Pat Priest | Through the Shattered Lens

Have you ever wondered how Herman and Lily Munster came to live at 1313 Mockingbird Lane?

No?

That’s too bad, because Rob Zombie is going to tell you anyways.

Rob Zombie’s The Munsters is a prequel to the 60s sitcom of the same name. It shows how Herman Munster (Jeff Daniel Phillips) came to be created, how he became a Rob Zombie-style rock star, and how he overcame the opposition of the Count (Daniel Roebuck) and married Lily (Sheri Moon Zombie). It also shows how Lily’s brother, Lester (Tomas Boykin), tricked Herman into signing over the deed for the Count’s castle in Transylvania. There’s not much of a plot but there was never much of a plot when it came to the original sitcom either. Just like the show that the movie is based on, The Munsters exists to show classic monsters making corny jokes and freaking out at the prospect of dealing with what the rest of the world considers to be normalcy. Unlike the multi-faceted Addams Family, The Munsters have always been a one-joke family.

There have always been elements of satire and subversive humor in everything that Rob Zombie has done, as both a musician and a director. Those who claim that Rob Zombie does not have a sense of humor are mistaken. However, the comedy in The Munsters is deliberately broad and vaudevillian, like the show on which the movie is based. As a director, Zombie doesn’t always seem to know how to best present that type of humor. The Munsters is the rare movie that would have benefitted from a laugh track because the jokes are definitely sitcom-level. They were designed to be followed by canned laughter. Zombie’s affection for the material and the characters come through and the deliberately artificial production and costume design actually works better than I was expecting but, at nearly two hours, The Munsters often feels directionless.

Jeff Daniel Phillips and Daniel Roebuck do adequate imitations of Fred Gwynne and Al Lewis, respectively, but its Sheri Moon Zombie who steals the show, bringing a lot of mischievous energy to Lily. Of the principle cast, Sheri Moon Zombie is the only one makes her character feel like something more than just a tribute to an old sitcom. The camera loves her and she convinces us that she loves Herman, no matter how childishly he behaves.

One final note: Sylvester McCoy — the seventh doctor, himself! — plays the Count’s assistant, Igor. McCoy doesn’t get to do much but it was still good to see him. Igor was the type of role that Tom Baker used to specialize in before he was cast as the Fourth Doctor. By casting McCoy as Igor, it almost felt as if Zombie was keeping the role in the family.

1973’s Some Call It Loving tells the story of Robert Troy (Zalman King). He’s rich. He has a girlfriend (or maybe she’s his wife, we’re never quite sure) named Scarlett (Carol White). He lives in a big, beautiful mansion with Scarlett and Scarlett’s girlfriend, Angelica (Veronica Anderson), and several different women who Robert and Scarlett bring home so that they can all pretend to be someone other than who they are. (When the film begins, Scarlett is pretending to be the strict head mistress of a finishing school. Later, she’ll pretend to be a nun.)

Robert seems like he should be happy but, from the minute we see him, it’s obvious that he’s not. He’s mired in deep ennui and even playing in a jazz band at a nightclub doesn’t seem to bring him any real joy. Robert plays saxophone. His best friend in the band is Jeff (Richard Pryor), a barely coherent junkie who is probably only alive because of the pills that Robert keeps him supplied with.

One night, Robert goes to a carnival. He stops at a tent that apparently houses “Sleeping Beauty.” Inside the tent, a young woman named Jennifer (Tisa Farrow, later to star in Lucio Fulci’s classic Zombi 2). Jennifer is in a comatose state. People pay a dollar so that they can enter the tent and kiss her. Her “owner” says that Robert can do more with her if he’s willing to pay $50. Robert instead buys her for $20,000.

It turns out that Jennifer has been in a coma for eight years. She’s been kept in that state by a “sleeping potion,” a cocktail of drugs that has to be administered on a daily basis. Robert takes her back to his mansion and doesn’t give her the potion. Eventually, Jennifer wakes up.

Now, speaking for myself, if I woke up in a strange place after being in a forced coma for eight years, I’d probably be pretty pissed off. Jennifer, however, cheerfully accepts that the fact that she’s been asleep for eight years and now she’s living with a somewhat creepy man and his two girlfriends. She’s just happy to have her mansion and her Prince Charming!

While Scarlett and Angelica view Jennifer as being someone new to play games with, Robert starts to develop real feelings for her. He wants to have a real life with Jennifer but, unfortunately, the only life that Jennifer knows is the fake one that he’s created with Scarlett and Angelica. Robert finds himself torn between deciding whether or not to commit to Jennifer or to the fake world that he and Scarlett have created at the mansion….

Some Call It Loving is a strange film. It’s incredibly pretentious in the way that only an art film from 1973 could be. Reportedly, the film was a box office disaster in America but the European critics loved it. That’s not surprising because the film’s sensibility is far more European than American. Not only does the film refuse to judge its characters but it also ends on the type of ambiguous note that seems specifically designed to alienate mainstream audiences. Though the film’s plot has all the making for a kinky melodrama, it’s actually far more of an erotic fairy tale. Jennifer really is Sleeping Beauty but, unfortunately, Robert may not be quite prepared to be a true life Prince Charming. In the end, both Jennifer and Robert are trapped by their own fantasies.

As I said, it’s pretentious but it’s also strangely watchable. From the opening of the film, director James B. Harris achieves a properly dream-like feel and Zalman King manages to be both compelling and creepy at the same time. Tisa Farrow is perfectly cast as Jennifer and the mansion where the majority of the film takes place is simply to die for. Even if Robert is a creep, he at least has good taste when it comes to interior design. Some Call It Loving is obviously not a film for everyone. What some will find dream-like, others will find to be muddled and annoying. But it’s an intriguing artifact of early 70s arthouse cinema.