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| Jeff Daniel Phillips as Herman and Sheri Moon Zombie as Lily in The Munsters |
A reworking of a classic series which achieves something surprisingly similar in tone, The Munsters is not what most people would expect from a Rob Zombie production. It’s whimsical, it’s family friendly, and it’s really very sweet. A large part of that is down to Zombie regular Jeff Daniel Phillips, who plays the newly created Herman Munster, a monster just getting his bearings in the world when he meets Sheri Moon Zombie’s Lily, who will become the love of his life. Like a big screen sitcom with wild colours and a loud rock soundtrack, the film is definitely a niche work, but will delight many longstanding fans. When I meet Jeff, he tells me that he numbers amongst them.
“I was a huge fan growing up, definitely. And everybody else was also. Rob and the guy who played Grandpa, Daniel Roebuck, those two were Munster historians. They knew every writer on every episode and every guest appearance, and so it was fun being around those two. We had some time to rehearse before we started, and they would just throw out all this information behind the story. Actually, Daniel did work with Fred Gwynne before too, so that was fun to hear about.
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| The making of a man |
“There was one point Rob was going to make it about 12 years ago, and it didn't happen. But I was driving my car, he called me and I had to pull the car over. I started thinking like, ‘Oh my God, what? I'm honoured but I don't know how I'm going to pull this off.’ And so when we started again, it kept getting delayed because of Covid, obviously, and we started to get that anxious feeling and study it and then it would go away for six months, and then it would come back. So by the time we started, I think I got rid of a lot of nervousness, and we just jumped right in.”
I ask him about his approach to playing such an iconic character, and he says that a lot of it came down to this particular scenario.
“It's an origin story, so he’s just being developed. He just got he was just created by Dr. Wolfgang, and so he's trying to feel out who he is. His brain is from somebody else. It's like he's used to driving a Cinquecento and now he's driving a big muscle car. It’s that and his voice. I took that kind of teenager feel. So he's just he's not quite comfortable in his body, his voice is cracking, and then obviously, he falls in love, you know, with the love of this life. So that’s what I was approaching? Hopefully it comes across and, you know, the kooky humour does do.”
We talk about what it’s like to be part of Rob’s team. This is their fifth film together. I’m told that it’s quite tight-knit.
“Yeah,” he says. “He has a group of people he draws from in this particular project. We're doing it in the middle of Covid, in Budapest, and they closed down the city. So it's like, all these things were against us. None of us had vaccinations, it was that early. And so it was tough. And he didn't want to risk throwing somebody in that he didn't know or wasn't familiar with. He likes to surround himself with people that are ego-less because we all work towards his performance, and he loves performance, he loves character actors. I've worked with Sheri five times before; Daniel I've worked with a bunch. So yeah, I think it makes his projects unique, the fact that everybody trusts each other on set, and because we trust him, and he has a vision, and he's very passionate, and it's contagious, everybody tries to match that level of excitement.”
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| Love and marriage |
Alongside the difficulties caused by Covid, he says, there was one positive, which was that the delays meant more time to prepare.
“The Budapest crew was still on the clock, so they kept building more stuff, more costumes, all these different things. So that was that was probably in our favour.”
Delivering a comedy performance in that situation, though, presented particular challenges.
“To do comedy, with a group of people with masks on – you just see these two eyeballs. And a lot of people English definitely wasn't their first language, if they knew it at all. If I do any comedy here in the States, I kind of have an eye out and look at the cameraman or sound to see if anybody's chuckling It was crickets the whole time. So yeah, that was trippy. I mean, obviously, Rob's behind the monitor, and I could see if he laughed or chuckled or anything. But yeah, that was a little tricky to try to to comedy and, you know, in the prosthetics, four hours of makeup, you're working all night.
“There's a suit that I'm wearing, I'm on the platforms. Luckily, this great Hungarian special effects team, they were all women, they were fantastic. I mean, they just made it so much better. I've done things like that with prosthetics and it's so gruelling, and by the end of the day – you're there, you know, 16 hours or whatever, 18. And you're just...” He sighs. “In my suit I was always 15 degrees hotter. So they would just kind of throw me to the chair, clean me up, put me in the van, go back to the hotel, bring me back. So yeah, they're very sweet group of people. And, you know, we made it.”
