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Psycho and The Addams Family

posted 5 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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"The three of you together. Now that's a picture only Charles Addams could draw."

That's a line from a Hitchcock movie. Not Psycho.

North by Northwest. Roger Thornhill(Cary Grant) addressing Vandamm, Eve, and Leonard, the first time he sees them all together in "massed villainy."

I've always taken note of that line because its one of the few times that a Hitchcock movie acknowledged the cultural world OUTSIDE of Hitchcock's. (Which can date a movie, like "Bob Stack in The Untouchables" being referenced by a character in Billy Wilder's The Apartment.)

Ernest Lehman wrote that Charles Addams line, and Hitchcock kept it in NXNW, and I think this is part of the reason: Hitchcock was acknowledging that Addams and Hitchcock were "of the same world": macabre, death-oriented...funny, sophisticated. It was "professional courtesy" for Hitchcock to mention Addams in his movie.

In 1959 when NXNW was made, The Addams Family was only a New Yorker cartoon, which made it MORE sophisticated to mention them. The TV show didn't show up for 5 more years(1964) and maybe Hitchcock wouldn't have allowed an Addams Family line when it was "merely a TV show."

Of course, by the time North by Northwest turned up on network TV(1967), The Addams Family WAS a TV show (on the air at the time) and Hitchcock may have rued his approval of Lehman's line five years earlier.

I mention all this because a "new" Addams Family film is in theaters right now. Its animated -- in that robotic CGI way of our time -- and it comes a coupla decades after Angelica Huston as Morticia and Raul Julia as Gomez gave us a live action version. (Charlize Theron and Oscar Issacs do the vocal honors this time.)

I saw the new Addams Family last week. Yes, there was some nostalgia to it, but yeah, its a cartoon for kids and seemed steeped in the simplistic moralizing of our time and -- well, it didn't seem like the REAL Addams Family to me.

Except in one very Van Santian way, at the very end: they do a shot-for-shot, note for note(nobody speaks) gesture for gesture(Gomez's deep chest breathe) re-do of the original TV show opening credits for The Addams Family ...complete with sung theme song and trademark finger snaps.

Yes, its "Van Sant's The Addams Family" and its the best part of the new movie.

Because the BEST Addams Family always was, and always will be:

1964-1965 TV season. Pretty, but odd-looking Carolyn Jones as the reedy sexy Morticia(so stonefaced and deadpan). Stylish and very funny John Astin as Gomez(so LUSTFULLY in love with his deadpan but appreciative spouse -- this may have been the sexiest married couple on TV. ) The Vic Mizzy harpsichord and finger snaps. (Vic Mizzy made sitcom music for The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres and THIS, and it seemed he HAD to be named "Vic Mizzy." He did The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, too. Herrmann. Mizzy. The Greats.)

In one of those weird "twinnings" that happens often in movies and TV, The Addams Family on ABC premiered in the same 1964-1965 TV season as the CBS/Universal version of a "comedy sitcom about a family of monsters": The Munsters. The Munsters used Universal monster copyrights to give us a Frankenstein clone(Herman Munster) a Dracula clone(Grandpa) and a Bride of Frankenstein clone(Lily) and have great fun with them. The Munsters was the slapstick monster comedy of 64-65, but The Addams Family was a bit more adult and twee. (Still, neither of them escaped the laugh tracks or stale canned jokes of early 60's sitcoms.)

Whither Psycho in all this?

Well, as a matter of mood and "look" Psycho certainly took a page from The Addams Family(New Yorker cartoon) before it, and certainly presaged SOME of the look of The Munsters after it. The Munsters was made at Universal, which meant that some of its soundstage and backlot look is that of Psycho. The spooky interiors of the Munster house may well have been decorated with some leftover Psycho props.

But the big deal, of course was the EXTERIORS: the haunted houses which anchor Psycho, The Addams Family, and The Munsters were all of a piece in the 60's: black-and-white, Gothic, a bit rotted out and rundown.

An issue: I do believe that the house in The Addams Family was simply a reproduction of a Charles Addams DRAWING . No house had to be built or re-built. Just drawn.

Meanwhile: The Munsters house was (purposefully) put on a neighborhood block , so as to be near to ...neighbors.

Versus: the Psycho house all alone on a rural hill up from a shabby motel.

But they were all of a piece. Put more clearly: Hitchcock, with Psycho, not ONLY entered the world of William Castle and Diabolique -- he entered the world of the Addams Family. Likely knowingly - -inspired by those comics.

