Similarly to the first film made on The Munsters, this one isn't really anything special. The Munsters Revenge is plagued by a pretty weak story and is not nearly as funny as the show on which it's based, which might be due to the absence of a laugh track. Just like Munsters Go Home, they decided to get a different actress to play Marilyn for some reason, although the most important roles of Herman, Grandpa and Lily are unchanged. The film starts with Herman Munster (Fred Gwynne), his wife Lily (Yvonne De Carlo), Grandpa (Al Lewis) and son Eddie (KC Martel) at a wax museum which just so happens to have scale replicas of each member of the Munster family. When the museum closes for the night, the wax replicas of Herman and Grandpa (revealed to be robots) start to move around and frighten some people outside at the behest of a mad scientist in the museum. While at home some time after, cops visit the Munsters and arrest Herman and Grandpa, not realizing they aren't the robots and only look basically identical to them. Herman and Grandma manage to bust out of the jail and try to get back to the museum in order to absolve themselves of any wrongdoing. At the museum, Herman and Grandpa manage to disable the circuitry on their robotic doubles and take their place. In so doing, they manage to infiltrate the underground lair of the scientist and Dr. Diablo (Sid Caesar), who wants to steal jewels belonging to an ancient pharaoh he claims to be related to. After making it back home, Herman and Grandpa meet Glenn, a detective and son of the police chief. Marilyn (Jo McDonnell) tries to get Glenn to help her uncle and his father in law, but by the time Glenn reaches the museum, there are no robots to be seen and Diablo's lab has vanished. Meanwhile, Herman and Grandpa dress up as waitresses in order to get inside a pizzeria whose owner was seen giving a briefcase full of dollar bills to the scientist before. Herman and Grandpa wait until someone from the museum shows up, then sneakily follow him back to it. Once there, they pretend to be the robots again and learn that Diablo's plan is set for Halloween night. Grandpa plans to inject a special serum into the mummy so that he is brought back to life, but it's all the way in Transylvania. After being stashed in coffins on a plane, Herman and Grandpa arrive in transylvania and come to the castle of Igor (Grandpa's former assistant) who dies for seemingly no reason. Grandpa tests the serum on him, and it works, but his attitude changes and he becomes sympathetic towards the mob of angry villagers coming to burn the place down. Herman and Grandpa make it back home shortly before Halloween, and Lily tells them that both Glenn and Marilyn went to the museum and haven't come back yet. Herman, Grandpa and their cousin, the Phantom of the Opera (Bob Hastings) go there and find the two imprisoned by Diablo in a strong glass container. The Phantom sings opera loudly and gets the container to shatter, freeing them. That night, the Halloween party is underway at the museum, and Marilyn steals Diablo's controller for the robots, making them not function while Grandpa injects the serum into the mummy. As Diablo tries to escape and make off with the jewels, the mummy comes to life and begins choking him. The cops show up and arrest Diablo, the mummy is revealed to actually be Herman, and the real mummy had too much of Grandpa's serum, reverting him into an infant. Back home, Grandpa and Herman join Lily's Halloween party and reveal they have been gifted a large diamond for their efforts, but the Phantom sings too loudly again and shatters it. I don't know what it is, but something about Munsters movies just spells disaster. The first one was already painfully average and unfunny, and this isn't really any different. I did at least enjoy seeing De Carlo, Lewis and Fred back together after so long, but it's not like the first movie where there's a lot of interaction between them. Lily is absent from most of the film, and 90% of this movie is just Grandpa and Herman doing their own thing. It's also pretty shocking how this is over 15 years after the show ended and they all basically look the same, which in the cases of Lily and Grandpa I suppose makes sense because they're vampires. The story (as I said) really isn't much, and the kid playing Eddie looks nothing like Butch Patrick (but at least sounds like him). I really don't understand why Marilyn's actress kept getting replaced so much, but here, she's once again just a generic blonde girl. Probably the only saving grace this movie has is seeing Grandpa and Herman interact. While not as funny as they are on the show, they do have a dynamic that only duos such as Laurel and Hardy can come close to. Overall, I'd say this is for diehard fans only. They did have to pay huge amounts of money to get Fred and Al to come do this, after all.
Review of The Munsters' Revenge
