15 unexpected Christmas specials you have to see to believe
The Munsters’ Scary Little Christmas
Nobody is safe from a holiday special, not even America’s favorite monster family, The Munsters. In 1996, Fox resurrected the characters from the famous 1960s sitcom for a TV movie set around Christmas. The Munsters’ Scary Little Christmas featured a whole new cast and has continued to be shown on TV over the years, as well as receiving a VHS and DVD release.
It’s Christmas time in the Munster household and son Eddie is homesick for Transylvania. His father Herman decides to cheer him up by giving his troubled son a good ole fashioned Transylvanian Christmas to get him in the holiday mood. He’s determined to make it a great holiday, so he enlists the help of the rest of his family, including Lily, Grandpa and Marilyn, and he sends out invitations to their extended family, like Mummy and the Gill-Man.
To help him plan the perfect Christmas, Herman asks his boss for a raise, and is promptly fired. He takes a handful of odd jobs to help him make money for the holiday season, including donating blood, wrapping presents, and even nude modeling for an art class (yikes). But he’ll do anything to make Eddie happy.
Meanwhile, Grandpa is getting up to his own hijinx. On Christmas Eve eve, one of his experiments goes awry and he ends up transporting Santa Claus himself to the Munster Mansion, along with his elves. If they can’t figure out a way to send Santa back to the North Pole, they might ruin Christmas for the entire world. Dun dun dun! While this is all happening, Lily is competing in a home decorating contest and the lovingly normal Marilyn falls in love, while their nosy neighbor Edna Dimitty continues to cause trouble for the Munsters.
The Munsters was always cheesy, but it was perfect for the family-friendly TV landscape of the 1960s. Fast-forward to the ’90s, and it wasn’t quite the same era, making this made-for-TV movie the epitome of Christmas fluff. Fans of the original show might enjoy the nostalgia it gives, but let’s be honest, nothing can compare to the original — though a Christmastorylinene does make everything a little bit better.