And the Munsters came trailing along after.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

That's really about it on this topic..though I must admit seeing a "new" Addams Family house in this new cartoon movie, the Psycho vibe did enter in when I saw the house. And this: Psycho, The Addams Family and The Munsters all offer up the idea of the "haunted house amidst the regular folks." Comic gold is made of this premise on the TV shows as various "normal people" run scared from their monster neighbors; Hitchcock was a bit more sophisticated in suggesting that the Gothic Bates house would simply be accepted by its distant Fairvale neighbors...as long as it was out of sight and out of mind.

But this: The "shot-for-shot, note-by-note" homage to the ABC TV show credits at the end of the new "Addams Familyi" was very Van Sant does Hitchcock does Psycho.

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

and it comes a coupla decades after Angelica Huston as Morticia and Raul Julia as Gomez gave us a live action version.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

There were two of them, The Addams Family & Addams Family Values, and they were both, as I recall, surprisingly great (I'd need to see them again now to be sure - the second one had some problems I think but the scenes with Wednesday and Pugsley at Camp were so strong that all was forgiven).

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I recall seeing both of them -- I was much younger and they were live action so I don't recall considering them to be "kiddie movies"; the new animated movie IS. But this: I've seen a LOT of movies in my life(and that's been a great part of my life), but I'm surprised how many are in the category now of "I remember seeing it, but I don't remember a thing about it." I think the brain starts rejecting the storage of memories it finds "unnecessary," and most movies, beyond their immediate entertainment value...get the boot.

So it is with the Addams Family movies of the 90's. I remember seeing them and liking them, but that's about it -- though your mention of the camp sequence in the sequel brings back some good memories of liking that.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

As for the TV version, I don't recall watching every episode -- indeed I was never an inveterate watcher of TV episodes of ANY kind "all the way through" but clearly I watched enough Addams Family episodes to get the gist of "who was who": the main family of five; Cousin It(a great concept; nothing but hair, wearing sunglasses) and The Thing(The Beast With Five Fingers rendered funny.) Ted Cassidy's hulking Lurch(THERE's a name for the ages) and his booming "You rang?" were always great. Cassidy had some competition in the "giant guy" acting category back then -- Richard Kiel, who went on to be "Jaws" in two Bond movies in the 70s, and made the rounds of The Wild Wild West (as a giant henchman to dwarf villain Dr. Loveless) in the 60s.

Ted Cassidy lost the white ghoul make-up and also made a little history as the hulking member of Butch Cassidy's outlaw gang who challenges Butch to a fight and receives what William Goldman's screenplay calls "the most exquisite and perfect kick in the balls in American movie history."

But I digress.

I do have to say I remember thinking that the casting of Anjelica Huston and Raul Julia was close, but not really as good as TV folk Carolyn Jones and John Astin in the original. Huston was not really pretty enough for Morticia, and Julia's realistic latin charms had to compete with the very unique but VERY funny facial and vocal style of John Astin, one of those great 60's comedy guys who was great, well, just for the 60's. It was a bit like the movie of Miami Vice, in which Colin Ferrell and Jamie Foxx, "big movie names" didn't come close to the chemistry of TV folk Don Johnson and Philip Michael Hall.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Other "TV show better than movie casting": The Wild Wild West movie(which will have relevance here, as we shall see) in which big star Will Smith and sorta star Kevin Kline didn't come close to the mix-and-match of Robert Conrad and Ross Martin on the TV show(it was a bad script in general, but worse was how the TV show's best buddies became arguing antagonists in the movie, with Smith calling the meant-to-be-brilliant Kline's Artemis Gordon stupid. Terrible movie.)

Wild, Wild West the movie was the downfall of previously hot director Barry Sonnenfeld, who had GOTTEN hot on the basis of...his two Addams Family movies.

Somebody somewhere did a study of "movies from TV shows" and it seems that for the most part, the movie have flopped -- because old TV shows by their very nature were flimsy vehicles for narrative movies. But there HAVE been successes, and the Addams Family movies(the 90s ones) are among them.

And though this is generally a thread that struggles to stay on topic(sorry, fans), I DO feel that the original TV Addams Family has connection to Hitchcock in his own television host mode -- deadpan, witty, a bit "twee" but not too much and wonderfully macabre. In a modern world of blood and guts horror, there is something to be said, and warmly remembered, about "macabre funny tales." The Trouble With Harry is another example.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Side-bar: Carolyn Jones. Even before she was Morticia, there was something "otherworldly" about Carolyn Jones. She had a slinky way of carrying herself and a slit-eyd, deadpan beauty. In the fifties, she was a female victim in the great horror movie "House of Wax"(in a key scene of old-fashioned terror, the heroine realizes that her lost girlfriend Jones, has been turned into a wax statue.) And she is in a Hitchcock movie, but in a very small part, as one of the waiting guests in London in "The Man Who Knew Too Much '56." She's a fun "diversionary love interest" as a Miami Beach beatnik in Capra's "A Hole in the Head"(Eleanor Parker gets Sinatra instead, though.)