The film was a really strong aesthetic. Jeff has a background in production design himself and I ask if he contributed any ideas to that.
“I don't think Rob needs my ideas at all,” he says. “He's an extremely talented person. He's very focused on what he wants. But I think he said, in interviews and on the set, it was like a giant cartoon come to life, so he popped all the colours even more. He said we were going to make it more colourful than he even planned. I know Universal didn't want a black and white film, and so that was not even an option. He went the opposite. He just went full bore Rob Zombie with colour and craziness, and, you know, in the music.”
So what were the best parts of the shoot?
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| A Halloween romance |
“There's a couple of things,” says Jeff. “I mean, definitely when he first first meets Lily. After the concert, he has a little show and she comes and they meet, and there's just something, you know? I am fortunate that I know Sheri and we have so much trust and we're friends. If that doesn't work right away then, you know, you’re not going to believe the romance the rest of the movie. So that was a sweet part. And then the other one was, there's a Halloween moment in town when we're in this neighbourhood, and I just kind of removed myself from the situation. It's like, unbelievable, we're really doing this, you created this whole neighbourhood. All the people in these Halloween costumes were the characters, and it was just heartwarming, we were all just kind of like, ‘I can't believe we pulled this off.’ Because it was gruelling to try to get there under the situation with Covid, people hadn't been working in a while, and it just it all fell into place. So it was a very sweet moment.
“If you look at the film, the scope of what we covered and what we pulled off, we're in Paris one day, we're in a laboratory another. Sometimes you can throw in a line here or there, but not not as much when it comes to this particular film. I tried to stay pretty tight to the script, because I thought it was great... But I'm not a stand up comic, so to jam 75 of those jokes in my head, song lyrics, and then my lines, my head was spinning by the end of it. And probably breathing in enough of the make-up chemicals and whatnot.”
A lot of fans were probably expecting something more gory from this film. What was it like working with this particular team on something that’s so different in style from their usual work?
“Well, we approach it the same way,” he says. “I know I did. It's fun, though, because there's a few of us that go out to promote these films. I usually go out to these conventions about this time as the film comes out. I've done it in the past, and it's great. In this particular film, all these kids, these families come up to me, which I've never had. Everybody's laughing and having fun. So yeah, it's great opening up the world to, like, they say for some of the younger kids it’s a gateway into horror, but it's just fun to be able to show this to a larger group of people, and show Rob's work to a larger group of people. I've been very tickled with the response when it comes to people coming to these conventions and excited about it and watching it over and over.”
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| Home sweet home |
There was already a big Munsters fanbase out there, he says.
“In the beginning, people were like, ‘Oh, you can't ruin it!’ – but we're not trying to ruin it. It's a love letter to the show. We're all huge fans of the show. And a lot of those people have come around and said ‘You know, I don't know what I was worried about. You guys obviously know the show. You were trying to honour it.’ Some of those people just like to be negative right off the bat. There's a large group of people that were completely enamoured and some had so much fun with it that they even went back to the old shows and watched them, you know, so it's a give and take.”
Will there be a sequel? He tells me that he’s the wrong person to ask, but that he would definitely be up for it if there were.
“So I was talking about these conventions. I went to this convention recently in Michigan, and they scheduled me to talk on an independent film panel. I showed up on Sunday morning, there was like 40 people and I didn't expect that. And and so I went in there and these young people were so excited, and as I was working with them and talking to them, I was like, ‘Yeah, I do have a lot to offer. This is how you do this.’ You know, there's so many streaming ways to do it, and the technology is so strong now that you can do a high quality project on the cheap. And because I come from more of a fringe theatre background also, I'm used to putting these things together. And as I left, I was like, ‘Why aren't I doing something like that too?’ So it's funny how I went to go talk to them, but actually, they inspired me. And so I've been just shooting stuff, chipping away at this one project now. I just shot something a couple of weeks ago, I'm going to shoot something more this week.
“I’m just into filmmaking. I like that spirit. I like everybody coming together. So, that's where my heart is. Yeah, I'll do a commercial if they ask, you know, I do a lot of that kind of stuff to pay the bills. But independent filmmaking is where it's at for me.”
