin, Pledge furniture polish has been around since the 1950s.
But then, that was part of the charm of The Munsters. Their house wasn't covered in dust and spiderwebs because they didn't have access to cleaning tools. It was that way because that's how they liked it. Lily put a lot of work into making the house look the way it did, and took great pride in it. Remember, Lily's definition of "dusting the furniture" was using a vacuum cleaner set in reverse to blow dust over the furnishings. I recall another episode in which she mentioned "hanging cobwebs" about the house.
No way. I always hated that the Addams house was way too bright and cheery. It was supposed to be scary but wasn't. If you ever saw the old Chas Addams cartoons, especially ones that included any of the characters that later became the Addams family, they were always dark and gloomy. I never could understand how the producers of the show totally didn't get that. The Munsters was a deliberate spoof of the old black and white monster movies including all the Dracula and Frankenstein flicks, and they did a great job of recreating the dark, dank, and dusty atmosphere of those old films.
shareWell the Addams Family was scary in a different way than the Munsters, The Addams Family was supposed to be seen as ELEGANT and sophisticated in a sense, not just flat out horrific.
shareWell The Munsters sets needed to be horrific because they were spoofing the old Frankenstein and Dracula movies of the 20s and 30s. Horrific might have been overkill for Addams Family sets, but as I mentioned, if you are familiar with the old Charles Addams cartoons that inspired the show, the scenes that he drew were VERY dark, gloomy, and creepy and I always felt like the producers of Addams Family completely missed the mark.
p.s. I actually just looked up some old Chas Addams cartoons of The Addams Family and the backgrounds that he drew for them were much closer in character to the sets used for The Munsters. To me, the Addams Family house on the series looks more like a retirement home.
Check out The Addams Family house from the original cartoons here, there is one cartoon that shows The Addams Family staircase and it looks remarkably like The Munsters stairs:
http://www.newyorker.com/cartoons
Oops, here's the correct link, I think:
http://www.newyorker.com/cartoons/bob-mankoff/charles-addams
I read somewhere that some of the sets used on Munsters actually were used in some of the old black and white monster movies. I think in particular a lot of the equipment used in grandpa's lab was stuff that the studio had lying around from earlier days.
share