In the 60's, Carolyn Jones played the very first murder victim on Burke's Law(a femme fatale and keeper of many men who is killed by one of them) -- in the pilot starring Dick Powell as millionaire police captain and whodunit detective Amos Burke. Powell would die and Gene Barry would take over the role. As for Jones, she married the producer of "Burke's Law" -- a fellow named Aaron Spelling, who would use the "guest cast of new and fading stars" formula of Burke's Law for the lesser but more successful Love Boat.

Alas , Jones died fairly young of cancer. I can't recall if it was before or after she broke up with the rich and famous Spelling.

In any event, an interesting career for Carolyn Jones, but it is Morticia for which she will be most remembered.

By the generation(mine) that can remember her.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Wednesday, played by the young Christina Ricci was the breakout star. Indeed some people think Ricci's performance as Wednesday is the best child performance *ever*, e.g., here are Scriptnotes guys gushing:

https://johnaugust.com/2017/scriptnotes-ep-301-the-addams-family-transcript

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This is great, how you find these things, swanstep.

I do remember now that this is where Christina Ricci made her breakout; I'm not sure about the best child performance ever, but its among them. Chloe Grace Moretz voices Wednesday in the animated film, but Wednesday is animated so there's no facial acting allowed.

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

Wild, Wild West the movie was the downfall of previously hot director Barry Sonnenfeld, who had GOTTEN hot on the basis of...his two Addams Family movies.

Sonnenfeld had quite a string of hits in the '90s: Addams, Addams2, Get Shorty, Men in Black, until the WWW disaster. Since then MIB2 & MIB3 are his highest profile films & his few originals have tended to be stinkers, e.g., Nine Lives (2016), starring a cat voiced by Spacey got terrible reviews. Mostly TV for him now according to IMDb.

Sonnenfeld was an ace DP first: Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Throw Mama from The Train, Big, When Harry Met Sally, Miller's Crossing, Misery (that's a lot of tasty, mid-to-late '80s viewing!). I guess you'd have to say that none of Sonnenfeld's self-directs are as good or as beloved as any of those.

Surprisingly few DPs have made the jump to director and only a couple have triumphed. Indiewire has the details:
https://www.indiewire.com/2014/04/15-cinematographers-turned-directors-86989/

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Sonnenfeld had quite a string of hits in the '90s: Addams, Addams2, Get Shorty, Men in Black, until the WWW disaster.

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Yes, it all comes back to me now -- including his "promotion" from DP(rare, as you say.)

Wild Wild West was a disaster, I think, because it failed on so many levels. Most dangerously, it really shot a hole through the Will Smith Superstar aura. He had had other Fourth of July hits(Independence Day, Men in Black) so he called the Fourth "Big Willie Weekend" for WWW and...it was so bad it gave him that "pride comes before a fall thing." Plus -- as usual -- Smith DID have star quality, but he was carried by two good to great earlier summer films.

As often with these TV reboots, the new generation didn't care, and the older generation that held WWW deep in our hearts(however cheesy it was) were appalled by the desecration of a TV team just this side of Kirk and Spock for camaraderie.

Anyway, I'd say WWW was near fatal for Sonnenfeld. He never really recovered. But I am sure he is rich.

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Since then MIB2 & MIB3 are his highest profile films & his few originals have tended to be stinkers, e.g., Nine Lives (2016), starring a cat voiced by Spacey got terrible reviews. Mostly TV for him now according to IMDb.

Sonnenfeld was an ace DP first: Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Throw Mama from The Train, Big, When Harry Met Sally, Miller's Crossing, Misery (that's a lot of tasty, mid-to-late '80s viewing!).

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Yes.

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I guess you'd have to say that none of Sonnenfeld's self-directs are as good or as beloved as any of those.

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An interesting idea. He didn't have "the right stuff" to fill the director's chair.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Surprisingly few DPs have made the jump to director and only a couple have triumphed. Indiewire has the details:
https://www.indiewire.com/2014/04/15-cinematographers-turned-directors-86989/

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I'll take a look. I recall Jan De Bont making the jump and hitting with Speed and Twister. But he was such a reported mean a-hole to casts and crews that when he finally did bomb (Speed II?)...the fall was rapid.

PS. I'm searching for your post about The Movies and movies of the 21st century. Can't find it. Help?