Rob Zombie, rocker-turned-filmmaker, has had crypt doors quaking ever since he first announced that his next project would be an adaptation of The Munsters, the goofball off-the-wall sitcom from the 1960s with the family being made up (in Frankenstein’s Monster Herman’s case, literally) of Universal’s gaggle of classic movie monsters.
The trailer is a colorful ode to the series with Herman Munster and his wife, Lily, and her father, “Grandpa” Count Dracula, (Fred Gwynne, Yvonne de Carlo, and Al Lewis back then, Jeff Daniel Phillips, Sheri Moon Zombie, and Daniel Roebuck now) running through a confection of a story the feels akin to the movie version of The Flintstones that hit back in the early 1990s.
Zombie has long let his freak flag fly when it comes to his love of classic horror and retro monsters, from his retro, Texas Chainsaw Massacre-inspired House Of 1,000 Corpses universe to his Halloween remakes, to his animated The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, something that feels like it lives around the corner from Mignola’s Hellboy. So when it came time that he announced a movie about The Munsters, the ball was in his court.
The last time anything even vaguely Munsters-related was on TV was a made-for-TV movie from Hannibal’s Bryan Fuller, Mockingbird Lane, featuring massively reimagined versions of the classic characters that bore little resemblance to anything fans might recognize. Zombie’s version is far closer to the visuals of the series, even recreating the famous Munster’s house, famously located at 1313 Mockingbird Lane, in exacting detail.
The trailer—which reveals the story to be a prequel to the series—opens with Lily wanting to find herself a man and reveals that Grandpa’s efforts have been less-than-successful at getting her anything she’d want. At the same time a mad scientist is birthing what audiences will know as Herman Munster in all the arcing, sparking, lightning-bolt-infused glory a Frankenstein’s laboratory, “He’s alive!” scene needs. Lily and Herman then have a meet-cute and proceed to go on a series of dates in various wacky outfits nodding to the series and era the original show was set in.
Along the way, various werewolves, creatures from the Black Lagoon, vampires, Igors, and more all make wacky appearances. Grandpa is trying to undermine the budding romance between the two undead kids—sparking what would be the enduring disdain he feels toward Herman throughout the original series—while they grow closer than ever. The trailer ends with the family taking up residence at their classic home and visiting a neighbor who faints dead away at the sight of Herman’s hello: “Greetings from Transylvania!”
The Munsters is expected to release this year.