Hey, I Remember This Show: She-Wolf of London

I never saw this show on its first run through syndication but I caught up with it on DVD. It started out on a promising note but then the writers either lost interest or changed direction and what looked like good campy fun during the first few episodes slowly went downhill and became just campy.

It's a pity. For a while, this show came close to doing for werewolves what Buffy the Vampire Slayer did for vampires and I wouldn't be a bit surprised to find out that Joss Whedon was inspired by an episode or two. Due to budget problems, the show later changed settings from England to the good old USA but that still did not improve matters. In fact, the American episodes include some of the worst stories of the series.



And this intro for the new "American" version did not help matters much.

Hey, I Don't Remember This Show: Hammer House of Horror

I don't remember this show ever coming to our side of the Atlantic. When you consider a lot of the British shows that did, that's amazing.

Hey, I Remember This Show: The Munsters

The Addams Family was one of my late father's favorite TV comedies when I was growing up and I wish I could claim that I liked them just as much when I was a kid. But, unfortunately, my first love was The Munsters. Only when I got older did I develop much affection for The Addams Family -- perhaps because the opening credits for that show used to creep me out when I was very young.

The Munsters, for some reason, seemed more accessible. Granted, the gags were often more lowbrow and less imaginative than the ones in The Addams Family. But they were funny too.

If The Addamses were the aristocrats of the Halloween sitcom world, the Munsters were the working stiffs. Or to put it a different way, the Addamses were the rich eccentrics who kept to themselves for the most part while the Munsters were the good-hearted democrats who were not above mingling with their more conventional neighbors when they could.

In any event, here is the intro and outro from the second season. If you wish to see the intro for the first season, please go here.

Hey, I Don't Remember This Show: The Munsters Today

Until I came across bits from this series on YouTube, I had honestly forgotten that there ever was a Munsters reboot, much less one that aired way back in the 1980s.* And after watching this intro, I can see why this show was not more popular. After all, this show's opening credits do not exactly encourage me to think I had missed out on anything by never watching an episode. However, YMMV.

For what it's worth, this is the intro from the first season, starring Mary-Ellen Dunbar as Marilyn Munster:



And this is the intro from the second season, starring Hilary Van Dyke as Marilyn Munster. She first started playing Marilyn after the thirteenth episode of the first season and went on to play her in the third and final season as well. Please don't ask me why she chose a look more reminiscent of Kelly Bundy than the original Marilyn. I guess she had her reasons. Plus neither she nor any of her fellow cast members sing those awful lyrics from the first season intro so that alone is a big plus. The show's theme always worked better as an instrumental, anyway.



* Actually it aired from 1988 to 1991 and lasted one season longer than the original show. Go figure.